The last four weeks have, without a doubt, been the hardest time since I was diagnosed with this tumour way back in 1993. My resilience was first tested on 16 June when I visited Dr Paul Mainwaring at the Mater hospital - Division of Medical Oncology(see earlier post). The scene in the waiting room there was a huge shock for me. There were50-60 people, most of whom were in advanced stages of intense cancer treatment using chemo therapy and were obviously very unwell. I was sitting there thinking:
"wow! this is the new me - Laurie Barram cancer victim. This peer group is a far cry from the gang that climb at Kangaroo Point on Wednesday evenings that I used to belong to only a few weeks ago..."
Then, the very next day I had an appointment with the Radiation Oncologist Dr David Schlect. Well, it was almost a repeat of the day before, with elderly, obviously very ill patients lining up in the waiting room for their daily radiation treatments.
For the first time, I started to get scared, very scared!!!
By the time I got to see Dr Schlect, I was a mess.
He simply said:
"How are you going?"
That was all it took to tip me over an emotional precipice and next thing I know I was crying like Bob Hawke and hugging Cheryl in desperation.
Luckily, Dr Schlect is used to this sort of thing and keeps a good supply of tissues in his office!
Once I could speak again we talked about what to do about my loss of emotional control and he gave me a referral to a psychiatrist friend of his, Dr Eric Delacey at the Toowong private hospital.
So I visited the "shrink"on 29 June and I must say that I was very disappointed to find out that Woody Allen has been conning us all these years because I can report that there was definitely no couch to be seen. Dr Delacey focused on determining which of three possibilities was causing my depression. Was it a) a normal reaction to having a life-threatening illness b) I had developed a depressive illness or c) due to damage to the right frontal lobe of my brain from the surgery. After I had no trouble with some tests for the latter, he decided that it was mainly just a normal reaction. Regardless what was causing it, he felt that a low dose of anti-depression medication would be the best way to deal with the problem and I was prescribed a half-dose (ie 30mg tablets) of a drug called Cymbalta
My emotional state has certainly settled down considerably now.
