Cancer Story

On the 23th December I got a call from Aarhus University Hospital sarcoma department. This was the day before Christmas as we in Denmark celebrate, exchange gifts and dance around the tree on the 24th. The 25 & 26th are reserved for Christmas celebration, known as Julefrokost at family or friends places. The call informed me that I been on a multidisciplinary conference, just a fancy way of saying multiple people with different specialties look at the same pictures and patient journal and discus the case. They wanted to have a clear idea of what we are dealing with, so they would like a biopsy. This is done with a doctor locating the tumor with ultrasound, guided by CT and MRIscans. When they locate the tumor, in my case hitting a 5x5x7cm is not that hard, they give local anesthesia. When they confirm the anasthesia is working, they make a small incision and use the opening for the biopsy needle. The needle is not so much a needle, but rather a holedigger that drives into the flesh and pull back a flesh core, leaving the layers intact. I could not feel a thing and it was all over after 10 mins. Then came the hard part, you have to lie still on you back for 4 hours, to make sure the wound don’t open inside and cause a bleed.

So I’m finally free, after one week of been admitted, at lot of scans, confusion and disturbed sleep, I’m ready to go home for Christmas. I’ve been sleeping in the hall Monday to Friday alongside 2-3 other patients, as all rooms were filled. The Camiño was perfect training for this, earplug in and…. sleeep! Some of the other patients were easily disturbed in their sleep and I can’t imagine how hard it most be going through a lot of pain and getting no sleep. I told them if a room got available, please prioritize others then me, I’m good as is. I was also lucky, as I got the end row of the hall, it had a nice view from the window and a table next to it that sort of became mine.

It’s been a weird start to the week. The night between last Saturday and Sunday I was feeling off, simply could not find a comfortable position to sleep in. No extraordinary pain, but enough to keep me awake. Thinking that this was feeling not quite normal, not like a food poisoning or upset stomach. I called the weekend docker early Sunday and got a time to get a checkup a 9:00. Arrived expecting the usual circus of people at the emergency weekend dockers, but it was luckily not full and I got in straight away. The doctors did an examination of the stomach and got quite worried as he could feel a pulse coming from the exact spot where I had pain. Then things got hectic, the doctor called in an code on the phone and suddenly I was rushed in a wheelchair to the Emergency. Here I placed in a room immediately, two nurses lifted me on the bed all the while a doctor was beginning to ultrasound my stomach. Nobody had told me what was going on at this point, everybody was rushing, getting vitals and doing stuff. The ultrasound doctor was mumbling and talking to himself, when he finally announced: I’m calling in my senior colleague. She came down right away and took over the ultrasound work, after about 5 mins, she looked up: “Hi Daniel, so we are from vascular surgery department, the was a suspicion, you had a bleed from your aorta, when this happens we need to move fast. luckily this is not the case, your veins are looking normal and fine”. then she turned over to her colleague: “please tell the surgeons they can stop prepping”. At this time the clock just turned over to 9:20, so I’ve learned that if you need critical care, they system is in place. From here everything turned into a regular ER experience in Denmark, waiting, alot of waiting…

I often thought to start blogging, it just seamed like getting out of the start box has been annoying hard. It’s not a lack of topics I want to share my idea about or interesting projects. It’s more about finding the time, or rather prioritizing the time, to actually sit down and write up a post. I don’t expect many to find this site, so mostly this comes down to me, wanting a place to recollect my ideas; thoughts and passions!

But my life is changing rapidly, everything I knew and thought was given, have been put through the shaker of life and not all have been left standing. All throughout the process I have been keeping a daily journal, this blog will serve as a platform were I post summaries of what I have been going trough these next couple of months.