Breasts

What a title to grab attention! I wonder what the hit rate will be. However, those here for salacious reasons (you know who you are) may be disappointed. This is not what you are looking for. It is about embarrassing side-effects of the Tepotinib medicine I take. 

And they truly can be embarrassing. It messes with your proteins and hormones to strange effect. In an earlier post I mentioned scrotal oedema (14th November). It has you rolling round like a bow-legged sailor. Fortunately, this has now subsided and I can go back to sea; well, walk around the village and do the gardening, at least.

But there is a still more embarrassing side-effect, which I would not be mentioning at all had it not been sorted: gynaecomastia. It translates from the Greek as “female breast”: man boobs.

I am not talking about a bit too much flab and fat in the chest department (you also know who you are; we think we do too), but something more uncomfortable. It took a month or two to pluck up the courage to tell the consultant I was a little sore around the nipples. A month later it was becoming painful. A hug from my wife had me crying out, and bumping against a door frame made me writhe in agony. I don’t know how you women manage. Breast feeding must be a nightmare. There were hard circular lumps under the skin and they were growing bigger. I began to worry it might show.

The consultant said it was not something he had come across with Tepotinib, but he did an additional blood test. My testosterone levels were right down. Both men and women produce testosterone and oestrogen in different proportions. My testosterone was around the female level.

Four months and four jabs in the bum later, I am relieved to report that it has gone completely. The jabs could have been at shorter intervals, but I went for a more careful approach.  I didn’t want to start acting like Rambo.

No further jabs needed. I now have a gel you rub on - no, not there - you rub it on your shoulders. 

“Testogel”, would you believe? Two pumps per day. Phwoar! 

You have to wash your hands thoroughly afterwards, and on first use prime the pump and dispose of what comes out. Quite a bit goes down the sink. I suppose somewhere there is a fish with a beard and a deep voice.

Snowing Like Buggery

Heavy snow was forecast today, with a weather warning for our part of the Pennines, but it was nothing compared to how things used to be.

The guinea pigs snowbound in their hutch at the end of the garden, 2013

Wednesday, 25th January, 1995. It started to snow at half past four in the afternoon, much earlier than forecast, and much more heavily. I was at work at the university, feet on desk, on the phone to someone in Newcastle. Big heavy flakes, like dinner plates some would say, reflected the office light back in through the window. I should have got out straight away. When I did, it was chaos in the car park. Any later and I would have had to spend the night in the sports hall. 

All over Yorkshire, people were trapped overnight at work, on trains, in churches and town halls, and in cars on the M62. Six people died trying to walk home. The audience at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds were forced to stay the night. They had been to see ‘The Winter Guest’, a play about a community cut-off during a blizzard. Realism at its utmost.

My wife, J, was six months pregnant, her last week at work before maternity leave. She worked seventeen miles away. How was she coping? No mobile phones in those days.

It took me two hours to do three miles. The traffic inched forward with longer and longer standstills. The road then steepened and the next few hundred yards took another hour. I turned round and went back to a pub car park, had a whisky and some crisps, and started to walk home.  

I crunched my way through the countryside under crystal-clear stars, along the middle of a now silent road. There were a few other walkers, all cheery and excitable, and a lot of abandoned cars. Where was J? Was she back already? There had been no answer when I phoned from the pub.

The house was in darkness. No messages. I waited up for a time. It seemed best to get some sleep, so I went to bed.

I was awoken by her scathing voice. Her car was outside in the middle of the street, deep tracks through pristine snow. It’s an interesting experience, shovelling two feet of snow off your drive at three in the morning.

It had taken her nine hours to get home. Apart from stopping for petrol and a bar of chocolate, she had simply kept going. She knew she couldn’t get out and walk. On getting stuck, she just went backwards and forwards wiggling the wheels until free. She was rather pleased with herself, the only car still on the road.

The snow melted quickly and we were able to rescue my car the following afternoon. 

Early the following week, it happened again. In no way was the university management going to be caught napping again.

This time I was helping to invigilate an exam for a hundred and fifty students. We were in a windowless, sports hall half a mile from the main campus. I had accompanied a student to the toilet (fortunately, they were still capable of removing and replacing their own pants in those days) when someone came to tell us we had an urgent phone call. Gary, one of the other invigilators, went to take it.

“Evidently it’s snowing like buggery* outside,” he whispered to us. “The examinations office say the university is about to be closed and we should all piss off home quick” (don’t ever think that university professors are urbane and well-spoken all the time).

I wasn’t too happy. It meant we would need to set another exam, and the students would have to prepare for it and retake at a later date. We whispered between ourselves and decided to tell the students how things stood. Gary made an eloquent announcement offering them the opportunity to leave early. None did.

Afterwards, we were supposed to be collected along with the examination scripts by university transport, but none came. We had to struggle back on foot. The university was locked up and abandoned. Even the security staff had gone home. We could not get into our offices. We walked to the car park and put the scripts in my car. I began the drive home.  

If anything, it was worse than the first time. The traffic was even slower and more halting, and I could see I was going to get stuck again. I had the bright idea of diverting by one of the back roads. Wrong decision!

Half way home there is a steep, down and up dip. I slid to the bottom and that was it. Car stuck in the middle of nowhere, boot full of students’ examination scripts. It was going to be hard enough to walk the rest of the way without having to carry the scripts as well. So, I abandoned them. I wasn’t going to spend all night in the car.

There it stayed for two days. What would have become of me had the car been broken into and scripts full of data flow diagrams and entity life histories scattered across the countryside? I suppose it would not have been the first time that examination papers have been lost. It must have happened at some time, somewhere. Or has it? 

Road near our house, 2013

 * a colourful expression I had not heard since childhood, meaning "a lot".