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The Christie is one of Europe’s leading cancer centres, treating over 44,000 patients a year.

The Christie hospital is based in Manchester and serves a population of 3.2 million across Greater Manchester & Cheshire, but as a national specialist around 26% of patients are referred from other parts of the country. We provide radiotherapy through one of the largest radiotherapy departments in the world; chemotherapy on site and through 10 other hospitals; highly specialist surgery for complex and rare cancer; and a wide range of support and diagnostic services. We are also an international leader in research, with world first breakthroughs for over 100 years. We run a large, high quality, dedicated clinical research environment where our patients can participate in complex and early phase clinical trials, with around 400 trials taking place at any one time.

The Christie Hospital welcomes donations. Charitable donations are vitally important in enabling The Christie charity continue its work in the battle against cancer.

Among the services delivered are:

Acute Oncology manage the unexpected care needs of patients with cancer, including emergency situations, acute complications and acutely unwell patients and

Brachytherapy , which is the oldest form of radiotherapy, but also one of the least known. In its most simple form, brachytherapy is bringing a radioactive source close to a tumour.

Chemotherapy means using medicines to treat cancer. There are lots of different chemotherapy medicines and we often give several medicines in combination to increase the effectiveness of treatment.

Although I was expecting to be in The Christie Hospital for just one night, it didn’t work out that way.

I had some complications which meant I ended up staying in hospital for 8 nights!  I was admitted as an emergency after things went wrong with the catheterization.  This was even though the brachytherapy had gone well according to the Consultant Radiologist.

My Treatment Continued

I actually had the brachytherapy on Monday, but when the catheter came out after the procedure, I was unable to pass water, so it was replaced which gave me some relief. Temporarily as it turned out, as when that one was removed, I was unable to pass water again.

The complications arose when the catheter was again replaced but it was inserted  in the WRONG PLACE. This was discovered on Wednesday the 1st of August in the morning, after a night of sheer agony while they thought there were clots blocking the drain. The drain bag was full of blood, so they tried “irrigation” which meant a lot of pain for me. More on that later.

On the Wednesday morning I had a bladder and kidneys scan but the Consultant couldn’t see the catheter in my bladder. They quickly removed it out and sent for some more specialists; one from the Urology team and one from the Critical Care Unit ( which really bothered me). The Urology Registrar decided that I would probably have to go to theatre for a supra-pubic catheter, but first tried another method involving a 1.5 metre length of wire which was a massive relief when it worked and the water flowed again!

I thought I  would be kept in over the weekend as I  developed a chest infection and they wouldn’t let me go until the drain was running clear. There was also some concern about my kidneys following the irrigation issue. This will push the next stage back by at least a week, so the timeline may be affected.