Abdominal radiotherapy, they say, can cause huge side-effects sooner or later. Whenever I have to attend the hospital for a check-up, I'm asked incredibly impertinent and personal question about the state of my gut and there are always looks of surprise and (I suspect) disappointment when I say that I haven't had any problems (the literature, I find, suggests 1/2 of those who receive abdominal radiotherapy will experience major side-effects and that many of them will live with those side-effects, not realising anything can be done).
Having said that, from time to time I do wonder what effect radiotherapy has had on me. I'm sure that my digestive system is less robust than it was; I seem to suffer gastric upsets more frequently than I did before treatment and, with every gastric discomfort, I start to wonder if this could be a side-effect or, worse, a recurrence. Of course, it all comes back to whether the cause of loss of robustness is mechanical or organic; maybe I'm just getting old!
Whatever the reason, while it's annoying, it's not debilitating; I know that if I eat something that's slightly past its "sell-by", I'm likely to react badly in a way that didn't happen when I was younger. If I am affected, it serves me right but, equally, the discomfort and inconvenience is minor compared to what others have to deal with; I know that tomorrow I'll be fine again. Others don't have that luxury to look forward to.
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