A mild touch of the cancer: In which David has an unscheduled transit stop

Author and comedian David Downs shares his experience with cancer in this series 'A mild touch of the cancer'.

Greetings from the 'emerald isle', which will be serving as my hospital room for the week. In another attempt to take control of my illness and my environment, I will be transforming my ward into a small slice of Ireland - the land of my forefathers. Actually, that's not true, I only have the one father. I may have refrained from adopting a faux Irish accent for the week, however I am not above the odd Irish joke from time to time as you can see. Here is another.

Dr Maloney tells his patient: "I have bad news and worse news, Paddy."

"Oh dear," Paddy replies. "What's the bad news?"

The doctor replies: "You only have 24 hours to live."

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"That's terrible," says Paddy. "How can the news possibly be worse?"

Dr Maloney replies: "I should have mentioned it yesterday."

My parents are both from Ireland, moving here before I was born but forever blessed with (or stuck with, depending on your perspective) their strong Irish accents. I swear my mother's is getting stronger as she gets older, like the flavour of Guinness in the annual Christmas pudding. And possibly that explains why.

My room will be dressed this week in their honour and 'mammy' (as true Irish people would refer to their mothers) will be coming to inspect it, probably tidy it a bit, fuss over me, and give the nurses cake. It's one of her main hobbies, if not her fulltime occupation, feeding other people.

I suspect mothers around the world do it but certainly the Irish, like the Italians and Greeks, have quite a reputation for trying to make other people fat by putting utterly delicious irresistible food in front of them. Chocolate caramel slice, Louise cake… if the IRA had employed similar tactics it may have been more successful for them. Mum (I'm not proper Irish) nearly succeeded on us when we were kids and has made good ground with my father, although he is a willing participant with a sugar addiction and a fetish for cream. We had to resuscitate him once when he overdosed after she gave him cronuts.

Like a trip on the budget airline Ryanair, however, my holiday this week in Ireland has been delayed a day while the plane makes an unscheduled stopover – that is to say, the room I was supposed to stay in wasn't ready, so I had to go into a shared ward for a night. They try to avoid having us chemotherapy patients share rooms as the drugs we are on, and our bodily emissions (at least some of them) are poisonous for a few days. But this time it was unavoidable so I spent a night in a shared room, trying to keep my bodily fluids away from the other patients, some of whom were also having chemo, and who weren't necessarily affording me the same courtesy.

Two of my roommates waiting for their new accommodation. DAVID DOWNS

So that meant that all the symptoms I've had, I am now experiencing from others. All the things I have described in these columns – the funny, the strange and the downright unpleasant, came back to haunt me and I had some appreciation of (for example) the nitrous nasal flavourings of chemo-influenced flatulence I have been inflicting on others.

It's very public, sharing with other people. The questions that were private before now become very public – I think hospital ward designers may think that a curtain drawn around the bed provides privacy but I can tell you, it doesn't. And as I've outlined before, when in hospital the medical staff are obsessed with bowel motions, so seem to ask constant questions as to our regularity.

In a shared room this can be somewhat amusing and embarrassing, although they try to keep it as subtle as possible. Perhaps too subtle for the harder of hearing occupants of my room, leading to an escalating series of questions just before sleep time.

"Mr X, were you successful in the bathroom today?" the nurse asked the man in Bed C1.

No answer.

"Mr X, did you open your bowels?"

Still no answer.

"Mr X, did you go number twos at all?"

Nothing.

"Mr X, any emissions from your back passage?"

Again, nothing from C1.

One of the other occupants decides to help out. "Oi", he yells loudly, "did you poo?"

Still nothing from the poor bloke at C1, who I think was already asleep, but C4, thinking the question was for him, replies: "Hell yes, I went 6 times! Might have diarrhoea!"

Not wishing to be outdone, and thinking this was turning into some sort of cancer story one-upmanship, I pipe up too "I only went once – but it was a goodie!" Always anxious to please, me.

While the nurse decides to give up at this stage, I think this sharing of experiences appears to bond us more closely, and unconsciously, we appear to now copy each other's symptoms – sniffing, coughing, spluttering and yes, farting.

Pretty sure this Irish saying is something about farting.  DAVID DOWNS

It's like we are having a game of Simon Says. The guy in Bed C2 sniffs, so the man in C1 does too. Then I sniff, and let out a little cough, to see if they will copy. C4 does, and tops it with a subtle botty burp. So C2, not to be outdone, lets off a ripper. And so it goes on through the night. I'd say it's like a child's school camp, but the average age is about 68 and I am taking that average down substantially so I don't think we can claim to be juvenile.

Actually, now that I come to think of it - Sniff, Splutter, Cough and Fart. If I remember correctly from school, these are the 4 stages of the internal combustion engine.

Finally though, to try to get some aural respite, even if I can't get nasal relief, I search around my bag and find a set of earplugs from an airline (from my previous life, when I had one and used to travel). So for most of the night, my body may have been in a hospital ward in Auckland, but my inner ears were cruising at 35,000 feet towards Ireland. (Why do they measure airplane height in feet? The last vestiges of the imperial system, perhaps?)

Jean Paul Satre may have said that 'hell is other people', and in the middle of the night, with strangers snoring their heads off and trying to gas you with chemotherapy created sulphur bombs, that might be true – but I think heaven can be too. In the morning, chatting with my ward-mates, we got to know each other a bit better and shared some of our experiences. It was great to hear their stories. We are all at different stages of a similar journey and it was nice to meet them and feel a sense of camaraderie.

When they split us up to go our separate ways, I like to think we had bonded a little. As I walked out of the ward, I let out a wee trouser trumpet of salute to my fellow cancer travellers, and Mr C4 – ever the showman – did a triple trill in reply. Or it may have been that diarrhoea, I didn't stick around to find out.

I'll report back when I touch down in Ireland, and let you know how the rest of my week went. Toot toot!

David Downs has been, at various times, an author, radio and TV actor, comedian and public speaker. With careers in TV, IT and now the public sector, where he helps New Zealand companies grow internationally, David lives in Auckland with his wife and three teenage boys.