This post is just about being ill as writing about it makes me feel better – read at your own squeamishness risk and degree to which you can endure moaning.

Spent a bilious 5 minutes on the bathroom floor again, happily overseen only by my loving wife this time. She made me a towel tent with a flap from which to observe her concerned comings and goings, Lawrence of Arabia style. Did I want a glass of water? Groan. Was I feeling any better? Groan. Did I need anything from Waitrose? Groan, Groan. (Not really) Having been on the floor before I was at least able to reassure her that the near death experience would pass in about 20 minutes, which it did, but only after I had attempted, yet again, a reprise of the infamous crawl to the oasis (sofa) routine. It was going quite well when midway it was interrupted by the sudden and alarmingly rapid downward trajectory of my stomach which necessitated, in mid crawl, an advanced driver Sweeny-like three point turn back to the bathroom. Meanwhile two cats had decided that this was just too much fun and so I covered the ground using a grand total of twelve legs, eight of them furry.  Oh how we laughed. NOT!

So I have resolved baths are out, showers are in. I have never liked showers preferring to wallow in my own putridity but I am resigned to having to master the absurdity of bathing vertically. Our shower is a gravity fed head over that bath which is another way of describing a system as far from a power shower as imaginable. It came with the house along with all the other botched features installed by the previous resident, ironically a woodwork teacher. His claims to fame included plastering over an external door rather than removing it. He even put a patch of roofing felt over the letter box. He also bequeathed a splendid set of bookshelves made of hardboard, yes hardboard not mdf. They formed inverted rainbows before they fell off the wall.

My numbers are nearly at the target of 30 somethings!!! With mounting enthusiasm my consultant has recommended a last sprint for the line and I am now on a double dose of thalidomide as it’s ‘going so well’ and frankly I can tell the difference.  It is like a fairy tale sleeping draft. I expect to wake up as a frog or in a castle cellar spinning straw into gold. My consultant describes it as ‘making you a bit sleepy’ I would describe it as stage one Dignitas. Anyway, somewhat amusingly, I had not had the sense to move the dose from first thing in the morning to last thing at night when its sedating qualities would do less offence. He was most amused by the fact that I had endured falling asleep into my Lasagne bowl (Garfield reference) every morning at 11:00 am for a month.  So it’s a bit better now but I am still a lazy bastard and it does provide a convenient excuse for lazing about.

Due to my tendency to topple the zimmer frame is back from the loft. Not exactly a welcome return but I have a strange nostalgia for her spindly presence. The last time she and I danced together I was really ill, (it was right at the beginning of all this) in quite a bit of pain and seriously immobile she ensured that I did not end up in nappies.  So at the moment Nonna and I compete for the least mobile inhabitant of AR. She’s winning by a country mile by the way. (What is a country mile?)

I have a whole bunch of cardiology appointments in November that I am very pleased about. All routine processes, connecting monitors to me to try to diagnose the fibrillation issues. The trouble is that as you know from all my moaning, the chemo drugs also cause palpitations and dizziness so I am experiencing a perfect storm of symptoms at the moment. I hope that does not confuse things because It would be great to get some bit of my failing body fixed. I look at myself with some disdain. I am super-duper unfit. At the royal free there is machine that sort of scans you Star Trek fashion and gives Dr McCoy a summary of your fitness. The results indicate a non-human potentially alien presence with such a freakishly bad BMI and legs seemingly not robust enough to support the weight of the torso that I am surprised they don’t ship me off to Roswell.

My capacity to do anything useful at the moment is zilch. On the other hand my passion for doing useless things remains unabated. More on that another time.

To sum up. I have been on the chemo for quite a stretch this time , it has not been that much fun but I am delighted that it works. I have been very lucky as I gather it doesn’t always work in all cases which must be very frustrating for those poor folk who endure all the symptoms for nothing. So far everything they have thrown at me has had a beneficial effect. I assume that once they have used one drug they can’t use it again as the body becomes resistant, but never mind, I gather there are still lots of options up to and including more drastic things like stem cell transplants. No need for any of that just now as my latest numbers have only been surpassed once since I became ill so I am very happy. To give you some context – When I was first diagnosed by bad thingies were over 1000 (beyond the capacity of the measuring device), now they are 33 with a target of 29, so despite the moaning, and I do enjoy a good moan, I bloody well should be happy!