God tempers all the winds to the new-shorn lamb/The Devil knows the Bible like the back of his hand

- which is merely my way of saying that I got fed up of the stupid fluffy bits that were left on my scalp and I got Judy to razor them off, going for the full Magwitch. It looks a bit bizarre, but at least I am now in no danger of being pulled in by the fuzz. (A painful procedure, at best.)

So. Anyway ...

According to my Little Red Chemo Book, my regimen - it is regimen, dear children, not regime, trust me on this, I'm an editor - is now Carbo/Taxol - Taxol. "That'd be Carbo, then," I said brightly. You would think that having only to be poisoned with one drug would result in a swifter recovery rate, and so it would if there were any justice in the world, but here we are, more than ten days later, and I still feel rotten. Meh, I say.

You would also think that having to take only one drug, discounting steroids and flushes and so forth, would be a whole lot quicker than the old six-hour procedure, but by the time you take into account the usual delays, the absence of a chemo nurse, the absent chemo nurse being Rosita, someone on the ward having an adverse reaction, and three goes with the cannula, we spent longer waiting for the chemo to start than the chemo itself actually took. Still, we have our own ways of amusing ourselves. You can play 'patient or carer?', which is by no means always obvious, and 'wig or not-wig?' - the trick here is to look for anything too perfect - and 'who's going to throw up first, please don't let it be me', and also 'are you trying complementary naturopathy, or do you actually enjoy chomping your way through an entire Tupperware of raw vegetables?' ... that one really needs a snappier name, although it's probably a one-off anyway, I doubt I'll find myself sitting next to the same woman again.

The chemo, when it finally arrived, and when I was finally cannulated, went off okay, except that the needle suddenly started to really, really hurt about ten minutes before the dose finished. I don't know if maybe a vein collapsed? I don't know what that would feel like. Either way, my arm is still quite sore now, and the bruise from the cannula is frankly magnificent.

On the upside, we didn't have to avail ourselves of Sainsbury's facilities on the way home. Really, it was very clever and thoughtful of Sainsbury's to open up a branch with a customer loo halfway between hospital and home. I should thank them. Possibly by buying something there. You know. Ever.

That was Monday - the Monday before Christmas, not the Monday just gone. On the Tuesday we had to be back at the Churchill again, this time for the chest clinic. Much to my woe, the lovely Naj wasn't there. We got a little girl - I'm sorry to be patronising, but the Churchill really does specialise in what I am sure are fully trained and highly specialised medical staff who look about twelve and weigh maybe 90 pounds soaking wet - who took my complaints of gaspiness and chest pains seriously enough to send me for a CT scan. She offered the charming suggestion that chemo might have given me blood clots on my lungs. My. Wouldn't that be fun, if true? I will spare you any suspense: nothing showed up on the scan, and even the original pleural effusion seems to be shrinking. So, clearly I am just making it up to put on airs. *sigh*

So home we went, and there was my brother and sister-in-law, and a whole lot of frozen vegetables. The veg came as a bit of a surprise (Tim and Michelle we were expecting), but Tim explained that they were to help make cooking Christmas dinner a bit easier. And so they did, and very thoughtful it was.

The BoyCat decided to spread his own version of Christmas cheer by refusing to come in for two nights and then vanishing altogether. It was probably a protest against all the people we'd had in the house; Penny had stayed the previous weekend (and had brought another lovely knitted blankie for me to wrap myself up in), and then the GC came, and then Lynn came to stay over Christmas, and then some people from work stopped in for a visit ... BoyCats do not approve of such goings-on. Although, given that the last time he vanished was on Hallowe'en, maybe he just has somewhere better to be on solstices. He was finally persuaded in on Christmas Eve, so we all settled down to have a lovely Christmas.

And we did. And god bless us all, said Tiny Tim. Especially the cats, who bought me a Slanket (there is a theory that it's actually their Slanket, but they'll let me borrow it to warm it up for them). And all the other people who bought me many, many lovely things - all of whom, I am embarrassed to admit, I still owe thank-you letters.

But what I have mostly been doing is sleeping. I do believe that the Tuesday of the chest clinic was in fact the last time I left the house. Which is a bit bad. As I write this, I am trying to muster up the energy to stagger - and by 'stagger' I mean 'get Judy to drive me' - up to the doctor's to pick up a prescription, and then into town to get it filled. Running out of codeine would be a pooey start indeed to the New Year.

A New Year that I do very much hope will be better than 2011. 2011 sucked!

... and so to bed

La, my dears, if Pepys had been as bad a diarist as I am, we would now know fuck-all about the 17th century. (Incidentally, it is Quite Interesting how Pepys's diaries came to be decoded and transcribed - but I digress.)

Since last we spoke, I have been visited by persons from my place of work, to wit, my line manager and someone from HR, which went off quite well. I was worried they might hassle me about getting back to work which, pas possible, but they didn't, although, as feared, my SSP is about to run out, and the HR lady arrived bearing a form to claim further benefits from the Guvmint which, in my case, I do not think I qualify for; however, I sent the form in anyway, so as not to drop off the grid. I should hate to wake up one morning and find I was no longer entitled to NHS care. (I'm not so worried about my Old Age Pension, as I doubt I shall be around to need it. Morbid, but sadly true.) Wendy, my line manager, had just come back from Florida Disneyworld, which to me seems an odd choice of destination for a child-free adult, but to each their own. She brought me some choklit and a poinsettia, both v welcome.

On the Thursday of that week we had the ex-YBP dinner at a local pub (The Plough, should you ever be in Bicester; the food's quite good). I had rather an embarrassment of riches in terms of people making sure I could get there okay, and Stuart kindly drove me home - and Nairne walked me out of the pub to make sure I ended up in the right place! Oh, chemobrain, you have a lot to answer for: I used to be a fully-functional adult and now I can't tie my own shoelaces, if I had shoes with laces and could reach my feet to tie them in the first place. The YBP family got rather rudely broken up two years ago when [company merges and takeovers, blah blah blah], as a result of which those of us who survived the process - I only very narrowly qualified, and that was largely due to YBP in America saying lovely things about me, thank you, guys! - clung together in much the manner of survivors on a freezing life raft ...

... wait: wouldn't survivors on a freezing life raft be more inclined to chuck each other overboard and increase their own chances of survival? Bad analogy. Anyway. We all got very close, much more so than colleagues normally do. It was quite an odd group already, including as it did two people heavily involved with amateur dramatics, one movie buff, several SF readers, one convention-going Supernatural obsessive, and me, all of which merely reinforces my conviction that there are no normal people. Heck, even the little girl who used to live next door to me when I was a teenager grew up to marry a man who's into historical re-enactment, and I'm sure that had nothing to do with me. *thinks back* Did it?

So, anyway: very nice dinner, although the vaguely exotic fish (haddock with ginger) went rather oddly with traditional roast veg, and they served Yorkshire pudding with the turkey which, what? Then on to Friday, and what would have been a lovely visit from my lovely brother and was, in fact, a lovely visit from my lovely brother, only somewhat mitigated by the fact that when I bent down to feed the cats that morning my back pinged out and I was in agony, and remained so for another week - it still isn't quite right, in fact.

Somewhere in amongst all this we started becoming festive. Judy got lumbered with the traditional job of cleaning up the sitting room so that Father Christmas won't think we're slobs - it's the only time the bookshelves get moved so we can clean behind them (yes, yes, but you haven't seen our bookshelves). I couldn't be much help, or any help, really, but I took on the job of LibraryThinging the books from the shelves behind Judy's chair (somewhere along the way we drifted into the habit of appropriating chairs of our own, we are very middle-aged now) and then sorting them, which I have actually been itching to do for some time and have never had the energy to do. I didn't really have the energy now, either, but it's amazing what you can do when you are determined, and when someone else pulls the furniture out of the way for you. So now the philosophy books are all organised although not, alas, by discipline, merely by philosopher and/or author. (Not me. Judy. Open University.)

The Christmas tree, which we bought a couple of weeks ago, has been brought inside, and is now about three-quarters decorated. The amount of tree-decorating I can do at any one time is severely limited, not so much by spoonlessness, although that too, but by how much prickliness I can take at the any one time in question. My fingers may be numb, but they still feel pain, which seems unfair somehow. And there are pressies and cards all over the place and, all in all, it is v exciting.

On Monday of this week (see, I am almost up to date now) we were off once again to the Churchill - although Judy had to chase them up for the appointment, sigh - to see the consultant for my pre-chemo appointment. She's cleared me for both my upcoming session and the following one, which is early in January, and has taken me off Taxol, so it will only be ... oh, I can't remember the damn names, the other thing - this time. Which, I hope, will mean a much shorter session, and possibly also no need for an emergency stop at Sainsbury's. *hopeful*

I just about had enough spoons after that for a ginormous shop at Big Tesco, after which, somehow, we still had no actual food to speak of. The cats are all right, though, as the Who never sang, so that's okay. At some point we must buy vegetables. We really must. We must buy potatoes and sweet potatoes and butternut squish and parsnips and carrots and broccoli and courgettes. And then we must cook them and eat them. Yes. Also, cranberries. ("Hey, you forgot cranberries too?!")

On Thursday I had Plans to go into Oxford, since Judy was going in anyway for what I am sure was a thrilling lecture on Restorative Justice - Plans that neither spoons nor bad back nor threat of snow could cancel. And so I did. And I managed a wander round the Covered Market, remembering to buy mistletoe (should you ever want to buy mistletoe from the Covered Market, remember to get it from the other florist, who sells big bunches for £2, where the first florist only sells sprigs which are also £2); and a moderate-sized shop in Boots, gaining (amongst other things) Gü Christmas crackers and some Simple facial wipes for which Macmillan will gain the princely sum of 10p; and a Lush shop; and a big old collapse in Pret a Manger, involving a tuna melt and a lemon pudding and two lattes, and I wasn't even sick afterwards! I was very, very glad to see Judy, though, so that we could go home.

And so, as I said, to bed. I have not quite been there ever since - for a start, I'm obviously not there now, I can't do this much typing on the netbook - but pretty much. As I also said: very, very tired, and very, very breathless. This coming week, as well as chemo, I have an appointment with Dr Naj at the chest clinic. I think Naj thinks he's going to sign me off his books. I think he's wrong. I only hope I have enough breath to argue. I have a number of new spoons, including a small wooden Welsh lovespoon on a chain that Judy gave to me yesterday (and what I suspect is a spoon from LM, although it is wrapped in Christmas paper and is thus, obviously, currently unopened), so perhaps those will help.

Our friend Penny is visiting at the moment, bringing with her, as though she were not welcome enough already, Christmas Lush stuff, and a lovely M&S nightie and another of her wonderful knitted blankies for ME. We were planning to have celebratory Indian food last night; it's a measure of how poorly I feel that I wasn't up to it. WOE, and, indeed, WOE!!! Luckily, my friends are fast becoming used to visiting only to have me languish on the sofa at them - and sometimes go to sleep mid-sente...

The two-cannula job; or, double, double, toilet trouble

Let us pretend, for the sake of - oh, I don't know, just pretending, perhaps - that today is Monday, 28 November, that I have just come back from chemo, and that I am blogging about it promptly in order to keep my memories up to date.

Ah, the heck with it. Let's not. It's actually the Saturday after, and this is as close as I've got all week to feeling well enough to write. Just the sitting up at the PC to type is an effort, and typing itself isn't made any easier by the fact that my finger ends are now almost entirely numb, where values of 'numb' = 'still hurt when you bang the keyboard a bit too hard by accident because you can't feel you're hitting anything until you do'.

The most that can be said, really, for chemo #4 is 'well, that happened'; it was pretty unremarkable. I've got to the point now where I just click into hospital coma mode as soon as I step inside the ward: lie down wherever they point me to lie down, rest my arm on a pillow, and let them get on with it.

Monday sessions are less satisfactory than the now-defunct Saturday sessions, for a number of reasons - traffic, parking, clinic busier, we don't get hands-on service from the very efficient Rosita - but the Saturday sessions ain't coming back, so there's no point bitching about it. The one thing that would've annoyed me if I'd had the energy to be annoyed is that the chemo staff have a team meeting from 9.00 to 10.00 in the morning and, my appointment being at 10.00, the nurse left in charge wouldn't let us in and give me my bed until then. When we went back in the room had filled up, so I think someone told her not to be so stupid. Anyway. I got a bed, Judy got a chair, we got medicated - well, I did; Judy worked on her cross-stitch; those are the main things.

Judy, as promised, remembered to let the nurses know that I wanted the cannula in my arm, not my hand. I still have a whacking great black bruise on my right hand from the blood transfusion cannula a week ago (also the bruise on my arm from the defective pressure cuff). I don't think, given what else they have to contend with, the chemo nurses fuss too much about bruising, but, as a patient, I say that every bit of pain I'm saved is ... I dunno, a penny earned, or something. A Good Thing. Anyway: cannula #1 failed, and I ended up with it left in my arm for the duration, even though the Team Leader herself came and put it in. Cannula #2 went into my other arm quite happily though, and did its thing, so all was well. Well, well-ish; I'm not entirely sure I got all the pre-meds I should've done, but I'm still here, so it can't matter too much.

Once I'd slipped into my usual state of oblivion, I think Judy had the more exciting time. From what I can tell, one and all around us were full of admiration for her cross-stitch; plus at one point the woman in the next chair was using a cold cap (no-one ever mentioned the cold cap's existence to me when we were talking about chemo, but it doesn't matter, I couldn't have used it anyway - claustrophobia) (yes, my claustrophobia is a real thing, and pretty bad; I shall be so fucked if I ever have to have an MRI), which first gave her a splitting headache and then made her vomit. I have to ask whether, in this case, the game is worth the candle. Someone did stop and admire my toenails. Now I think of it, that seems rather an odd thing to do. Never mind.

That's about it, I think, except that I had an upset stomach again on the way home and, once again, had to thank heaven fasting for Sainsbury's and their utilities. It cleared up reasonably quickly but, you know, it's never quite quick enough, and does make you most awfully miserable at the time.

Post-chemo hasn't been much fun this week; I've been less mopy and whiny than last go-round, I think - I hope; or at least, I've been trying to be - but I've suffered badly from fatigue, from aches and pains, in particular in my hip and knee and back joints, extra pain and fatigue from sitting, the aforementioned fuzzy fingers, breaking nails, garbage mouth, and acute chemo brain. It's started to have a deleterious effect on my vocabulary; I'm getting words confused, sometimes coming out with completely the wrong thing altogether, and, playing WWF just now, I could not for the life of me remember how to spell 'quiet'. This really hacks me off, words being pretty much my stock-in-trade, but ... once again, we file it under 'means to an end' and 'this too shall pass'. I hope. Also, the chemo smell is particularly smelly this time, or maybe I'd just forgotten how bad it was before. I have to say, "You have a life-threatening illness, the treatment for which is painful and deleterious, oh, yes, and also: you smell" is really just a low blow.

Because troubles never come singly, our plumbing decided to back up over the weekend, with the bath making scary glugging noises as it drained and then trying to flush two of the loos (we have three, that's how posh we are!) from the wrong direction. We really suck at being grown-ups, and we hate having to deal with this sort of thing. It turned out okay, though: Judy has emergency plumbing insurance with the water board and because it was drains and also, I say with a touch of pride because of me - because I'm an invalid, dontchaknow - it did qualify as an emergency, and they sent a plumber out as soon as possible on Tuesday, and it didn't cost us anything. One of the drains was, it turned out, pretty much flooded, so he de-clogged it, then plunged the bath and removed what appeared to be a small werewolf pelt but was, in fact, my chemo-ified hair - I apologised nicely - and all was well. At least, it's well at the moment, and I hope it stays that way.

Speaking of the hair, it's trying to grow back, or bits of it are, but so unsuccessfully that we took pity on it; Judy volunteered to clip it back down. Given the scant handful she accumulated from this, I'm glad I didn't get it done at a hairdresser - it really would have been almost £1 per hair!

While she was on a roll with doing grown-up things, Judy investigated the wilds of Launton and found that the rumours of a glass warehouse were true, so has now bought the piece of greenhouse glass she needed to replace the one that got knocked out by the wind a while back. It may not sound like much to you, but it's these little victories that pave our way through Life.

We have also, this week, been to Tesco, got my assorted prescriptions re-filled, bought a rather premature Christmas tree and wreath - the tree was in a pot, and Judy has given it a better pot and more soil, so it should be okay - and I've broken the back of my Christmas shopping without breaking my own back, although the same cannot be said of my bank balance, but the hell with it. This isn't going to be my last Christmas, but I'm jolly well going to enjoy it as if it might be. After all, it might be, and have nothing to do with Mr Crab. A toilet could drop on my head at any time. These things happen.

Most important of all, Judy went online to the early sales site on Thursday morning and bagged us a pair of tickets to Springsteen at something-or-other-stadium in Manchester in June. We have been going to Springsteen gigs now for some thirtyodd, sometimes very odd, years, and the ticket procuring process never gets any less traumatic. I think it's actually worse now than it was in olden days when you had to send an SAE off to Harvey Goldstein and hope for the best. You build up so much tension and adrenaline, crouching over the keyboard, desperately waiting for the site to go live - then crash, it always does - then refresh, it's a wonder that the rush of ticket sales isn't followed by the wail of many ambulances as half the Springsteen stalwarts in the land, none of us spring chickens, keel over from a string of heart attacks.

It will be strange to see Bruce without Clarence Clemons. That was just one of the shitty things that has happened in this shitty year: Clarence died of a stroke. My favourite writer, Diana Wynne Jones, died of Fucking Cancer early in the year. My brother set the scene by falling out of a loft trap when the year was barely new. Two other women writers who influenced me profoundly, Joanna Russ and Anne McCaffrey, have died this year. Judy was made redundant. And me ... well, you know about me.

But set against this the kindness of strangers. I was just looking at the cards ranged on my bookshelves; there are so many there that I actually can't see all of them, some have got lost behind others. Stuart dropped by this week, unexpectedly and bearing unexpected cake, which was delicious, by the way. A delivery that I thought would be my Christmas orders turned out to include Green & Black's choklit from lovely friend Ellie. And my sister sent me a new and rather fetching cancer hat ("It goes with your ensemble," said Judy; well, yes, given that the ensemble in question is a denim pinafore dress, black leggings and teeshirt, style queen that I am), and also made me a Mr Crab pincushion so that I can have the pleasure of stabbing him for a change. She even supplied the pins!

And that's just this week. I should have made a note of everyone who's sent cake or chocolate or spoons or cards or flowers, or any combination - or hats, or Trollbead bracelets!! Chemo-brain is making them blur. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate them; I do. I can't begin to tell you how much. Dealing with Mr Crab is a hell of a fight. I am inexpressibly lucky to have so many people fighting by my side.

Next week, I have actual Things in my diary: a visit by my office HR person and my line manager on Wednesday; a meal with former colleagues - which I hope I shall be able to taste by that time - and a visit beforehand by one of them on Thursday; and my brother who, I believe, is currently in Amsterdam and lamenting the de-potification of the coffeehouse, is, I hope, coming by on Friday.

This is more excitement than I ever had, pre-cancer. Thanks, Mr Crab!

Wait - what'm I saying?!

Transports of delight

"Don't catch the bus!" they said, "the hospital will provide transport!"

I had to have a blood transfusion yesterday, you see, and Judy was away in London at a conference so she couldn't give me a lift.

Here's what would have happened if I'd caught the bus. I would have got up at 7.00ish, had a bath and a leisurely cup of coffee, got dressed, walked - slowly - round the corner to the bus stop, caught the bus to Summertown, caught the hospital bus from the same stop in Summertown, got off at the Churchill and gone about the business of being transfused.

Here is what happened. I got up at 7.00ish - by the way, that's going to be a shock to the system if and when I eventually go back to work - had a bath and a cup of coffee, got partly dressed and waited for the hospital to phone and tell me if someone was on their way or not.

At 9.00ish I got a phone call from the driver to say he was about five minutes away. Scrambled into rest of clothes - yes, nanny.b, I did remember to put my knickers on - and raced downstairs just in time to answer the door to a teenage girl who, fortunately, did not turn out to be the driver. The driver was an oldish bloke in a private car, and what she was doing with him I preferred not to ask.

He had another person to pick up in Bicester, so off we set, round and round the one-way system in ever-decreasing circles, until his satnav brought us up on the wrong side of a solid brick wall. The driver couldn't phone for directions because the woman's line was engaged (she turned out to have been on the phone to the hospital asking where her lift was). So, off we set once again, in even more diminished circles, until we ended up on the other side of the wall, which turned out, rather distressingly, to be what had once been a beautiful estate that had been sold off for development and turned into sheltered accommodation. To add insult to injury, the sheltered accommodation had been designed to look like almshouses. Nothing like rubbing it in ...

Second patient acquired, and off we set. There is little to relate of the remainder of the journey except that the driver kept skipping track after track on his music player until he settled on a string of Country & Western numbers. And not alt.country, either; this was Jim Reeves, or maybe even Roy Rogers, or someone of that ilk. Horrid.

I finished treatment just after 3.00 in the afternoon, and then had to wait for the return driver, which, after a while, turned up in the form of an ambulance crew. A whole ambulance for one person seemed excessive, but no, they had other pick-ups to do. Or did they? They stopped at the Warneford, got out, and went into Reception. Reappeared shortly, sans patient, apologised, and wandered off in another direction. And were gone a good 20 minutes.

I have claustrophobia. I think it's worth mentioning this. I didn't actually try the door, because knowing for sure that it was locked would have been worse than wondering whether it was or not. By the time they came back, I had Schrödinger's claustrophobia with a vengeance. And they still had no patient.

So then they phoned their control room, who didn't know anything about the patient but promised to find out. In the meantime, could they pick up a couple of patients in Banbury - which is where they would've been taking the Invisible Patient, if they'd been able to find him - and bring them back, one to Bicester, the other to the JR in Oxford. The Oxford patient had an eye emergency. It's a long way from Oxford to Bicester to Banbury and back again. It was about 4.30 by this point, and the crew knocked off at 6. The driver shrieked. The other guy said yes to the first one (the driver shrieked some more), but no to #2. Moral: never have an eye emergency in Banbury.

And off we all set again, this time to the Nuffield, where they succeeded in collecting a wheelchair patient and getting him properly strapped in. By this time the control room had called back to inform them that they wouldn't be picking up the Warneford patient because he hadn't gone in that morning. Which meant that they wouldn't have to go to Banbury to drop him off. Except for where they did now have to go to Banbury to bring back the other patient. The driver shrieked again at this. Once she'd calmed down, off we set, straight into the full flow of rush hour traffic.

(At some point in all this I made the mistake of sympathising with the driver about the bad day she was evidently having and being treated to a full-on rant about her partner, who she clearly couldn't stand. Eh, well, love, best get it off your chest.)

I finally got home at around 5.30, knackered, spoonless, and with a splitting headache. I went to bed.

"But the transfusion?" I hear you ask breathlessly (leave the breathlessness to me, okay? You don't really want it), for I know you are longing to hear.

The transfusion. Much like chemo, but with plasma, not poison. It didn't hurt - apart from the cannula, which she put in my hand (I've begged them not to do that), and the blood pressure cuff, which has left a big band of bruises round my upper arm - and my arms are not that fat! It does not, however, seem to have made a blind bit of difference, so far as I can tell. It must have had time to circulate by now, but all I have to show for it is an achy arm. No spoons. Nothing.

"It must have done some good," said the nurse, "you've got a much better colour now." I didn't have the heart to tell her that that was down to being hot and itchy from having been in bed fully-dressed for several hours.

Also yesterday: although Judy's conference appears to have been very successful, and she made a number of what I hope will be extremely useful contacts, she came home to an email from her University to say, in effect, whoops, we forgot to invite you to your own graduation. I was not so tired that I didn't get utterly furious at this. She worked bloody hard to get that doctorate, and if they don't add her on to the next upcoming ceremony, I shall gather up all the spoons I can muster, go up to Luton (first find out where it is), and punch someone in the face.

Not with the hand that had the cannula in, though, because that's still owie.

We had to go back to the Churchill today - it's my home away from home! - to give my pre-chemo blood sample. And now we have the weekend to while away.

Someone amuse me, please. Aside from all else, the transfusion didn't cure the breathlessness, which I had hoped it would, so I am not only still scared but now disappointed also.

On the upside, the Gentleman Caller has just gone out for Indian food. I can mostly taste things now, so I may as well make the most of it before chemo on Monday, and the whole round of nasty side-effects starts up over again.

Tralalalala, what fun we do have.

In which they are out for my blood

Actually, it's the other way round: they are going to give me some. But I anticipate myself ...

When last seen, we (that's me, as usual) were in a miserable, grumpy sort of mood. There had, in fact, been actual tears - not many, but a few - and this is rare, because we may be a bit daft but we are not, in general, a big wuss. With a view to posterity (hi, posterity!), perhaps I should note: the week directly following chemo does seem to be a bit rotten, incorporating any combination of mopiness, twinges, fizzy fingers, trashcan mouth - other than language-wise, which is SOP and about which nothing can be done - and other things which, with apologies to posterity, I have now forgotten as they were all of a week ago. Oh, yes, chemobrain, but that too is SOP these days and I've stopped worrying about it. After all, how many people would be bothered if they couldn't remember Clement Attlee's name? That's what I thought. Mrs Attlee, perhaps, and exactly nobody else, and I imagine Mrs Attlee is probably dead by this time.

So! We are altogether less mopy now, and so I should jolly well think, given that almost every single person I know, with the notable exception of anyone from my present workplace*, has now been by the house and brought me something, some of them several times. Most of the things they have brought have been cakes, cookies, pie, and other items of that ilk, which may account for the fact that, while other cancer patients fade away to a big-eyed, frail shadow of themselves - like those bloody awful tramp-child artwork posters you used to get in the 70s, because nothing is more romantic than an underage street person - I retain the general outline of a prize-winning pumpkin. With, unfortunately, IQ to match. (Note: this does not mean that cookies, etc, are by any means unwelcome, far from it.) Lynn gets a special mention for coming for several days - several days during the course of which she barely saw me at all, because I couldn't get out of bed for most of them - and for repainting the downstairs loo (Judy dropped the mirror when she was putting it back, and broke it. Hah. Seven years' bad luck? BRING IT THE FUCK ON!) (the new mirror is fish-shaped, to go with the somewhat piscine theme of the downstairs loo ... hey, I just thought, I could change its name from the current, rather boring 'the Blue Boudoir' to 'the Piscine Chapel', though it still has nothing on the Comedy Bathroom upstairs. Anyway, it was a very cheap mirror and had a bit of a scratch on it, so Judy's stuck a dolphin sticker over the scratch. You know, as you do). Tina gets a special mention, too, for bringing me a stick. It would've been an orchid, but the flowers fell off. It made me laugh, anyway, hence the 'special'. Father Christmas, in the far more attractive shape of my lovely sister-in-law Michelle, sent me a silver Troll bracelet, so now I have the excitement of looking for beads I can afford. And then there were the lemon cupcakes which Judy sekritly conspired with someone at Fat Club (I know, the irony of it all) to bake ...

I did manage to muster up the energy to bitch about idiotic Facebook memes, especially cancer-consciousness-raising ones that do nothing of the kind, and also about the general butt-ugliness of cancer hats. By pure serendipity, I managed to sort the second problem (nothing will ever sort Facebook idiocy, and you will break your heart trying) - I found an Irish site, BlueRoseWaterford.com, which makes exactly the hats I had been looking for. This has been a public service announcement, and you are most welcome.

In real, ie cancer terms, last week was very quiet, all I had to do was go and get pre-clinic bloods taken. This week ... this week should've been quiet too, but it looks as if it might get interesting. Clinic was this morning; the Churchill was on its usual super-efficient form, with an hour's wait, but it's getting so we expect that and think ourselves lucky if we're seen the same day. It did seem a little alarming that almost nobody was getting called in, and more worrying yet that the few people called in by the senior consultant never seemed to come out again - we thought perhaps he was harvesting their organs - but we did get seen eventually, and by Dr Nicum herself, no less. Dr Nicum has her name on the hospital writing paper, so clearly we are impressed. We ran through the standard 'how I felt after chemo' routine (see above), she scribbled things down, looked at her notes, and then said "How would you feel about a blood transfusion?"

Puzzled, is actually the answer, since she asked it kind of out of the blue and it took me a moment to realise she was suggesting I should have one, but it may be a good idea given that my red cell count is quite low, at least according to the chemo nurse. It might help with the tiredness. It might even help with the breathing problem, which would be nice - for Judy as much as for me, she must be awfully tired of the gasping noises I make from time to time. For that matter, it'd be nice to be able to walk to the corner shop without having to stop a good half-dozen times both there and back. It's a five-minute walk, this is silly!

So, first, and with no apparent sense of irony, they took yet another blood sample, or at least they did once the phlebotomist came back from lunch (more waiting. Yes). And now, once again, we are waiting, this time to find out when they'll call us in.

That is, I am, and that's where things get complicated: Judy's just gone up to London for a conference and will be away overnight, and she'll also be away on Thursday. I probably could get to the hospital by bus if I had to; back again, too, although I suspect that would be far less amusing. But getting a lift there and back would be favourite, even though it would mean poor Judy being stuck in the Churchill for yet another six-hour stretch. Chemo #4 is next Monday (stand by for mopiness, everyone!), so, really, if they could schedule me for this Wednesday or Friday, that would be ideal. But I don't think they do it as an on-demand service.

And no, they can't do it at the same time as chemo - one drip in each arm. We asked.

Big news of the day is that now I have to stay alive until June: Bruce Springsteen is touring on the back of a new album! I'm not thrilled that it's Hard Rock Calling again, but I can't really gripe lest someone ask if my diamond shoes are too tight.

They are, in fact, but I suppose that's the least of my problems.

* Rebecca and Christina, I don't mean you, you're ex-YBP.

Please do not post this status as a smack in the mouth often offends

There are not enough words in the world - and you know me, I know most of the words and have them round for tea of a Sunday - to express the blind rage that the following arouses in me:

Okay pretty ladies, it's that time of year again...support of Breast Cancer Awareness!! So we all remember last year's game of writing your bra color as your status? Or the way we like to have our handbag handy? Last year, so many people took part that it made national news and the constant updating of status reminded everyone why we're doing this and helped raise awareness!! Do NOT tell any males what the statuses mean...keep them guessing!! And please copy and paste (in a message) this to all your female friends! It's time to confuse the men again (not that it's really that hard to do ;])
The idea is to choose the month you were born and the day you were born. Pass this on to the GIRLS ONLY and lets see how far it reaches around. The last one about the bra went around all over the world. Your status should say:
"I am going to________________for___________ months."
Use your birth month for the place you'll live.
January--Mexico
February-- London
March--Miami
April--Dominican Republic
May--France
June-- St Petersburg
July--Austria
August--Germany
September--New York
October--Amsterdam
November-- Las Vegas
December-- Columbia
Use the day you were born for how many months you will live there.
Write a reply to all...and have fun, ladies!!!"

OMIGOD, SO MUCH WRONG, WHERE DO I EVEN BEGIN?

Let's begin with 'twee', 'smug', and 'patronising'. Let's carry on to 'idiotic' and 'peurile', and then let's swing by 'pointless'.

Just for a kick off, when you call me 'ladeez', smile. 'Pretty ladies'? Yeah, I'm saving up an extra special smack for you, whoever you are. Do the words 'go fuck yourself you condescending twerp' mean anything to you?

'Let's confuse the men' - oh, yes, let's, for they are poor, weak-minded beings, easily bewildered and helpless without a Mother's hand to guide them. Every one of them. You too, Einstein.

'Support Breast Cancer Awareness' - yes, let's do that. (I am not entirely sure who, exactly, in this day and age is unaware of breast cancer, but let that pass.) If you will tell me how, exactly, posting this status is supposed to raise breast cancer awareness when it makes no reference to breast cancer or to cancer of any kind, then I will take and crown you Queen of the World and make no argument about it.

*slams door*

The small picture

Sometimes, as the actress has no doubt said to the Bishop many times, it's the little things that matter. When it comes to the big stuff - oh, let us say, for the sake of argument, sitting down one day in a clinic and being told that there is a crab eating away at your insides - then it's easy: your immediate reaction is oh, is there, then? We'll see about that, Crabby, my lad! And, in fact, the big things - hospitalisation, surgery and so on - are pretty easy to deal with, if only because (a) all the important stuff is in other people's far better-trained hands and (b) one is mercifully unconscious for a lot of it.

But then there is the small stuff: you know, the stuff you're not supposed to sweat. And it is small stuff, minor, petty, insignificant; not worth acknowledging, even, let alone bitching about it. Except ... it goes on and on, day after day, and it builds up, and there's no end in sight, and ... you get so tired. That's my only explanation, and my only excuse.

'Tired' is a big part of it, in my case; because of the problem I had with my lung, and now because of the chemo, I'm exhausted almost all the time. I can't do stuff, and I want to do stuff - even being able to focus on a book or watch a DVD would be something. I can't keep up with my friends online, and I can't go out without paying the cost for hours, even days, thereafter. Tesco might as well change its name to Annapurna.

I have a long way to go, even so, before it becomes a real problem: I can feed myself, get to the loo, keep myself clean, take my medication, and I'm clinging to that. But sometimes one gets a bit fed up of being thankful for small mercies.

And then there are the chemo side-effects. Hair loss, for one. Well, I said all along that this wouldn't bother me too much and, in fact, it doesn't - although I have discovered through bitter experience that going out without a hat puts one's cancer automatically in the public domain ("Yes, I'm doing fine, thank you ... oh, really, your sister-in-law, I'm sorry ... who are you again?") - but I'll tell you that, even though I don't think personal vanity is one of my worst failings, losing my hair would trouble me even less if I were to look more like a Pre-Raphaelite with a Romantic Wasting Disease and less like Matt Lucas with ringworm.

Fizzy fingers. They call it 'numbness', but it isn't numbness, they're not dead, they have feeling. It's just not the feeling you expect your finger ends to have. It's weird. It's unpleasant. It's constant and inescapable. And it plays absolute buggery with your typing!

Loss of taste - "You never had much in the first place, Hils," I hear you cry, and I ignore this vagary as beneath contempt. First of all, let me acknowledge that I am fully conscious of my first-world privilege in that I expect food to be readily available, and to be diverse and enjoyable. I'm not in a saintly mood at the moment. I'm in the mood that, truthfully, just about anyone would be in if everything they'd eaten for weeks tasted like garbage and stayed in their mouth, still tasting like garbage, for hours after every meal. It's got to the point where the high point of my day is gargling with Listerine - and even that doesn't last.

(There is actually a temporary fix to this that I discovered quite by accident: mint-flavoured toffees. My brother brought me some left-over Hallowe'en sweeties ["Reverse trick or treat!" he said], that's how I found that out. Toffee isn't usually part of my gastronomic landscape.)

It's a similar sensation to the one that's mentioned in a lot of vampire mythologies, where human food is dust and ashes to them. Being reminded, as I am, of Mick St John in Moonlight, on briefly becoming human, promptly heading out and gorging himself on junk food, isn't much of a consolation, but I know just how he felt.

And let us come, at last, to the pain. For several days now, I've had to break radio silence just to bitch about Mr Crab being exceptionally bitey. Personally, I suspect that this is his reaction to the fact that we're trying to KILL HIM, which is only tit for tat, after all, he'd do the same to me. But it's hard to tell what's Mr Crab, and what is only, let us say delicately, 'stomach cramps': they both bloody well hurt. How do you know when it's hurting as much as you can stand? And how would you cope if you turned out to be the girl who called 999 just because she needed a poo?

What a dilemma it all is. Luckily, I've just about run out of steam for this post. I expect there will be more in a day or so.

Other points to ponder: all of this might have been a bit more bearable if there had been, you know, daylight at all this week. It's so bloody No-vemberish that I can't even.

And it's also possible, stupid as it may sound, that I'm suffering from post-chemo depression. For three weeks, everything builds up to chemo: then, six hours, and it's over, and you're left with another three weeks of ...

... well, of nothing, really. Or of very little.

Which is where we came in.

On the third day ...

Woe, alas and lackaday - or perhaps something less dramatic - our Saturday morning chemo sessions are no more, yesterday's was the last. I can't say I'm surprised; it was very quiet last time, and this time, from what I could tell (I was asleep for most of it), I was the only bed patient, and no more than maybe half a dozen more people came in during my six hours. Well, you can't possibly justify opening and staffing a clinic at that level. I deduce that someone thought the clinic was a Good Idea - which it is - and then didn't bother to see to the administration; or, possibly more likely, that the administration got handed over to someone who thought it was a Bad Idea and/or just couldn't be arsed and who deliberately scuppered it.

Anyway, the rest of my sessions are on Mondays - I think; where and oh where has my Little Red Chemo Book gone? - at 10.00, which Judy is not pleased about as she will have to fight the tail end of commuter traffic and will have huge problems parking, and which I am not pleased about as it will be much noisier and I may have to fight to baggsy a bed.

As I say: woe.

Anyhow: yesterday's session went much as predicted: arrive, wave vaguely at nurse, collapse on bed, get cannulated, get pre-medded, get poisoned x 2, sleep more or less throughout, go home. No emergency poo stop this time, hurrah! Avoid the tuna sandwiches, is my advice.

Any medical news? H'm, let me think. My red cell count is down - this might account for Mr Crab demanding bacon sandwiches, steak and chips, etc - but no-one had any very sensible advice on how to get it up again. It might have to be bacon sandwiches. I do have iron pills somewhere about the place, but they have tragic effects on my tummy at the best of times, and this is not the best of times. Although nor yet the worst of times neither.

And Chemo Nurse went against the tide of popular opinion and strongly advised against a flu jab, mainly due to aforementioned cell count. So sick people - not to be insensitive, but stay away from me, please!!

Back home and to bed, to horridly crampy legs and very cross cats. As we were going out early and not getting back till mid-afternoon, we didn't let them out in the morning and then we kept them in on account of fireworks - also on account of the ShadowCat's little misadventure last week. Oh, they were displeased!

And that ... pretty much ... is that. I'm fairly awake today, but very shaky - there's a wobbly feeling in the middle of my chest that, most disobligingly, never shows up in any scans or tests or anything - which means that I feel as if I should be up and doing ("Filthy house!" chants my conscience, "Just look at it!"), but can't actually do anything of the sort. Bugger, bugger, bugger.

Judy has to go to a friend's daughter's confirmation today. I do not think this will be the high point of her life.

Which reminds me, Judy very kindly send off for a free DVD/booklet on 'look good ... feel better'. AHAHAHAHA, as if! It's all about how to put your slap on when Mr Crab fucks you over. I hate to say it, but a little mascara isnot going to make me feel any better in any way whatsoever. I didn't wear make-up pre-Crab, so I'm not likely to start now. My personality, my emotional wellbeing and, dare I say it, my femininity are neither manufactured by nor dependent on Revlon.

/hairy-legged (only not any more) 70s feminist.

I'm expecting former colleague Tina at some point today. I may have to lie on the sofa and let her talk. The brain is willing, but the body seems determined to screw me over. DO NOT LIKE! GIMME SPOONS! GIMME THEM NOW!

Huh. A DVD on 'How not to turn into a raging bitch during cancer' might be more to the point.

A useful link

Sometimes you will hear me complaining that I have run out of spoons, or that the cutlery drawer is empty. When I do that, I'm talking about the spoon theory, completely forgetting that everybody does not spend their entire life faffing about on the internet so some people won't know what I'm talking about. Not that there is anything new there.

When I talk about the spoon theory, I'm talking about this: http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory-written-by-christine-miserandino/

She sums it up pretty well.

So now you know.

Lucky, lucky, lucky

Another blog post, I hear you ask. Why, Ambassador, you spoil us. But the good news, at least, the good news for me is, I don't actually have to do much writing on this one; most of it comes from a conversation I had with Little My. You see, I commented on someone's post that I felt like a fraud sometimes, when I read other people's stories, because - so far - my cancer experience hasn't been nearly as horrible as might have been feared. And then Little My rose up like the Doom of Ragnarok (or at any rate, I think she might've been looking at me severely over the rims of her glasses) and said, in so many words, are you mad, woman? And she listed a few of the things I've whined about in these pages - the lung drainage, the tiredness, the poorly tummy, the baldiness, and so on. And I said ...

Well, first I told her about a new poo song: Cat Stevens's I Can't Keep It In. But after that, I said ...

Judy tells me off too, every time I say I'm lucky, or that I'm doing fine - although her argument was that I was downplaying things to the doctor which would, it's true, be baaad. But, cancer-wise, I really am better off than many, probably most.

To get one thing out of the way: I don't know how bad it is. I don't know how long I've had it - if some of my suspicions are correct, it's been developing for a good many years. I don't know what the prognosis is, and I'm happy that way. I'm not looking any farther ahead than the end of chemo, which will be early in January, and the possible prospect of surgery after that. Judy thinks I might have to have another laparoscopy. I would very much rather not, but if it happens, it happens.

Now, Mr Crab hisself. These things are good: he is in my tummy. He is not in my face, my neck, my arse, my ladybits. All of these, I think, I would find much, much harder to bear. And - here's the thing: he doesn't hurt. Okay, maybe he hurts a bit, he can be quite bitey when he's in a bad mood, but I lived for forty-odd years with menstrual pains so far off the scale worse than Mr Crab that it's practically astronomical. As well as the menstrual cramps themselves (referred to, throughout my acquaintance, as 'Lady Pains' - let that be my legacy!), there was a knock-on effect of bowel pain so bad that it sometimes made me faint. I bled so heavily that I'd get in the bath and find myself surrounded by what appeared to be floating lumps of liver. There was mess, there was fuss, there was distress to the Nth degree. Cancer - at least for me, at least so far - is a doddle.

"Only women bleed," as Alice Cooper so rightly sang. I'm glad to say that I don't any more. It stopped, short, never to go again, when I was 50 or a little over.

Now, with hindsight, some of this might have been early warning signs of the cancer, which my consultants did originally think was ovarian. (I wish it had been. Then I'd have my own coffee morning!) We'll never know. I never took it to a doctor because, well, you don't go to a doctor with dysmenorrhea. You suck it up and take an aspirin. Or two. Or however many it takes.

And that, kids, is how Mommy became hooked on Solpadeine.

All righty, so much for the cancer. Poorly tummy/sickness = sleeping on the bathroom floor: a very rare occurrence; we do have carpet on the bathroom floor here; and, again, I sometimes used to have to do this when I had bad Lady Pains. And back then the loo wasn't in the bathroom, it was in a small, cramped, uncarpeted room on its own. Not at all comfy! (Going back to the fainting - I used to do this in the loo a lot. Having then to pick oneself up off the floor and somehow clean up blood, poo and pee, without anyone else knowing, probably doesn't equate to the Baggy Manoeuvre, but it's as close as I care to come.)

The draining of the lungs, I will grant you, was not nice, especially having to have it done twice in one week! But it's over now, I think - I hope - the lung is fixed, and we won't have to do that again. And I got a funny story out of it. No?

Chemo ... well. It is what it is. This is where the constant tiredness becomes a blessing. It may be six hours, but it's six hours that I pretty much doze through, while poor Judy gets to sit in an uncomfortable chair and occupy herself as best she can. I could do without the after-effects, especially the twinges up the girlbits and bum; on the other hand, I have not, as yet, spent my post-chemo hours puking my guts up. The extremely dodgy tummy on the way home last time was, I must say, Not Required On Voyage. Next time, I'm going armed with Imodium.

Baldness: I didn't think it would worry me too much, and it doesn't. It helps that I look quite good in hats (for a relative value of 'good', that is). And it'll grow back. If anyone else is bothered by it, well, fuck 'em. My hair = my business, and mine alone.

And that really just leaves the tiredness. As a blessing, it's a mixed one. It does mean that I'm more or less drifting through my life with cancer - I sleep more than I'm awake these days. On the other hand, there are things I want to doooo, or which need to be done. Internet stuff, for one. I've said before that I can really only do one thing a day at the moment. Internet-wise, I can blog, or I can answer comments, or I can comment on other people's blogs: not all three. RL-wise, our boot-buying Expotition to Bicester Village, which took maybe three-quarters of an hour, knocked me out for the rest of the afternoon. My wonderful brother comes every week from Bristol to see me, and after less than an hour I'm wiped out; my sister comes all the way from Penzance, and almost all I do is sleep at her! I couldn't go to a gig I'd been looking forward to since May. My house is a disgrace. And, you know what? If I weren't so tired, I'd be fit to go back to work, if they didn't mind me being in the loo half the time. As it is - no chance, not even for a few days a week, not even for half days.

There. That's pretty much the state of me. Taken all in all, it's not so bad, is it? And don't forget that I have Judy. And my dear, loving kitties, when they're not vanishing and sending me into a flat panic. And loads and loads of lovely friends, both online and three-dimensional, not one of whom has yet tilted their head at me.

So, okay, my 'lucky' may be in roughly the same ballpark as Alice Sebold's. But still. Better than no luck at all, eh?

Blah blah blah KITTENS!

One thing nobody tells you when you get sick - or, at least, nobody told me - is that cancer smells. I mean literally in this case, although, obviously, figuratively too. It doesn't matter how often I bathe, I can't get the smell out of my skin. Judy says she doesn't notice, but I'm acutely aware of it.

This means that I have to do laundry more often - I may be living my life mainly in my nightie, but I do not have an inexhaustible supply of nightdresses and knickers - and also change the bedclothes more regularly. (Which reminds me - the missing pillow case I was wittering about on Warped the other day? It never did turn up, god knows where it's gone.) And all of that, of course, just makes me even more tired than I already was.

Which is still pretty damn tired, even though the lung's supposedly okay now. I'm still very short of breath, and frequently make what I am sure are highly attractive gasping noises.

My, what a delightful picture I am painting of myself. Throw in that I'm also now almost entirely bald and, gosh, you'd think some lucky fellow would just come along and snap me up, wouldn't you?

Anyway - all of this is to say that I am having a lot of trouble keeping up with the things I need to do, or want to do, or have invented to do to fill up the few hours of the day when I'm not sleeping. I've said before, I think - you will find that I repeat myself quite often. Could be old age, could be chemo brain, could be the baked beans - I can really only do one thing a day. Site-wise, that means I can either blog, or I can answer comments, or I can comment elsewhere. Maybe two of the three; not all of them. To which I say: meh. Also, predictably: poo.

(Predictive poo. Now, there's a thought.)

So, I haven't updated my blog in quite some time, which rather invalidates the whole purpose of having a cancer blog. Fortunately, however, this has been a quiet week: no hospital or GP appointments - why, I haven't even had to give a blood sample! - no crises, no dramas. Just me and Mr Crab, skipping along our merry way. Well, I say skipping. Trudging.

Stuff has happened, of course. Our friend Penny came for a short visit at the end of last week. It was lovely to see her, and I don't say that just because she arrived bearing four bars of choklit, a punnet of grapes, one mini rosebush, one mini orchid, and a lovely scarfy/shawly/blankie/wrappy thing that she had knitted with her own fair hands, well, and a pair of knitting needles. I am afraid that I spent a large part of her visit being sociable where values of 'sociable' = 'wrapped up in duvet on sofa asleep' but, luckily, Penny is capable of entertaining herself. There was Domino's pizza, which I managed to eat with no disastrous effect, a trip into Bicester so that I could look for head coverings in the various charity shops with which the place abounds, and then a further trip out to the garden centre, which did not so much involve gardens as Hobbycraft (to Judy and Penny, Hobbycraft is an Aladdin's Cave of wondrous treasures; to me it's "Eeeeew, what is all this tat?!") and Lakeland (which is an Aladdin's Cave of wondrous treasures that I cannot afford and, at present, have little use for).

We did our routine grocery shop in Buckingham this week, mostly for a change of scenery. I don't know what we bought, exactly, but it managed to come to over £90 - rather worrying, as it didn't even include cat food. Much more of that, and we'll be forced to resort to Lidl. I only ever set foot in a Lidl once, and it scared me, but ... needs must when poverty drives.

I said a while ago that I needed boots. I now have boots, courtesy of the Clarks outlet in Bicester Village. Of course, even buying boots can't be straightforward, not in my world. The ones I ended up getting (quite nice flat ankle boots with a solid sole and a buckle) (two of each, actually, one for each boot) were size 6, and a perfect fit - I take size 5, and every other size 5 I tried on fitted just fine - and they also had no price on, which meant we had to find the same boot in another size, one thatdid have a price tag, and take that up to the counter. I felt pretty stupid, queuing up with three boots in my hand. I have a lot of problems, true, but I am not Jake the Peg!

Side thought: what a lot of shitty songs I do know, to be sure.

Yesterday my brother came for his currently weekly visit, and this time he brought Michelle, my lovely sister in law, who is still recovering from breast reconstruction surgery. She still looks quite drawn and tired, and I hope the round trip from Bristol didn't take it out of her too much, but it was nice to see her. Also, she brought a bag of wigs with her, from her own baldie days, and we played with those for a bit. Verdict? Wigs are exactly as hot and scratchy and uncomfortable as I'd thought, and do, indeed, make me look like a bloke in drag. And I don't mean someone who's cross-dressing in any sort of serious way: I mean the local rugger scrum half at a tarts' and vicars' party. (Rugby players always come as tarts. I have long ceased to ask why.)

They brought cookies, too. I'm just saying. You know, it's no wonder I'm not losing any weight in spite of the chemo ...

The mail today brought confirmation from my hospital insurance company of my claim for my ten-day stay in the Churchill. They're paying out a lot more than I'd expected, but I suppose they know what they're doing. If they don't know what they're doing, let's hope they never notice.

So, what does the near future hold? Next week it'll be back to the medical routine: consultant on Monday - so we had better be sure to change the clocks this weekend, or we'll be there an hour early. (? Late? Brain the size of a planet, and yet I never can work that out in my head.) Pre-chemo blood samples at the GP on Thursday. And chemo on Saturday. Is everybody happy? Like buggery we are ...

I really do know all the crap songs. Why, god, why?

Before all that, we have an exciting Sunday lined up: we are going to Sunday lunch with a friend. A friend, mark you, whom I know only through Facebook, but she breeds Maine Coons, and suggested that KITTENS would be an excellent form of cancer therapy. And, you know what? I bet she's right.

EEEEEEE KITTENS!!!!

Being for the benefit of Mr Crab

Have you ever wondered what Mr Crab & Co look like? I don't mean Googling for images of cancer, because, ew, but have you ever tried to put a face to him?

I have. Mind you, it's pretty easy for me, because of where my own personal Mr Crab lives - in my tummy, which is so much easier to explain than 'peritoneum'. He looks like this:

Those are actually the Snapping Turks from Yellow Submarine, which is a v good film, although not if you don't like the Beatles (or if you like them Very Earnestly). I was a bit wary of Googling 'snapping Turk', which sounds like a Victorian sex aid, and, for all I know, is, but I was traumatised yesterday by an unwise Google for 'perineum' and maybe that's made me over-cautious.

I have been further traumatised today by Googling for coffee enemas. They sell the beans on Amazon, you guys!

So, in case you ever wondered what I do all day, at the moment the answer is mostly: I'm in bed with the gentlemen pictured above, or one of them.

I've had better.

If: the cancer remix

With apologies to Mr R Kipling ...

If you’ve been told you’ve cancer in your innards

You’re faced with problems totally unknown

You don’t know if you’ll live, or die, and nobody

Can help; you have to face it on your own

You start a round of which humiliation’s

The least of problems, set against your lot

Of care and fear; of fighting with the doctors

Who treat you without saying why or what

You reassure your friends, your loved ones,

Family: it’s bad enough they’re seeing you this way

Don’t frighten them, or say how bad the nights are

Too much, too scary – will they run away?

In all of this, there is one consolation

You’re not alone: you’ve joined a special band

It’s not a group you want to join for pleasure

But once you’ve joined it, people understand

Warped people, who will not let cancer beat them

Whose weapons include humour, love and hope

And saying ‘fuck’ a lot’, and simply caring

All those things help; and somehow you can cope

You cry sometimes, because you’re only human

You spend your hours frightened and in pain

It wears you down. But when the tears are over

You come back fighting time and time again

Cancer’s a bully: mean, and sick, and spiteful

But stand your ground, whatever comes to pass

Stick with your friends, keep faith, and keep on smiling

Together, we’ll kick cancer up the arse.

Kicking against the pricks

What I done on my Wednesday: got up far too early; drove, or rather was driven by Judy, to the Churchill - different route, similarly horrendous traffic, if I ever get really ill I think we shall have to take lodgings in Headington, maybe the man with the shark on his roof will take us in; waited around for a while being tired and uncomfortable, but 'tired' and 'uncomfortable' are SOP these days, so whatever; got cannulated; got injected with "mild radiation" - cool, but I'd better not go biting any spiders, the results could be fearsome; was shown to a singularly uncomfortable bed? couch? trolley - whatever it was, still better than sitting - so that I could lie down; duly lay down; an hour later, was woken up to have blood drawn. Lather, rinse, repeat x 4 at hourly intervals, then home.

Tedious. Not too painful. Not exactly skipdedoodle dancing-and-singing fun either, but there is v little about Stoopid Cancer that is dancing-and-singing fun, I find.

I don't begrudge them the blood they need for their tests - kidney function tests, these are and, all in all, I would prefer that my kidneys did continue to function - but I'm a bit miffed by the blood they drew off and threw away. There was enough there for a perfectly decent black pudding!

Tired - even more tired, I mean - and crampy afterward, so it was off to bed for me. Judy had a nap, too, but then had to bounce back up and be Intelligent - she's giving a lecture in Luton today,and had to put the finishing touches to her thesis. I used to get a bit grumpy about being the thick one out of all my friendses, but these days I think of it as the line of least resistance. Extracurricular education and all the work it involves? Neine danke!

So, Judy has buzzed, well, driven off to Luton, and is staying overnight - where, I hope she will have a lovely time with her friends and colleagues, and be able to forget the evil Mr Crab for a few hours. I'm a bit wibbly at the prospect of being on my own for the best part of two days, especially as the evil Mr Crab is currently twisting his claws in my tummy and laughing his evil laugh ("BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!"), but I shall deal with this in my usual inimitable fashion ...

Yup, you guessed. Drop a shitload of drugs, and go to sleep for the duration. It's how we roll, kids.

The rest of the state of me: the twinges from chemo are dying down, pretty much, and my mouth doesn't taste quite as horridly cardboardy. Little My and her yin/yang tummy may, I hope, have had some relief yesterday ... And my pixie cut turns out to have been a bit of a wasted effort, as the hair's already rubbed away over my right temple. Pity, but ... it is what it is. Now I wait until I'm well, and then wait for it to grow back. It will be fine. Because I say so, is why.

In non-cancer news - it is fecking cold, and I need new boots. These two statements may or may not be connected.

Hair: less

This is going to be a quick, well, quickish, update, just for my own records really, and v boring. Sorry!

But before I start - I don't have as much trouble with the Mac site as a lot of people, maybe because I wasn't using the old one for that long before it changed, but why in the name of the blessed Ada Lovelace, are private messages listed under 'community home'?

Okay. Summary: I am not quite bald, but it won't be long, I think; my older brother is lovely (my younger one is a capital L Loser); my left lung appears to be on the mend; chemo has given me nasty shooting pains and affected my taste buds.

It all could be worse, though some of it could be better.

This seems to be a pattern: Sunday, the day after chemo, I was pretty much fine; woke up all bright and perky (Allbright and Perky bitched about it a bit) and even contemplated a trip to one of the big Tescoses in which this area abounds. Common sense set in, and this was downgraded to a trip to Homebase to buy Judy a new bookcase for her study. Once home, Judy set about making it; I went to bed.

Sunday night - not so wonderful. Mostly a lot of weeing. (Funny how we talk about poo all the time, but wee hardly gets a look-in.) Judy pointed out that I'd had a lot of fluid put into me the day before, it had to go somewhere. Of course, some of it already had gone somewhere, on the way home, thank god for Sainsbury's having a customer loo - and, LM, I do apologise over the yin/yang poo; from past experience, I suspect the balance will reverse very shortly. Anyway, that meant a very disturbed night, and I barely woke up in time to have a bath before my brother arrived. The mobile hairdresser got here shortly after, and set up a mini-salon in the kitchen. She was very good - not squicked out at all by my hair coming out by the handful (once again, when I got out of the bath that morning I had left behind Guy the Gorilla) - and gave me a nice sort-of pixie cut. I doubt it'll last long, my hair's still coming out, but it'll do for the moment.

(Strangely, hairdresser-lady grew up just round the corner from here, and remembers when our estate was fields where one of the neighbours kept goats. How things change. Although our next-door neighbour has chickens. There is something intrinsically comical about urban chickens. But I digress.)

Oh, while I was with the hairdresser, my GP's receptionist phoned to say that she - the doctor, that is, at least I hope it is - had filled out my hospital insurance form, and was going to 'waive her fee'. We hadn't actually registered that there should be a fee, but whatever. I should hope she'd waive it, given whose fault it is that I got so ill before I got any treatment. Yeah. I'm gonna let go of that in a hurry!

Tim brought the news that, when he emailed Jeremy - that's other brother - to tell him that the sale of our mother's house appeared finally to be going through, Jeremy's response was "Good, then we can all delete one another's email addresses" - followed, for reasons best known to himself, by a quote from Richard III which Tim didn't bother to try to interpret, instead merely observing "Tosser." And so say all of us.

My sister Penny sent me a buff from my Amazon wishlist that morning, btw. I'm not sure it'll get used; it feels a bit itchy. But it was a very kind thought of hers.

By the time Tim went, I was very tired and shaky and - you guessed it - had to go back to bed. And worse, the chemo symptoms were starting up: sharp, stabbing twinges in my lower tummy, and in my bum, and in my girlbits which, I have to say, is not somewhere that stabbing twinges are particularly welcome; less unpleasant, but still not nice, a very dry mouth, with everything I eat turning tasteless as soon as I've eaten it. Which sounds a bit like something that would happen to a bad character in a folk tale. Which might account for a lot. If I remember correctly, I had these symptoms the last time, too, and they wore off reasonably soon. I hope they'll do so again. And, of course, if not ... oh, well.

Another pretty bad night last night, thanks to the twinges. Up early to drive to the Churchill - in hideous traffic from Kidlington onward - to see the lovely Dr Naj. Had a chest X-ray ("Oooh, I haven't had one of these for weeks!" I said), and Naj said that it looked as if the left lung had stayed glued down and not taken in any more ascitic fluid. There's still the original pleural effusion on the right side, but they're not planning to treat that - it's too little, although still big enough to have been the thing that mucked up my breathing to begin with. I suppose I should thank it for that, as without that we might never have found the cancer. Um, thanks, lung! I think.

Anyway: I've got another appointment with Naj in December and, if all is well, that will be the last of this. Which I shall be rather sad about. Naj is sweet.

We came home via Bicester; I went to the bank and paid off my credit card bill only-just-in-time, and we did some shopping in the scabby town Tesco; came home, unpacked, and who would like to make a bet on what I did then??

Indeed. And there I have been, pretty much all day.

At this very moment I should be at the Stables in Milton Keynes, bopping along to Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. I'm not. I'm here, typing self-pitying nonsense.

Time to stop. Whining will recommence tomorrow.

That's chemo with a C, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for ...

It doesn't quite stand for 'pool'. Brown corduroy trousers might be in order next time. Thank heavens for Sainsbury's in Kidlington, which is about halfway between the hospital and home, and which has both a loo and a pharmacy counter. "Imodium Instants, and stat!" I barked at the pharmacy lady, believing myself, briefly, to be in an episode of ER. "Are you all right?" she asked, clearly concerned, and rightly so. Well. How do you answer that?

At least she didn't headtilt.

The chemo itself? Okay. Six hours of boring, but, as hoped, I managed to sleep through most of it - or at least go into that hospital-induced null-state where you're not quite asleep but not quite awake either. Judy started on a cross-stitch. In the room other women came and went, none of them talking of Michelangelo (well, they might have been, I didn't hear, but I doubt it). Why is my chemo so much longer than theirs? Who knows. Coffee was provided. A hospital sarnie was, perhaps unwisely, eaten. Things went in. Other things ... came out, not, as recorded above, always at the most convenient time. Follow-up drugs were dispensed. Um. Twice. Oh, Churchill!

So far, so good, so far as side-effects are concerned, but it's early yet. Let's see how the evening goes. And tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow ...

Did I really just write a(nother) blog post all about poo? Oh, well, at least it's only a little one.

The post, that is.

It's not just my baby that's gone down the plughole

EW EW EW THERE IS A DEAD RAT IN THE BATH - oh, no, wait. As you were. It's just ol' Burt again.

Useful Suggestions for hair loss have now expanded to include tea cosies. "A cat-shaped tea cosy," was the helpful addendum. You know what, we actually used to have one of those, but it didn't survive the last move. Ah, well. And then my friend Stuart posted a picture of his late wife wearing a tea cosy, so maybe it's not such a silly idea after all.

I have a young lady named Sam coming to the house on Monday to cut whatever hair she may be able to find by that time. She charges £20 for the service, and at this rate that'll work out at about £1 per hair, but never mind. I have put a buff on my Amazon wishlist, having first had to Google to find out what it was, and a friend has offered to bring me back a bandanna from Lanzarote - although I think the subliminal message there was 'Yay, I'm going to Lanzarote!', and who can blame her?

Okay, here is the Moral Story I was too tired to post yesterday -

Oh, wait: the Churchill has just phoned, their left hand, as usual, not knowing what their right is doing, wondering why I didn't have a post-chemo follow-up last time. (Answer: I did.) I'm glad Judy answered the phone, I really don't have the energy to deal with them. Mind you, it's a wonder she does, she's been working on the final revisions to her doctoral thesis all the time she's been running me backward and forward to hospital and generally being the all-round caregiver.

- Moral Story. Warning: this is the sort of thing that some people find inspiring, and makes other people want to throw up. I tend to fall into the latter camp. And yet, I share:

A woman looked into her mirror one day and saw that she had only three hairs left. (On her head, Little My, on her head, I cannot emphasise this strongly enough.) "Ah," she said, "today I shall wear my hair in a braid!"

The next day, when she looked, she had only two hairs. "Fine," she said, "I'll wear my hair in bunches."

On the third day, she had only one hair left, and so she wore it in a ponytail.

At last, she looked in the mirror, and found she was totally bald. "Hurrah!" she said. "Now I don't have to bother styling my hair any more!"

And the moral of this story - I told you there was one - is: attitude is everything. Although it might as easily be "whatever that woman was on, I want some of it."

I'll shut up about hair loss now. Maybe tomorrow I shall have Amusing Chemo Anecdotes, but, actually, I plan to sleep through as much of it as I can.

In the meantime: I do believe it's time for drugz. CODEINE, YAY!

... no, I don't think I have a problem. Well, okay, I might do, but I don't care.

Hair today - ah, you know the rest

Thus far my dear, loving friends' suggestions for dealing with hair loss have included "boot polish", "disguise yourself as Jean-Luc Picard", and "put a cat on your head". I'm thinking of firing the lot of them and renting a whole new set of friends. Judy's contribution was "buy a pair of Doc Martens to complete the look" - that's fine, but people would just assume I was an exceptionally butch Lesbian, and I've spent many years trying to disabuse people of that idea (except for one job I had, where ... oh, that's a long story). I said I could paint rabbits on my head, and then everyone would think they were hares.

Yeah, you can tell, we're all taking this madly to heart.

Judy's just found a number for a mobile hairdresser in the local advertising rag, so let's see if she can help. I hope so, this morning it was like I was sharing the bath with Burt Reynolds's chest wig.

Have been to give a pre-chemo blood sample, then to pick up (free!!) drugses. I am pretty sure that "Oooh, lovely!" is not the correct response to codeine, but the heck with it, it's mine.

I had a lovely little moral tale about hair loss and positivity I was going to share, but I am knackered and have to go lie down now. Maybe later.

Shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen

I think we - that's the royal 'we', and I don't know why I do that, being as how I am actually common as muck - have to prepare ourselves for hair loss. Quite a lot came out when I washed it this morning - not clumps, but a good plugholeful of loose strands, which reminds me, I must clean it out - and more when I combed it. Bum. I know it's not the worst thing that could happen, and intellectually I'm quite prepared for it. Emotionally, though, might turn out to be tougher than I'd've expected.

But hey. If it happens it happens, and it'll grow back. And I'm told you get a free Brazilian into the bargain, so win!

I'll be stuffed if I have to paint on eyebrows, though. Never having been a girlie-girl, I haven't a clue how to do it. The only person I know who might be able to help, um, isn't actually a girl at all. Most of the time.

(What have I said before about my life?)

The futon in my study is snoring gently. I would be quite alarmed if I didn't know the Jenny-cat was having a snooze behind it, having been out all night, evil creature.

Anyway. I went for a walk round the garden just now, because otherwise I'm cooped up indoors all day, just languishing on the sofa with no-one to fan me or feed me grapes. Our lawn is covered with toadstools.

"'ow d'you know they're toadstoools?"

"'Cos there's not mushroom inside."

Oy!

Monday morning couldn't guarantee

I honestly don't know why I don't just go and live in the Churchill. Well, I do know, it's a bit bleak and my house is much nicer, plus it's a bugger to get a bed. But for all the time I spend there, I might as well move in. I'm already due for chemo on the 15th, and on the 18th I have to go and see Naj (and tell him I think the fluid's back, which I don't imagine will amuse him); then, while I was asleep this afternoon, Judy took a phone call telling me to be there on the 19th for some kidney function tests, which will, apparently, take five hours, wtf!

Got up at the ungodly hour of 7.00 this morning (hah: I used to be at work for 7.30 am when our office was in Oxford; now I barely get out of bed at all) to go and see my GP. I like to drop in on her every now and then as a kind of living memento mori; if she'd been a bit more on the ball (she started out by trying to treat the fluid on my lungs with antibiotics which was, not surprisingly, unsuccessful), I wouldn't now be as ill as I am - or, at least, I'd be further along with my treatment. While the look on her face when she saw the "got cancer" letter from the Churchill was, admittedly, priceless, I would really rather have had an earlier diagnosis. Eh. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Anyway: today I had to give her my drugs list for re-upping - I've almost finished all those lovely painkillers the hospital gave me although, to my credit, I haven't even touched the morphine - and book a pre-chemo blood test, and also ask her if she could sign my hospital insurance claim. I have a highly amusing hospital insurance policy that I took out years and years ago, which pays me £30 for every full day I spend in hospital. I would have been better off stuffing the money under my mattress (or, better yet, putting it in a dedicated bank account), but it seemed like a good idea at the time and, once again, it's too late now. Anyway: she wasn't sure her signature would be acceptable - the form is hopelessly vague - and neither am I, so I have to phone up the insurers. But I was too tired today. Maybe tomorrow.

I got her to tap me on the back while I was there, on the grounds that she may as well make herself useful. She agreed that it sounds as if there's fluid on the left-hand lung, although she did it in a very cautious and qualified manner. I may have her scared. Do I want a scared doctor? Better than no doctor at all, I suppose, although I can't really complain about that, not when half the medical team at the Churchill seems to want a piece of me.

How nice to be wanted. Or is it?

My baby, she has restless nights

Every day I make my bed neatly, smooth down the duvet, tuck it down the side of the bed and the footboard. And every morning I wake up cocooned in a 30-tog pretzel with my feet sticking out.

I don't know what I dream about, but it must be very exciting. It's a pity I don't remember, I might have the next big best-selling fantasy series tucked away in my brain somewhere. Although even if I did, I am probably too lazy to write it down.

My sister Penny came for a visit, all the way from Penzance, last week - she arrived on Tuesday evening and left on Friday morning. I'm afraid I wasn't the best company, since I spent most of the time languishing on the sofa (it's useful having guests, it means that there's a spare duvet downstairs all ready for me), but Judy took her out to see the sights of Bicester: the town, and the garden centre, and Bicester Village, and the fake stone circle (we don't know why Bicester has a fake stone circle - that is, it's real in that it's a circle made of stones, but it's not an antiquity) - but it does), and ... ummm, that's it, actually. Thrilling, I know. Anyway, it was lovely to see her, since I haven't since my mother's funeral last year.

It's quite strange having someone to stay who's never been before; you have to warn them about all the little glitches that you just take for granted: "Okay, the upstairs loo has a bit of a funny flush, it works okay if you stand on the other side of the toilet and pull the handle towards you ... and the seat's a bit wobbly, and the hot water in the tap only trickles. You can wash your hands in the bidet, no, it's okay, we don't use it. The hot tap in the downstairs loo trickles too, you're on your own there ... Remember to lock the front door when you come in, or go out for that matter, it doesn't latch (the GC has never quite got the hang of this and has several times left it unlocked all night) ... We don't have a toaster, we make toast under the grill, BUT the cooker has slightly dodgy wiring so we turn it off at the wall when we're not using it. Oh, and the pilot light on the hob doesn't spark, you'll have to use the lighter-thingy ... ah, and apparently that one doesn't work at all. And please don't expect our cats to be friendly, they don't like people. They don't even like us all that much ... Enjoy your stay!"

Another former colleague popped in on Friday, bearing a lovely card and a pretty pink potted plant (and left with the loan of one of our three sets of Lord of the Rings, as she said she'd never read it). I think I have now seen almost all the people I used to work with, at least the inner cabal. Some of them are going to have to start coming round a second time. Actually, some of them already have, and very grateful I am, too, although it may not seem like it when I'm propping myself up on one arm and trying to keep my eyes open!

The cancer? Oh, the cancer. It's still there, crabbing away at my tummy. Don't tell it, but it's having its second lot of chemotherapy this coming Saturday. I don't expect it to make a lot of difference, but I hope it'll do some good. Kill off the cancer whilst causing me the minimum pain and inconvenience would be favourite.

The bad news is ... the breathlessness is back, and it is pretty bad, although not as much so as it was before. Dr Naj is going to be furious if the pleural effusion's filled up again after all his hard work, and I can't say I'm any too pleased about it myself. It hurts, and it's scary. These are two of my very not-favourite things. I'm seeing my GP tomorrow, and I'll get her to tap me on the chest and back and see what she thinks. I've got a chest appointment on the 18th; I hope I can hold out that long and not have to play the emergency card again. People will get quite tired of me, if they're not already.

Speaking of my doctor's surgery, they are the winner of this week's 'misplaced sense of humour' prize: they've just sent me a form letter offering me a free NHS health check ...