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On the day that our imprisonment was mildly relaxed and where the sun was shining bright and my family had been invited to go round to my in-laws for a barbecue in the garden, my chemo finally hit me a little bit and I was more or less confined to bed. After a bit of a restless night I was knocked out this morning and barely able to get up. I couldn’t face anything more than a bit of fruit for breakfast (I am delighted about this side effect and hope it stays for a while), managed a shower and got dressed, but then realised that there was no way I was in a fit state to go anywhere.
Everyone else went off to eat sausages in the sunshine and I went back to bed, feeling just a tiny bit lousy, drifting in and out of heavy sleep and not able to do much more than watch a bit of telly. I had thought of doing some snooker tonight, especially when the chemo seemed to be having such a minimal impact, but that was out of the window. As much as I am lucky with how lightly I have been hit by everything that’s happened to me this year, I’ve still had cancer and I’ve still had chemo and it was naive to think I could just plough onwards without pause. I was annoyed to be pole-axed in this way, but accepted that it was a good idea to listen to my body. And to be fair, the idea of eating sausages was making me feel sick, though I managed a small cheese and pickle sandwich for dinner which felt very exotic. After spending the first week post operation hoovering up biscuits in bed, I have made an effort to eat healthily (as I have been told I need to get fit to avoid complications down the line - the loss of a bollock affects your metabolism) and have shed about 3kg, so that’s a good start. Most of that was the weight of my ball though.
I managed to watch the end of The King of Comedy (which I’d dipped into a couple of weeks ago), which still stands up pretty well. Back in the 80s I had taped this off the TV and watched it a lot, mainly because I thought it was a great film and was interested in comedy, but also because you got to see Sandra Bernhard in her pants. Watching it now, it’s hard to imagine how I found her awful imprisonment of Jerry Lewis at all erotic, but I was 16 and there was no internet and a lady in a bra with bright red shimmery lipstick was more than enough. This film might have had a greater psychological impact on my sex life even than
Un Chien Andolou and possibly explain why I was so often attracted to exciting, unpredictable women (though none of them ever sellotaped me to a chair, worse luck). Bernhard is brilliant in this film and particularly this scene - chilling and terrifying and in many ways more unsettling than Kathy Bates in Misery.
