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I felt a good deal better today (and my weight dipped under 90kg for the first time since pre-first lockdown- cancer rocks!) and my appetite at least partially returned. I overdid it a bit at lunch, but the endorphins from the sunshine and the consumption of food sent me shooting up on the ceiling and it felt good to be alive. It is good to be alive. Well done for being alive everyone.
I wasn’t completely over the mild nausea though and the smell of some food was too much for me, so I passed over a very nice looking vegetable curry tonight in favour of another cheese and pickle baguette. I felt like I was eating at the Upper Crust at a railway station in the 1990s. Very briefly Upper Crust had been the height of dinner on the go sophistication. What lunks we were back then. It’s no Pret A Manger is it? Pret A Manger will never seem old fashioned.
Upper Crust is apparently still going. Which is like finding out that there are still alchemists doing business. Come on guys, enter the 21st Century. You deserve better than this.
Having said this, my dry baguette with cheese and pickle really hit the spot. Sometimes you need a little food time machine to make you feel right. A tin of Heinz chicken soup (which is what I always had when I was ill when I was about 5) would really have done the job, but we had none in. I don’t know when I last had Heinz chicken soup, but the memory of the tiny scraps of what might have been real chicken has really stuck with me. I can’t visualise them exactly, but I can remember them completely.
I had the first of three injections to boost my white blood cell count today and my wife volunteered (maybe a bit too willingly) to spike me. I was glad she did though as it was a mildly complicated procedure involving grabbing a bit of stomach fat and popping in the needle at the right angle and I would definitely have ballsed it up. Or balled it up. Oh how I have to get used to this new monotesticled world. But none of it really hurt and I haven’t yet had the spine pain that I was warned might result from this. I felt like a voodoo doll and presumably the little ventriloquist dummy of me was in agony.
None of the lethargy of yesterday was hitting me (at least until about 9pm) and I managed to do a little work and to take part in a two hour long history quiz for the British Library (which will be released on 8th April -
just £7.50 to view). I thought I might flake out, but stayed focused and even got a couple of answers right, even though I was there for comedy value. And it was fun to play the chemo and cancer card when a point was controversially denied my team and threaten to walk out. I am not sure that everyone got that I was only joking, but that made it all the more fun. Having cancer is a great way to unsettle people. There’s no comeback. Unless they find out that you have the rubbish, basically curable kind. In which case you’re in real trouble.
Perhaps I should have taken the week after chemo off, but I am glad I didn’t. It felt good to be doing something relatively normal and start the process of moving on. I am doing a RHLSTP on Wednesday night (with the legend that is Dominic Diamond as my guest) and hopefully will be up for a little Twitch of Fun on Thursday. Utterly desperate to get back to normal and get stuck in with being a proper dad again and get back into exercising and live for 100 more years. But one step at a time.
My daughter drew me another picture of me in lava. I think she thinks I like it. And she’s right. I do.
