Over a week later...

Who is responsible for choosing the word ‘chemotherapy’?Anything with the word ‘therapy’ ending it usually describes something that involves whale music or deep relaxation or bells.

Why can't this just involve bells?

That’s another week on the chemo merry-go-round and it seems that each ride becomes longer, and the queue to recover to get back on gets shorter.

I can’t believe it’s now Wednesday (when I started to write this blog post), and it’s taken over a week again to manage to stagger out of bed.

The sickness drive was in for a week.  A sickness drive is a large injection that with time mechanically pumps more anti-sickness drugs into me, and it did work, but, it also lead me into a false sense of security.

I had my chemo last Wednesday and only two or three days later, I was kind of feeling ok (when I say ok, I don't mean doing an hour in the gym, but I was at least able to lift my eyes and get out of bed). All was OK, my partner and family who run around me now, cleaning, washing, feeding, everything(!) started to get their own lives back again, and Iwas up and about, and doing things for myself, and then thesecond side effects kicked in.

That lasted three or four more days.

Chemo brain is back. Chemotherapy really plays with your thought process, you can be immersed in conversation and then, you haven’t got a clue what you are talking about; or something grabs my attention and then I don’t know what I was talking about again.

This did happen with my last lot of chemotherapy, six months ago, and it upset me then and wound me up. That got me nothing though really, so this time, I’m going to enjoy it and if it does get to a point where I’m walking around taking to walls, and cartwheeling across a motorway, please think, “Oh well, at least he looks happy!”.

Rob has wallpapered the kitchen with things we can and can’t eat, and with this the good news is - I won't die of cancer, but the bad news is - we will die of malnutrition (Rob – I’m joking! :)) No, in all honestly I’m enjoying what we’re eating, and it’s not that hard really.  Mind you, if you saw the two pizzas we ordered last night you’d think, “No it doesn't look that difficult!” - it was a cheat night!

It looks like I have a CT scan coming up to see if anything has spread and also in two weeks Prof Lehm wants to see me to see if the ablation has worked, so we’ll be heading back to London.

As for other stuff in my life, we are currently working on a project with my street food business Market Wraps to cater for Leeds Youth Film Festival, which I’m looking forward to. It’s nice to concentrate on something more normal than chemo.

It’s easy to get taken over by everything that cancer offers. I’m trying to at least have a life around it, your life has to fit around cancer, as cancer won't fit around your life, but I think one of the key things is to make sure that you do your best to fit a life around it. So with that I’m really looking forward to working on this Market Wraps project, we’re working on a Happy Meal style box that’s connected with the film we’re serving at – ‘Scooby Snax’ (to go with a Scooby Doo film) and a ‘Toy Box’ meal to go with watching Toy Story!