Half Way

Dear Diary, or whatever this silly blog is supposed to be....

Lovely to hear you Sara and to know that you are ok. Only I still don't know what the problem was. Do you? I could have asked Joe when I called him. I said that I was your dad. He seemed confused. You know, Sara's dad? He said  - Who? Eventually he sorted out which Sara we both had in common. He assured me that you must be ok because you had just delivered his lunch. That is really romantic! Do you put it in one of those tin containers that look like a little pirate's treasure chest? I can imagine all those other tough firemen gathering round to see if tiny notes tied in ribbons have been inserted. Come on Joe, open up that sandwich! Bet the cheese is trimmed into a heart-shape! Great to know you are well, er, well. Adam, I shall write back as soon as possible, but I need to get my head a bit straight, during that window between one fistful of chemo-pills and the next. Drivel come easy when you are on all this stuff like being chemo-stoned, but I need to think clearly about what you have said.

The taxi service is still not functioning smoothly. Thursday they picked me up two hours late. They had gone to the wrong entrance, whispered my name 3 times, said fuck it and gone home. It was apparently all my fault for not realising that I was supposed to shuffle my way through miles of corridor to the main entrance, instead of waiting by the 'Radiology Taxi Pick-up Point' sign.

Friday.
Merel went with me to the Crejat in case anything nasty should happen to me. My homework earned praise and not one teensy might-have-been-better-if comment. I think the Master has taken a shine to Merel. He said that I had a very special daughter, which I assured him was not news. I asked if it was alright that two of us were in the class for the price of one. He said that Merel was his guest, and her being in the class was nothing to do with me. He then took her away to the wet-room to teach her how to use spray-cans for graffiti. She will be off this weekend with a gang of teenies to help Toni and Elli decorate the school-room. The lesson went well and we enjoyed ourselves immensely, which came as a great surprise to me because I have always spelt it immensly, but F7 never lies.
Afterwards to the hospital for the last burn of the week. 13 down and 15 to go. Almost halfway. All downhill now, or maybe uphill. Anyway, nothing to do about it, just get it over with. Or as they say in the radiology room where there is a special chair to put your underpants, known as the underpants chair - 'Grin and bare it'.  Off to the chemo man for a progress report. He seemed surprised and quite pleased when I sat down. Often they can´t sit down at this stage he told me. That radio treatment combined with the chemo does things to your buttocks that render sitting down an option not for the faint hearted. And sometimes your feet and hands start to go red and you can´t touch anything because it hurts. Not always. But often. Quite often. Mostly though, but not 100%. Possibly.  Thanks Doc. So let me get this straight. You maybe can´t stand and you maybe can´t sit. And maybe you need soft padded gloves in case you touch things. If these things come to pass I shall encase myslf up to the neck in a huge plastic balloon filled with helium. They can take me to the hospital every day floating on the end of a string. Heart shaped would be nice. Did we have any questions? I said that when I lie under the machine, I hear all kinds of zapping noises, like Luke Skywalker shooting down Tie Fighters with laser cannons. Is it making photo scans, and how is everything looking on the inside? No, the Machine does not scan or make photos, it only sends a stream of particles at a quarter light speed. How was my blood, Doc? Down a bit on the krumfkopf scale, but these things can go either way, so it's probably about what we would expect, and if not, we always expect the unexpected, so no surprises there. All in all, he seemed quite happy that I can still sit down and have refused the anti-vomit pills. Without scans and photos, we'll only know at the end of the treatment. Well, none of this is happening yet, and maybe won´t happen at all. I do notice that I can´t play the guitar very well, but some would say that I never could. Not to be able to paint would be a bummer.

Saturday.
Merel, Thijs, Shelley and Marco are off to Tony and Elli to do a bit of graffiti. Feeling hungry, I go to the fridge to select one of the two flavours of astronauts poo. There is a large plastic bag full of little writhing wormlike things. Good heavens, that chemo has other side-effects not warned about. It turns out not to be hallucinations but mosquito larvae, food for Merel's angel fishes. Later I am informed by Merel that there is no way that these things will turn into mosquitos. The fish will hunt them down. To the recycle shop and found great books for just a couple of euros. Dylan Thomas, complete poems. And Leonardo da Vinci's note books on painting. There are six chapters in here just about light and shade, and many on painting the pupil of the eye to get  a proper expression. Good heavens! And Velasquez and Degas to add to my collection. Went shopping with Bernadet, and treated myself to a new watch for my birthday. The last one cost 19.75 from the Hema and disintegrated after only 2 years. Deciding to go up-market, we went to a real watch shop and paid no less than 39.95, but I thought quality is worth paying for, and this one also has 'water resistant' on the face and can tell you which day of the month it is.

Sunday.
Watched the rather exciting F1 race in Brazil. I mean, the race was in Brazil, I just saw it on the telly. Unfortunately my man Mark Webber only came second, the brat Vettel winning it. 'Ah it voz vair nice to has vun dis race. Ah hem vair prode'. However, by winning and not letting his team-mate Webber through, he has almost certainly ensured that neither of them will be world champion in the last race of 2010 next week. That will now go to Alonso of Ferrari, who now only has to come second in the last race. Curses.
Stayed up late to watch the football on BBC2. Got bitten by a mosquito. And then my left foot started to tingle and a burning sensation spread over my sole (but not my soul). Fortunately, my other foot remained quite unaffected and I could hop around the room quite happily. Like the curate's egg, parts of me are excellent. This sensation later went away, but I get the occasional twinge in my hands. Decided to sleep downstairs on the couch as Bernadet needs her sleep and I am restless. She has been working very hard to give a presentation and course that will be attended by Important People. But every time I closed my eyes, a zooming and whining of little wings and a pin-prick on my face or neck. Either the angel fish are not hungry or these bastards managed to hide somewhere and complete their life-cycles.

Monday.
14 out of 28. The halway point and then the operations can begin. I have lost a bit of weight but I was getting a bit podgy of late. I have been running out of trousers that I could safely wear without a popping of buttons and that awful sensation when a zip jumps the rails and you can't get both halves to mesh properly again. I kept all the 34's, then the 36's and when the 38's got a bit tight I was faced with an oncoming 40 waist and no trousers to clothe it with. Thank heavens I didn't dump them. Now I have have a trouser mine in my wardrobe!
Emma is in exam week and doing really well. She has acquired a taste for sociology and is highly inquisitive of all things political and there are lively debates at the dining table. Almost forgot, I must be mad. I went to seek out Merel for our Walk with the Horse, and found her riding in the sand arena behind the stables. Whatever posessed me in my state of health, but I just had to ride. Bit of a struggle getting on, but such a joy to feel this lovely animal under me. We didn't canter or gallop of course, that would really shake things up! I had the feeling that she stepped much more carefully than usual. She really is very sweet. The only problem was that I had a hard job getting her to go the way I wanted her to go, she kept turning her head to see where Merel was and trying to get back to her. Those two are really very close.

Tuesday.
Not much to report, except that for the first time, the Machine is operated not by two girls, but by one girl and a MAN. Or rather a youth. He looked, in his white coat, like a butcher's apprentice. Best end of neck and two lamb chops. Anything else Madam? I found this very intimidating. Especially the painting bit. He was obviously a trainee because the girl kept saying 'No, no not like that, the gizmoid goes down until the sproggle goes left and pushes the pokkeldoggle to green'. I thought 'This oaf is going to fry me by accident'. And I remember once, when I was a little more spry than of late that I had vaulted onto the table of the Machine in only my T-shirt and lain down with my head on the pad, lifted up my T-shirt and crossed my arms over my chest as required (this must distress some people, having to lay on this slab as if you were already in your coffin) when it came to pass that my willy was not pointing south in a horizontal way, but was laying, willy-nilly on my belly like a basking seal, and covering one of the fading lines that needed to be touched up with a silver acetate paint job for the Machine to focus on. A dilemma for all of us. The girls simply combined their brushes like chop-sticks and I was delicately lifted and set down again like a king prawn in a sweet-and-sour stir-fry. How would this lad handle such a delicate situation? A back-hander? Or beat it into place with a knotted towel? The lady of the two said that it would take longer today because the Machine needs to take some scans and photos. But the Doctor said the Machine doesn't do photos or scans, just party things at the speed of light..... Well there's doctors for you, old chap. They don't know it all, do they? See you later. And they run for cover as the warning buzzer sounds that it is not safe to be near me and the bunker door slams. The three-headed fly is just too late again.
Back home and a relaxing bath. But Merel has really loud music on and I can't get into my P.D.James book. Every time I raise my head to remonstrate with her, the music level dies down, and returns as I lie down. I work out that because all the outside walls are at 45 degrees upstairs, the sound is bounced down off the tiles and into the bath where it goes round and round. It's like trying to read a book in a church bell on Sunday morning. I wonder what the time is and look at my new watch on the toilet seat but it's all steamed up under the glass. Even the words 'Water-Resistant' are invisible. Bollocks.

Enough of this nonsense. Blame it on the pills. One very late entry in the worst stoma joke section. From ex-colleague Kathy. Don't worry, she says keep positive and 'Thumbs Up'. And adds 'Up What'.

Bye and Love to you all.

Stef, I am counting the days. Let me know a day or two before so that we can spray some Dettol into a spare room. The holiday house is now closed for the winter.