I’m suddenly wide awake.  A visit to the gents essential, an experience enjoyed by many middle aged men.

The room is stuffy.  I stretch my legs out of bed trying to decide if the floor is cold tiles or welcoming carpet.  But there’s pain in my hips and my thighs.  The stretch is slow progress until my feet eventually hit carpet.  I realise that I’m not in a hotel but in my bedroom at home.

I take more than a moment to stand.  It hurts.  I’m thirsty. And grab a glass before heading to the bathroom.  Each step hurts a little more.  Not agonising jabbing pain.  But pain nonetheless.

Aftee doing what I need to do I return to my room and open the window.  A welcome draught  blows in.  I reach for my phone and check the time, expecting it to be 4am.  It’s a little after midnight and I’m now wide awake after the deepest of two hour sleeps.  Uncertain as to how I will get back to slumber.

I reach for the paracetamol and take two.  No memory of when I last took them but hoping it was over four hours ago.  Better than the emergency tramadol for this current lower level of pain.

I struggle back into bed, lie down and curse jet lag.  Curse the cancer that’s caused my bone pains and plans to kill me.  Curse the Bell’s palsy eye pain that’s heading towards a full and unpleasant year and slurred my speech, reshape D my nasal passages and damaged my hearing for so long.

Yet, oddly, I still feel happy.  I’m a physical wreck, in pain, looking down the barrel of a gun,  I’ve no wish to die just yet.  Despite the various frustrations my body is enduring other elements of life feel calm, relaxed from drama.  The crises of the past long gone.

I wonder about cures for the incurable.  DNA mapping?  proton therapy?  Being in the 2% who report no cancer after a year on osiminertinib.  Nobody seems to know how many are still taking afatinib six years after starting.  But some are.  Even if most are long dead.

A giggle as my desire for extended life will screw me financially.  And deny my kids a decent house deposit.  Worse still, bring an end to business class long haul flights.

I’d better sleep.  They’re towing my car away in the morning to repair some damage caused by a third party who doesn’t have the balls to admit to it.  £100 excess.  And then an afternoon CT scan to establish the exact nature of my pains.  As oncobabe doesn’t believe the cancer is back.

Result in three weeks.  Slow.

Hectic Return From Holiday Activity