It’s been a fabulous day.  Zion National Park is an amazing place.  A green desert.  A gentle river valley.  A place of dramatic flash floods.

We came, we saw, we overpaid for a beer and we left.  The immobility that began to haunt me in my last week in Chile has continued.  My walking stick helped supply balance, but any pretence of pace and confidence is gone.  Put simply, I’m a slow man.  And in better times I’d have seen a lot more of Zion’s walks, pools and stunning natural beauty.

Pizza, wine and a bath finished off a lovely day and I nodded off early.  An hour later I was wide awake.  In pain from my growing pelvic tumour.  I threw down some paracetamol and chose not to take anything stronger.

As I sat, my afatinib side effect kicked in.  A dash to the loo to deal with it.  Vague thoug

Yesterday it needed to be somebody’s fault.

The easiest target in my head was Oncobabe. After all, I’d told her in June that I was feeling pain that felt similar to the agony afatinib had removed last December. Take more painkillers and we might scan if you come back in six weeks feeling the same. I did. And look where I am now!

But what would it have changed? Bad news sooner. Next drug sooner. Next drug failing sooner. My tactical game with this illness is to play for time until they invent a cure. My body seems oblivious to my tactics though. I’m running out of time.

I wondered about doctors and physiotherapists who were slow diagnosing my cancer originally. A simple X-ray would have shown it. But even then I didn’t know about it until it had hit the bone. By then I was a dead man walking anyway. But might have saved my lower spine. All thoughts I’ve had before though. And put to one side before. What will be will be.

I wish my work colleagues had been cancer experts. I wish I’d acted on Internet references to bone cancer when suffering a bad back. But again, I was already too far gone for it to change any prognosis.

That vague grumble from my lungs was perhaps the moment I should have seen my GP. And demanded an X-ray or scan. But even then I suspect it would have reached bone and lymph nodes before any surgery.

I want to hit out. Blame somebody. Even if that’s me. The reality is shit happens. And this time it was my turn. Just unlucky. Very, very unlucky.

hts that this unpleasant side effect may mean the afatinib still has the ability to downsize my new super-tumour.  Unlikely, but I’ll think it for now.

I then sat in the dark, 7am uk time, 11pm USA west coast time, and researched osiminertinib.  Again.  Improved comforts.  Moderately extended life.  I wonder if I’ll qualify?

There are things in my life I desperately want to stay around healthily for.  It shouldn’t be my time yet.  There might be new immunotherapy drugs just around the corner for me.  I’m not scared of dying.  But I sure as hell don’t want to yet.

Wanting to Play the Blame Game