I should have known that the moment I cancel all my care workers I would start to feel unwell again but that’s where we’re at. I’m trying to be optimistic by not having a bucket at my bedside as I write this. I already puked 4 times into a discarded blue plastic box in a hospital corridor today. You would have been proud.

This morning I had an appointment with Dr Montoto in the haematology/oncology department in the posh West Wing of Barts hospital. As I guessed, it was to tell me that the results of the PET scan revealed live cancer cells and as forewarned I will shortly be restarting chemo therapy.

I didn’t even try booking hospital transport this time and just took the tube. I stopped off at photo booth on the way to get a new passport picture for my Freedom Pass which I’m entitled to while I’m ill. I don’t take a good photo at the best of times but I still look ill, especially around the eyes. Maybe it was a sign.

Yesterday I had a surprise visit from Radek, a man from the Czech Republic who was in the next hospital bed to mine when I was an inpatient and who lives with his girlfriend in Leyton near Walthamstow (she’s a care worker but not in my borough). Radek has been given the all clear and was looking really well and much younger than he did in hospital. Good for him.

He has real hair, not that bum fluff that I seem to have grown post R-Chop chemo. He admitted that he hadn’t been to see me before now because of how unwell I looked in hospital where he had learned not to get too attached to fellow patients. I told him Shawn had died. He didn’t know.

The waiting room was over flowing today and too warm. By the time I got to see Dr Montoto I was already feeling like I was going to be sick. She made me wait outside for a few minutes and then sent me with my updated hospital notes to the outpatients ward to make an appointment to begin chemo.

As I left the lift in King George V block I suddenly felt the urge to vomit. This is where I was sick 4 times. I left the blue box in the toilets by the entrance to the outpatients ward and told a nurse.

My new chemo is called R-ice (pronounced ‘rice’) and is more aggressive than the previous R-chop. I’m going to have two treatments in 4 daily doses, 3 weeks apart. I start next Wednesday and finish on Saturday.

I took the tube home, worrying all the way that I was going to puke my guts up again but didn’t. Looks like it’s a one off. Maybe it was the prospect of more chemo that brought it on?
Next week is going to be fun fun fun!

We had to postpone the start of chemo by one day because on Tuesday I’m going to be admitted for ‘surgery’. I’ll be put under while they take a stent (a rubber tube) out of my left kidney which they say I don’t need anymore. I’m glad they are going to knock me out because they are going to reach it by putting a wire up my urethra (yes the passage you piss out of!)

I don’t know who I feel more sorry for, me, or the guy who has to perform the operation.