Sometimes, as the actress has no doubt said to the Bishop many times, it's the little things that matter. When it comes to the big stuff - oh, let us say, for the sake of argument, sitting down one day in a clinic and being told that there is a crab eating away at your insides - then it's easy: your immediate reaction is oh, is there, then? We'll see about that, Crabby, my lad! And, in fact, the big things - hospitalisation, surgery and so on - are pretty easy to deal with, if only because (a) all the important stuff is in other people's far better-trained hands and (b) one is mercifully unconscious for a lot of it.
But then there is the small stuff: you know, the stuff you're not supposed to sweat. And it is small stuff, minor, petty, insignificant; not worth acknowledging, even, let alone bitching about it. Except ... it goes on and on, day after day, and it builds up, and there's no end in sight, and ... you get so tired. That's my only explanation, and my only excuse.
'Tired' is a big part of it, in my case; because of the problem I had with my lung, and now because of the chemo, I'm exhausted almost all the time. I can't do stuff, and I want to do stuff - even being able to focus on a book or watch a DVD would be something. I can't keep up with my friends online, and I can't go out without paying the cost for hours, even days, thereafter. Tesco might as well change its name to Annapurna.
I have a long way to go, even so, before it becomes a real problem: I can feed myself, get to the loo, keep myself clean, take my medication, and I'm clinging to that. But sometimes one gets a bit fed up of being thankful for small mercies.
And then there are the chemo side-effects. Hair loss, for one. Well, I said all along that this wouldn't bother me too much and, in fact, it doesn't - although I have discovered through bitter experience that going out without a hat puts one's cancer automatically in the public domain ("Yes, I'm doing fine, thank you ... oh, really, your sister-in-law, I'm sorry ... who are you again?") - but I'll tell you that, even though I don't think personal vanity is one of my worst failings, losing my hair would trouble me even less if I were to look more like a Pre-Raphaelite with a Romantic Wasting Disease and less like Matt Lucas with ringworm.
Fizzy fingers. They call it 'numbness', but it isn't numbness, they're not dead, they have feeling. It's just not the feeling you expect your finger ends to have. It's weird. It's unpleasant. It's constant and inescapable. And it plays absolute buggery with your typing!
Loss of taste - "You never had much in the first place, Hils," I hear you cry, and I ignore this vagary as beneath contempt. First of all, let me acknowledge that I am fully conscious of my first-world privilege in that I expect food to be readily available, and to be diverse and enjoyable. I'm not in a saintly mood at the moment. I'm in the mood that, truthfully, just about anyone would be in if everything they'd eaten for weeks tasted like garbage and stayed in their mouth, still tasting like garbage, for hours after every meal. It's got to the point where the high point of my day is gargling with Listerine - and even that doesn't last.
(There is actually a temporary fix to this that I discovered quite by accident: mint-flavoured toffees. My brother brought me some left-over Hallowe'en sweeties ["Reverse trick or treat!" he said], that's how I found that out. Toffee isn't usually part of my gastronomic landscape.)
It's a similar sensation to the one that's mentioned in a lot of vampire mythologies, where human food is dust and ashes to them. Being reminded, as I am, of Mick St John in Moonlight, on briefly becoming human, promptly heading out and gorging himself on junk food, isn't much of a consolation, but I know just how he felt.
And let us come, at last, to the pain. For several days now, I've had to break radio silence just to bitch about Mr Crab being exceptionally bitey. Personally, I suspect that this is his reaction to the fact that we're trying to KILL HIM, which is only tit for tat, after all, he'd do the same to me. But it's hard to tell what's Mr Crab, and what is only, let us say delicately, 'stomach cramps': they both bloody well hurt. How do you know when it's hurting as much as you can stand? And how would you cope if you turned out to be the girl who called 999 just because she needed a poo?
What a dilemma it all is. Luckily, I've just about run out of steam for this post. I expect there will be more in a day or so.
Other points to ponder: all of this might have been a bit more bearable if there had been, you know, daylight at all this week. It's so bloody No-vemberish that I can't even.
And it's also possible, stupid as it may sound, that I'm suffering from post-chemo depression. For three weeks, everything builds up to chemo: then, six hours, and it's over, and you're left with another three weeks of ...
... well, of nothing, really. Or of very little.
Which is where we came in.
