You will need the fire well stoked in order to get into the mood for this episode: Our Hero and The Meddlesome Wife have, again, the snow flurrying around Cold Comfort Cottage.
We will set the scene: The moon is full and The Hounds are dreaming whatever wolfish dreams hounds have on silver, moonlit nights. (I suspect their dreams are full of doggy clichés, but let’s not disrupt the mood.) They are dreaming, perhaps, that they are snaking down the mountainside with the pack, forming a sinuous, deadly curve down the snow-covered slopes.
(Oh, for goodness sake, get on with the action!)
Our Hero is sleeping after an exhausting day; a day which included explaining to the maker of the very expensive uber-elf creation why he was wearing the cheap hat with flaps and not the carefully handcrafted one. (Being the very polite hero he is, he made up some story about the current toothless situation not really doing the uber-elf hat justice.)
He has done the forty mile round trip to his studio and showroom, just in case there was anyone who wanted to spend any money. (They didn’t.)
He is eating more than he has for weeks and is now nearly seven and a half stone again (still slightly underweight, given he is five foot nine). He is finding himself sleeping in positions which were, two weeks ago, unimaginably painful, presumably because the tumour was pressing into his back, his ribs, into nerves ... or into whatever a large tumour in the lower oesophagus might press upon (just about everything important, as you can imagine).
He says that now when he turns over in bed it is no longer like being flayed alive.
The Uninvited Guest is obviously shrinking fast after the magical PDT from the wonderful maverick surgeon.
The abyss has retreated and life, as far as Our Hero is concerned, is returning to ‘normal.’ And ‘normal’ means going back to work.
But here is what The Meddlesome Wife is pondering (she would, wouldn’t she? What is wrong with ‘thinking’?); there is no ‘normal’ any more. Unless there had been a spontaneous remission, brought on by the collective vibes, or the remote Reiki from the Master in Bulgaria, or the prayers from at least three Christian denominations, the potions which come all the way from China, or the self-injected Mistletoe (I don’t think the Mistletoe has been mentioned yet), Our Hero still has to contend with the tumours in the liver and whatever is happening with the lymph nodes.
It is off to see the oncologist on Friday where, if the NHS get their collective act together, they might have the results from the CT scan which was done in the middle of December. The oncologist will, we must imagine, be on the defensive since Our Hero has had treatment that was dismissed as being ‘experimental’ (despite the fact it is approved by NICE). Furthermore, the oncologist will have received the letter from the maverick surgeon which states that he has treated the whole of the primary tumour with PDT, and reiterates the fact that the ‘cheap as chips’ stent (all on offer from the oncologist) would have been worse than useless.
The battle lines, as you can see, have been drawn.
But The Meddlesome is wondering whether they should not just find a dog sitter (any takers?) and fly off somewhere warm - with excellent plumbing.
Since there is no ‘normal’ any more, she thinks they should seize the day.
Carpe diem, my friends.
