Wednesday and my alarm wakes me at 7 o’clock in a chilly hotel room. I struggle to the surface and take a shower before getting organised enough to go for breakfast. My morning meds are taken and I realise that this is the last day of cycle 29 of my Chemo. Tomorrow I will start cycle 30 and, providing I get back in time to get to the hospital pharmacy, will be the first day I actually start taking the additional dash if steroids. One of the side effects of steroids is to put on weight! This means that from Friday I have to cut out all the processed food and sweet stuff that I love. My exercise regime will also have to increase, I cannot face going back to looking like I did in my first chemotherapy that had steroids attached to it. I had a football head and developed body folds I felt ashamed off, I cannot go back there again, so once more I have to find the effort to resist and to fight extra hard. Basically if I want life as I want it I will have to fight for it, the alternative just speeds up the inevitable and I am not ready for that. I treat myself a huge buffet meal wanting to get my monies worth but also I feel I have not eaten that well over the last couple of days. I am missing home brought about by feeing anxious in the hotel environment and out of my normal routines. It, I mean I feel ill at ease fearing that at any moment I could become ill without a safety net, maybe this is what people mean when they talk about venerable people. Any way having downed my vast breakfast I return to the room and gather up my laptop and journals and return to the lounge area of the hotel. I hang my “please service my room” tag on the door of my room as I have yet to be serviced and need my bins emptying, bed making up and fresh towels. Its difficult not to take it personally that I have been un-serviced, it plays into my “they only want my money” paranoia . Anyway I pick a lounge booth, catch up on my journals and type up the poem I wrote yesterday, which of course I include below.

463
It’s back to hotel food,
a rare trip alone 
to see friends.
My room is cold,
the front desk pimped
from when I was last here.
It’s the equivalent of
all front and no knickers.
Of course I kill the time
by writing as I wait 
for food and drink.
Why do people find
lemonade and blackcurrant odd, 
or perhaps it’s the sparkly nails
and long white ponytail?
I had forgotten what it is to
be alone in public.
Looking odd but really normal,
hiding a body at war.
It is all smoke and mirrors
but when was it ever 
different? 

						463 Holiday Inn York 23-09-2025

There is an hour or so to kill before a friend is due to arrive for lunch so I read and scribble having drafted the blog as far as I can do for this morning. A time to process my visit so far and wonder why on earth the hotel thinks that it needs to play music all the time, bad soft pop music, it’s “musac” of the worst kind and not conducive to anything other than irritation. My friend arrives and we go for a short walk across the Knavesmire and then back to the hotel for a lunchtime sandwich. Again it is good to catch up and hear how someone else is doing and what is going on in their world. My friend is on the way to a funereal so we say farewell and I retreat to my room for a nap before visiting another friend for the evening and a bite to eat. I also collect my belated birthday present. By 10:45 I am tired and drive back to the hotel to take my night meds and to get to bed. I have enjoyed my time in York immensely but it is time to return home in the morning. There are new drugs to collect and the start of cycle 30 to get under way. I also need to process all the conversations I have had and the experience of being away from home for four days.