Friday and its Cycle 8 day. I take time to get up and prepare for the trip to the oncology clinic. So I spend my morning having breakfast, taking my meds with the added steroids. The morning goes by until its time to book an Uber to the hospital. I am in my lightest shirt and shorts as the weather is still hot. My partner and I get dropped off at the car park entrance which is considerably nearer to the clinic than our usual drop off point.

We pick up strawberries and cherries from the fruit stall at the hospital before I book in. I am about half an hour early but it is forty five minutes after my appointment time before I get called in. I am put in bay 1, and I do not recognise anyone on the staff or any of the fellow cancer club members. A nurse puts in my cannula and administers my pre-meds once she has checked my raised heart rate is acceptable with the on duty doctor. My chemo is reduced by about 25% but still takes a full hour to infuse. My session comes to an end after which I rej-oin my partner and we go to get another Uber home. It turns out that I have dropped one of my card cases, not the bank card case, in the Uber. The driver contacts me and lets me know he has found it and we make an arrangement for him to drop it off tomorrow.

Once home tea is eaten on the patio and then I watch TV until its time to take my meds and get myself to bed. I can feel that my body is beginning to react to the huge amount of dugs that I’ve got inside me. I just hope that I get some reasonable sleep tonight.

Saturday and I wake up feeling decidedly chemo’d. I am fatigued and my gut is off badly. I take my vitals and set up my records for cycle 8. My partner and her brother have gone to see their mother in hospital and then onto look at a care home. I get up late morning and have pizza for breakfast and then settle into a day of TV rugby and football. Apart from a Tesco delivery and the Uber driver returning my card case I did nothing. I know what I want to do, mostly to do with the garden, I also need to move on my new poetry collection but first I need to get through the first flush of the Cycle 8. I get to the end of the evening and attempt to catch up with the blog. I inevitably get to drugs time and the wandering of to bed in the hope of sleep. At the edges of my mind I am aware that friends are playing golf, attending Pride, celebrating Eid and tending gardens and allotments. I am also turning over in my mind a poem based on something my partner said in the oncology clinic waiting area. When I asked if she had seen any of the usual people we see on a Friday she noted that because my cycle was delayed a week none of the usual people where this week. At which point she said “I don’t expect I’ll see them again”. It is a haunting phrase that strikes a cord with me. A sense of temporary community and the unquestioned loss of people and the temporary joining of others. I am interested to see if these senses turn into an actual poem.