CYCLE 2 DAY 14

My first night away from home on my own since my diagnosis. It feels a little weird. I’m here in York having driven up this morning to visit one of my enabling environment services. I got up early to set out and noted that my waterboard mole hill and trench had not miraculously disappeared over night. I wonder if it will be there when I return on Wednesday.

For todays journey I have used the Mazda and found the M1 clear so made good time. Time in fact to stop for a coffee and a couple of bacon rolls at a service station. I find Greggs a strange combination of sticky buns and breakfast buns, something very British about it, an almost cavallier attitude towards anything healthy. A sort of “buns for everyone” outlook regardless of the consequences. Not a health warning in sight, no “indulge responsibly” or “eat responsibly” tag lines despite the obvious gamble.

The service I visited were expecting me and made me most welcome. We discussed where they were in regard to enabling environments and agreed a timetable for their award assessement process. Collecting and colating the evidence for the portfolio part of the award process always takes time to work through but the team have a clear plan and have started the work required. There is no need for me to return until the new year just to run an eye over their portfolio prior to the assessment visit. Before leaving I was happy to fill in one of their visitor feedback forms and praise them for their friendly welcome and enthusiastic work. Then it was off to the hotel and a shower and a bit of a rest.

I dined early at the Cosy Club with a friend and her five year old daughter and indulged myself with my favourite main and my second favourite as a side dish. Very satifying. It was good to catch up with the news about what was going on with some of the people I know in York from my time working there. I also discovered that the Cosy Club keeps board games for children to play and of course played several games of snakes and ladders while waiting for our food. I retuned to the hotel to read and write the blog. The first one that I have written on the road. All very prosiac, nothing transforming like Jack Kerouac, who wrote the classic “On the Road” in the days of the beat generation with people like William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. I read, thank goodness for my Kindle, and hopefully will read again till I drop off to sleep and not wake again till my alarm rings in the morning. However I suspect my bladder will deny me this and I will have my usual interuptions. The difference this night is that I am liable to trip over the furniture as I am in a strange place.

I am begining to think I am getting lazy with the blog as its a few days since I did anything new with it or learnt a new skill. I do not want it to become a chore but at the moment I seem to be coping with my chemo and learning the pattern of it. I need to be watchful as I do not know if its effects will become cumulative and effect me more as the cycles go on. I guess it is going to depend on how well I keep recovering from being poisoned every 21 days. It is this type of unknown that makes me feel as if I am in the desert with no fixed points to rely on and only the desire to keep heading in the same direction.