Thursday the 23rd of July, the last day of my chemo rechallenge. Its over, done with and I enter a new era and the challenge of finding a new heading for the blog. Suggestions welcome. It means no more chemo for a while, no interventions, just blood monitoring. It also means no more children’s toothbrushes, its back to the power tool.

I finally get up after drinking my morning hot water, checking my social media and news feeds. I take my vitals, but I am not really interested, I do it for completions sake. My blood pressure is okay as is my heart rate so everything is tickety boo. I shower and then then search the pantry for muesli but find none, so its toast and marmalade for me. I take my meds but as yet I’ve not adjusted my steroids yet to start the tapering process, I intend to do that on Tuesday next when I refill my dosettes. Need to keep some routines. A friend rings as she is on her way to do the shopping prior to traveling on holiday tomorrow. She is looking forward to her family holiday and the chance to rest and recover by the seaside. Its an exciting time but there are the holiday chores to do like packing the car and organising the travel snacks. After the call I have a long conversation with my eldest daughter about the official secrets act and what that means for research. I move on to booking a Tesco slot before a guy from the house alarm calls me and discuss an upgrade to my system. I eagerly await a quote.

By now I am hungry as is my eldest daughter so its timely when my partner returns from having her hair done and I suggest we go to Pesto for a good lunch. We arrive to a quite restaurant and settle in to a prolonged late lunch. It is a celebration of doctoral completion, chemo challenge completion and successful hair artistry. Of course when it gets to the pudding menu I immediately know its Affogato for me with an additional shot of Amaretto, well why not, fuck it, what have I got to lose other than everything. I pay the bill and we drive home. My next task is to get a quote form a local shredding company to get rid of all my eldest daughters PhD notes and all my old confidential papers lurching in my “must shred” box and the boxes in the loft stuffed with old assessments and reviews. With the prosaic done I take a photo of my chemo challenge tooth brushes and start the draft of todays blog.

With the draft done I head for the garden to see how it is going and then uncase the Stratocaster and tune it up and try to remember what all the knobs do on the Peavey amplifier. I am a crap guitarist but on occasions its nice to hit a few chords and pretend I can play blues in all its distorted forms the amplifier can produce. The rest of the evening is any bodies guess but I don’t care really, tomorrow I start a new era in my Cancer Years adventure and I am not sure I can afford to care too much about the future. It all ends up in the same place, the question is which path is them most fun.