Three days to Chemo C-3





C-3 Three days to Chemo

It’s Monday and today I have the first blood test / clinic to check I’m healthy enough to start chemotherapy on Thursday.

I slept well, which surprised me. I think this was mainly due to running the last Salsa Rapido 1-Day Intensive course until July 23rd! They were a fun group and I really appreciate that one couple deferred their date after I appealed for anyone with flu sniffles to postpone.
The last two weeks has been full of endings: I completed the Mambalsa course at the Nightingale which was a great success. I’ve also paused my counselling work there as the counselling rooms are too small for social distance.

The feeling I'm experiencing is closer to preparing to move abroad, I’m both anxious and excited.


I’ve also been shopping. I’m now the proud owner of an orange bucket and a multi day pill box.

The bucket is carrot coloured, do I need to say any more? The pill box is for the muesli of pills that comes with chemo. There’s anti-inflammatory, antiviral and antibiotic, plus two types of anti-emetic to keep all the others down. I think they’ve just gone along the shelf and chosen everything beginning with anti! My personal preference would be anti-gravity pills to rise above everything and anticlockwise pills for when I get wound up with a side order of antipathy!


Fliss brought me some sick-bags off Amazon. They looked strangely familiar, something from my dim and distant past. I noticed they had measurements printed on the side. Who wants an exact measurement of their vomit in millimeters?

Then it dawned on me. A long long time ago I worked on a farm and I watched the harvesting of bulls seamen. That’s where I’d seen them before. Some clever person has repurposed bull/ horse / donkey condoms into human sick-bags!

I’ll be feeling poorly on the tube after chemo and if the need takes me I’ll pull out a massive condom and chunder away! What trauma will that inflict on my fellow travellers? ‘Don’t worry I’ll say, It’s only 400ml! Meanwhile I know where to keep my aubergines fresh!

By the way, if anyone is curious to know how farmers get a condom on a bull, the answer is simple, they buy it dinner first! Boom :)




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