I went out for a Halloween themed dinner this weekend. Which was a pleasant surprise. Not the dinner part, obviously. That bit I’d been pretty confident about, what with being invited round for dinner. But I wasn’t necessarily expecting to be met at the door with a choice of masks (bat, pumpkin or Frankenstein’s monster,…

Walking back to my house this evening, I noticed an unusual number of lost items strewn about the pavement. Quite possibly nothing that anyone would much miss, with the odd exception, but probably none that were discarded intentionally. I don’t know whether I was in some sort of heightened state of awareness of lost belongings…

I seem to be suffering from some sort of partial amnesia. This is, I think, a good sign. For a while now I’ve been thinking I should stick something on here about the ongoing effects of treatment, after the big scary bit – the operations, chemo, radiotherapy bit – is done with. I’ve been thinking…

Sunday night. Just about that time when you can either decide to go to bed and wake up fresh for work on Monday, or… not. Because the other option is to extend the weekend for as long as possible, because Sunday evening is still weekend, and weekends are never long enough. I seem to spend…

Today I had to go for a chest X-ray. I had to go to a clinic I’ve never been to before. First surprise of the day – there are still new clinics to be discovered, even after a year of clinic trawling. This was quite a good start. I like a new discovery. But it…

Today I did the hardest and bravest thing I’ve done all year. It was nothing to do with bad news, treatment, horrible side-effects or any of the rest of the things I’ve dealt with this year. It took about five minutes, and I did it sitting on the sofa (and there’s a sentence that could…

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. I’m simultaneously amazed that a year has passed already, and shocked that everything that’s happened over the past year could be crammed into just 12 months. Either way, I’ve decided it’s definitely a date to celebrate. Obviously the initial news itself wasn’t quite what I was…

I’m not generally a fan of leaving things to chance. If I want something to happen, I’m not sure why I’d sit about and wait, on the off-chance that the thing might just happen. Not if I could have a bloody good stab at making it happen myself. However, I’ve been trying hard to be…