… with this dialysis nonsense and for two pins, I’d throw it all in. I’ve been trying to talk to the medical staff for weeks upon end and no-one has paid the slightest heed to what I’ve been saying. Today, it was the time for the monthly assessment of my “dry weight”, and the results are exactly as I predicted and I am rightly furious.

The doctor on duty must have realised too, because he kept well out of my way and only showed himself in our room for a brief second.

It’s the last thing that I need, on top of everything else that’s going on right now.

Last night, I mentioned going to bed early. But if only … I finished my notes early enough but I simply could find neither the energy nor the motivation to haul myself out of my chair. I sat here like a vegetable until almost midnight before I could stagger, fully clothed, the two feet from my chair to my bed.

It took an age to go off to sleep – it really did – and that’s so unusual these days. I was still wide-awake at 02:30 and well beyond that too.

Once I was asleep though, I slept right the way through to … errr … 05:20 or thereabouts. That three hours in the afternoon must have made a difference somehow. I left the bed at about 05:50 and then went off for a good wash, a shave and a scrub up in case I meet Emilie the Cute Consultant at dialysis in the afternoon, and then went for my medication.

Back in here, I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night – and yesterday afternoon too.

Yesterday’s notes are now amended to include the relevant entry, and then I turned my attention to those from the night. I had a strange dream last night. I was with my friend, and it was a question of hunting down some of his papers for some reason. It turned out that he had given them to another friend of mine to store because he had no particular way of storing his papers. He was always someone who was on the move around so he needed some kind of place to keep them. But there was again much more to this dream, but the moment that I awoke, it all evaporated yet again. But there was certainly something going on in my head about something called “The Familynappers” but I’ve no idea now why this seems to have related to anything.

This is another dream that seems to relate to nothing at all, although I wish that I knew what the missing pieces were all about. I’m missing far too many extracts these days with this disturbed sleep pattern following chemotherapy, and I’m not all that happy about it. Not at all.

Isabelle the Nurse was late this morning but she was her usual cheery self today. It seems that both she and her oppo are very happy, which is nice to see. As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I hope that it keeps up.

After she left, I made some breakfast and read some more of BATTLES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Our author, Colonel Carrington, is excelling himself with this book. When discussing revolutions, rebellions and insurrections in general, he criticises Shay’s Rebellion of 1786 in Massachusetts, saying that it "The claim that the Governor’s salary was excessive, that the State Senate was aristocratic, and that taxes were odious,". One would think that he hadn’t heard of the Boston Tea Party and the American War of Independence.

Later on, he tells us that "The first grade is that which devolves upon distant dependencies, the assertion of Independence, when the controlling authority is unable or unwilling to grant the people their rights and proper representation; when laws are constraints without equivalents, and the subjects are, in fact, slaves". Twenty or so years previous to when he was writing his book, the US Government left John Brown’s body mouldering in the grave after the events in “Bleeding Kansas”.

Back in here, I had things to do, and then I had a very important letter to write. It’s been taxing my French and it’s not finished yet, because it’s going to end up like GUERRE ET PAIX, but for all the good it might do, it will be finished some time soon.

My cleaner came along as usual to apply my anaesthetic cream, and then she stayed talking for quite a while. The taxi was late, and with someone else to pick up too, I was quite late arriving at dialysis.

As I said earlier, it was time to assess my dry weight, which took about fifteen minutes to complete. And sure enough, it’s 2 kg less that they have set it. That means that there was 4.9 kg of water to remove.

The nurse set it at 2.9 kg, using the old dry weight, and said that she would speak to the doctor. However, he disappeared from view and that was that.

For weeks and weeks, I’ve been telling them that with my appetite reduced to next to nothing, I’m rapidly losing weight. But not only has he taken no notice whatsoever, he increased the dry weight a week or two ago, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, and he also cut halted a session a short while ago with liquid still to be extracted.

Another thing was that on Monday I asked them, seeing as there was a margin of manoeuvre on the maximum hourly rate to be extracted, whether they could increase the limit to the maximum in order to give me a head start for chemotherapy, but they refused. "We can’t take out what isn’t in" was the reply, but the events of this afternoon has shown clearly that it was in there all the time.

It beats me why I go through all of this pain and suffering for what seems to be no good reason. But watch this space over the next few sessions when they oblige me to stay for four hours, through no fault of my own at all.

The session eventually finished, at the old dry weight with still 2 kg to go. However, to cheer me up, I had the young chatty girl taxi driver to bring me home and we had a lovely journey home, talking mainly about cats.

My faithful cleaner helped me back into the apartment and, once more, stayed chatting for a while. But almost immediately after she left, I had a ‘phone call. It was the ex-girlfriend from school. She’s planning on turning up on Monday evening to stay until Wednesday.

As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I have very suddenly become extremely popular these days and I’ve no idea why. I’ll have to buy one of these “take-a-ticket” machines to install outside the door if it carries on like this.

Tea was a handful of pasta and an overcooked veggie thing in breadcrumbs (I still haven’t fathomed out the intricacies of this new microwave) and now, I’m really going to try to go to bed and to sleep much earlier than usual.

But seeing as we have been talking about vegetables, Starmer was in a restaurant with “a certain visitor from overseas” last night, when the waiter came over to take their order.
"What would you like, sir?" asked the waiter.
"I’ll have the steak" replied Starmer
"And what about the vegetable?" asked the waiter
"He’ll have steak too" replied Starmer.