… my night last night was even worse than the previous one. I was awake for ages before going to sleep and then I awoke again at about 03:30. every time I tried to go to sleep something or someone brought me back round again and that was annoying.

None of the foregoing though stopped me going on a wander. I started off with my old rock group and we were practising in the concert room of some workingmen’s club somewhere. The club opened at 18:00 but the concert room didn’t open until 19:30 so we were able to hire it for that 90-minute period every so often. Things were a bit shambolic and anarchic and it was clear that we weren’t getting on too well together but we had to persevere.
From here we went on to the house of someone whom I know in France. There was agroup of us there and two of our number, the lady owner of the place and her friend, went out for a walk. They hadn’t been gone for more than a couple of minutes when there was the most astonishing thunderstorm and the heavens simply opened. I’d never seen so much rain in all my life. The house leaked like a sieve and the rain roared inside. The two people outside came running back and we asked them whatever possessed them to gooutside when the weather was threatening like this. I wanted to go into the next room but a stream of water cascading down the walls and down the door made me unwilling to open the door but someone else did so and we were thus able to leave the kitchen and go into the living room. But as we went inside, the daughter of the house (who was already in there) shouted “you should see the water going into the bucket”. What was happening was that there was an avalanche of rainwater falling down inside the house, bouncing off the stair rail and going straight into a sink at the back of the living room. But the whole house was inundated, soaking wet, and everything was being ruined.
A short while later, I was at another house and suddenly a couple of people arrived, one of whom was Nerina. They had been to the shops and bought tons – and I do mean tons – of stuff and they were unloading the car and dumping the stuff everywhere. Our task was to take it where it was supposed to go. I remember that there were four huge picture frames but what was in them I do not know because they were wrapped in Christmas gift wrapping. I had two of these and was taking them to another room, but trying to fight my way out with all of the rest of the items and everyone else in the way was proving to be much more difficult than it ought to have been.

The dietician came to see me this morning, and brought one of his drinks to show me. But even though it has no milk as such in it, it’s jam-pack full of milk proteins and so that’s no use to me unfortunately. Apart from that, he doesn’t really have too much of an idea as to where to go from there.

And the doctor came too. She was dismayed when I told her that just half an hour earlier, my “stomach trouble” had reappeared – and in spades too. I did think yesterday that it was too early to go crowing about it. But she tells me that they have decided against the chemotherapy that I’ve been having. They are going to give me some other sort of treatment. However, it does have all of the same side effects such as the shivering and the fever and it’s every three weeks, not every four, so I’m not sure how much further down the road we are going to be with this.

I have a horrible, nagging suspicion that my illness isn’t going to respond to anything really and that I’m going to be stuck like this for ever. seeing them bring another pochette of blood to me this afternoon did nothing to allay my fears.

The spinach that I ordered for lunch came smothered in a creamy kind of sauce which was clearly no good for me so it looks as if I’ll have to abandon my idea of a varied diet and stick with the mixed veg, rice and extra carrots for now.

In case you are wondering, it’s true that I’m feeling pretty disillusioned right now. Not with the hospital, which is doing everything that it reasonably can do to help me out, but with the way things are working. I was hoping that by now I would have shown some kind of improvement and would slowly be starting to get on top of everything, but it’s clearly not working out like I wanted. All of this is generally making me feel quite miserable and when I look back on all of the things that I was doing a year ago, or four years ago, or 10 years ago, it’s beginning to drag me down to think that I might never be doing that again.

So this afternoon I sat quietly (or as quietly as I could – only two visitors per patient are allowed at the bedside at any one time and so a huge family that has just come from Africa to see a relative is all crammed in the day room and as they rotate two-by-two they are creating something of a carnival atmosphere in here and I’m in no mood to enjoy it) and read a pile of stuff on the internet.

Still, tomorrow is another day. It’ll be quieter because there are no ancillary staff members on duty, but I don’t expect it to be any different.

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