… I didn’t have a wink of sleep last night.

My room-mate does snore, but nothing like as loudly as my previous ones. It was quite an acceptable level in fact. But he fell asleep with his television on and that meant that I didn’t drop off, and then I lay awake all night thinking about my operation.

I remember 07:00 coming along but then, as you might expect, with zero hour of 08:00 coming along, I dropped off to sleep. So I was rudely awakened. They offered me a wheelchair which I accepted, and then I was pushed for miles and miles around the hospital to the operating theatre.

I managed to avoid a panic attack although it was quite interesting watching the heartbeat monitor go up from 89 to, at one stage, 116. But I was draped in covers so I couldn’t see what was going on and apart from two small occasions, I didn’t feel a thing. In fact, if I were honest, it was much less painful than fitting a drain.

But here’s a thing. I asked them what would happen about taking it out when it’s all over and the answer is that they don’t. It’s here for life “just in case”, and it will need cleaning every three months. So my GP is going to have her work cut out with me.

Another thing that I found out is that if I have sex, I need to wear a condom otherwise I’ll be giving my partner a chemotherapy injection. Mind you, the chances of that ever happening, as I explained to the social worker who came to see me, are somewhat less than zero so it’s not going to be an issue.

She also mentioned that when I leave here, I won’t be going back to Sint Pieters but to the Pellenberg campus which is well out of town in the countryside. Nice and clean and green, but miles away from all facilities. I hope that there’s at least a supermarket and a fritkot nearby.

The chemotherapy was a nightmare (or, should I say, is a nightmare because I’m still plugged in right now). They start off slowly and gradually increase the pace, and I told them not to go beyond 50ml per hour because of the horrible side-effects that I had last time. But of course, no-one listens to an idiot and they soon had it wound up to 90ml/hour. And sure enough, I had the freezing cold, the violent shakes and the nausea and they had to come a-running to deal with the issues because I wasn’t prepared for it to drag on like last time.

They had to disconnect me for a couple of hours so that I could calm down and let my body resettle, and then start up with a limit of 50ml/hour. So it’s going to take ages for the stuff to filter into me but it’s their own fault; had they stuck to the 50ml/hour they wouldn’t have had the couple of hours interruptions.

Once things were back under way, I crashed out for a couple of hours and missed my tea. But they did bring it round later once I’d woken up so that was OK.

But I didn’t mention lunch. I had the dietician around this morning too and we had a good long chat. So for lunch I had boiled potatoes with a huge plate of vegetables, a bowl of vegetable soup and some soya desserts. It was delicious too – I really have an appetite for boiled potatoes these days.

So I’m not sure when the chemotherapy will finish, but I’m going to bed now to watch a film. I saw Inspector Hornleigh on Holiday last night but I’ve no idea what I’ll be seeing tonight. But here’s a thing. I had a close look at the three Inspector Hornleigh films and in each one, some young girl of about 11 or 12 has a walk-on part. And it’s the same girl in each film. She’s not credited in the cast, but I was wondering whether she’s the daughter of the producer or somebody similar. That kind of thing is not uncommon in the acting world – after all, Christopher Columbus’ daughters, Eleanor and Violet, had walk-on roles in several of the Harry Potter films.

Anyway, tomorrow is a new day and we’ll see what that brings me. It surely can’t be as bad as today, can it.