… the results of this morning’s blood test. The nurse who came to inject me and take a blood sample thins morning sent the blood to the laboratory who then sent the results to me and the hospital

And the hospital sent me an e-mail. "Your potassium is still too high" they said. You know, as if they are telling me something that I didn’t know. "Here’s another prescription for some more medication"

So how many is that now? I lost count a long while ago. These days I just shovel down the stuff as if I couldn’t care less. And I don’t, anyway. So what’s one medication any more or any less to the quantity that I’m taking?

Sometimes I think that they have run out of ideas and are just prescribing any old medication in the hope that they find something that might work.

And before anyone says anything, that’s not meant as a criticism at all. Anyone who reads ABOUT THE LATEST STAGE of mutation of this illness will notice words like "extremely rare neurologic complication", "Given that BNS is so rare" and "There are a few options when it comes to treatment so the type one will choose is completely individualized".

So what the hell does the hospital do?

There’s certainly no complaint from me about the kind of care that I’m having. Everyone is going above and beyond what is reasonable to make sure that I’m being well-looked after. My poor cleaner is running her socks off with trips to the pharmacy.

And I do have to say that I was told almost 8 years ago when I first went to Leuven that the end wouldn’t be pleasant. And in fact one of the reasons for going to be treated in Belgium is that I could choose when the end would be and I wouldn’t have to put myself – or anyone else – through all of this nonsense.

But perhaps it’s as well that I’m living in a (nominally) Catholic non-laïc country because the end would have been a long while ago. I can’t keep going on like this.

In fact, the end would have certainly been this morning after the events of last night.

You won’t believe this – or, perhaps you would because some of you have been followers of these pages since they first saw the light (in one form or another) during the heady days of T102 in 1997 and are quite used to this kind of thing because it happens all the time, but one of last night’s visitors was none other than Castor – and I wasn’t there.

Well, maybe there in body but not in mind, and certainly not in Spirit. Castor and I were playing with Hawkwind last night and I died in the middle of one of the songs, DAMNATION ALLEY. Of course Castor was distraught. She was surprised that the band had played that song knowing how ill I was. She asked one of the roadies if there was anything that she could keep as a souvenir. They said that they might be able to let her have a tyre from the vehicle, presumably the “eight-wheeled anti-radiation tube” but they weren’t sure if that would be possible. Another song that they played as a kind of tribute for me afterwards but I can’t remember which one that was. They then began to play another song and again she was annoyed about this because it was very personal to me. After a while she began to realise that it was also upsetting someone else who everyone wanted to upset so they were playing it deliberately. That thought seemed to cheer her up a little.

But can you believe it?

Something else that has gone horribly wrong today is confirmation of what I’ve been saying for 18 months, in that every time I have a bad fall, it makes things worse elsewhere and coming back from Re-education today, I couldn’t get back up the stairs even with the taxi driver helping me.

The power in my left leg has now gone and that, dear reader, is that

My cleaner came round this afternoon with a lorry-load of medication today and I told her quite frankly that if someone were to give me the option of going for a really decent and complete 8-hour sleep and never waking up again, I’d take it without a second thought.

She was quite naturally horrified, but that’s where we are right now.

At least last night’s sleep wasn’t all that bad. But it was another desperate scramble to find the phone when the alarm went off. Since the tragic events of Saturday evening the phone charger by the bed has been lost in the chaos and I’m having to charge it elsewhere

After taking the blood pressure (high as usual and I’m expecting another medication for that at some point) I went for the pile of medication and then came back in here.

There was a radio programme to send off so I had a listen, and found a glaring error so I had to re-edit it.

Years of bitter experience have taught me never to over-write anything but to prepare a re-take so I have all of the speech files at various stages of re-editing saved as (the date that I recorded it)_R(evision)1, R2, R3 etc so it’s easy to go back to the earliest revision, find a bit that I’ve cut out in subsequent revisions and then add it back into the programme to make up for the error that I cut out and the programme for broadcasting on Friday then becomes “emission_240119_R1”

And then I had a listen to the dictaphone. Some of the stuff I’ve already mentioned but there was other stuff on there too. I was playing in a rock band in the back of a trailer being pulled by a car. Because it was so narrow and the field of view was so deep the sides of the trailer folded back and were pinned back so that the crowd could still see whoever was at the edges of what in fact was the stage. We played a couple of Hawkwind numbers, including SLEEP OF A THOUSAND TEARS, a song that Castor and I had messed about with on THE GOOD SHIP VE … errr … OCEAN ENDEAVOUR. The dream went on from there for quite a long time but I was of course more interested in the song and kept on going back to the song and being on stage again. But I was certainly back home with my family at one or two points during the dream

I went to see my aunt in London and I’d bought her a bed. There was another young guy there when I arrived. We erected this bed together. She tried it out and thought that it was wonderful. After we’d chatted for a while we both left and headed for the Underground. I asked him where he was going. He replied that he had to go right the way round the city on the Underground to see his aunt, which is why it cost him a fortune whereas my journey back to one of the mainline stations was a lot quicker and a lot cheaper.

And that was all the work that I have done today. For most of the rest of the time I’ve been asleep. I really have. It’s been one of those days when I’ve felt like doing nothing at all. Liz had a chat on the internet with me but regrettably I fell asleep not once but twice in the middle of it.

The taxi driver who came to fetch me didn’t feel like getting out of his car and I can’t blame him in this weather so I had to struggle downstairs on my own.

Once I arrived I had Ophélie the ergotherapist trying to teach me a good way to get in and out of bed.

"Come this way" she said, leading me to the bed in one of the ante-rooms
"Well I never!" I thought. "Well, not for a while anyway"

There was half an hour on the walking carpet and then Séverine trying to help me as much as she can, which wasn’t easy.

A little earlier I mentioned the struggle to return home, and then I had my hot chocolate and a chat with the cleaner, to which I referred just now.

Having crashed out yet again, I’ve been for tea, a left-over curry, my first food of the day, and then I’m off for a hot drink and bed.

But where do I go from here? I dunno, and quite frankly I’m past caring. There has to be an easier way than this to go about things

And believe it or not, onto the playlist as I typed out the line above came Hawkwind and MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE
"IF YOU CALL THIS LIVING I MUST BE BLIND."
I couldn’t have said it better myself