Cancer 126

Three days after the butterfly catcher slashed my jugular, I am still feeling it. Last night I felt a distorted pulse (this is a vein, not an artery), and at one point I thought I felt the line move. These feelings, along with a myriad of others, are no doubt largely psychosomatic, made up by my pesky subconscious, based on the idea that it is not normal to have plastic tubes inside your body, and the common wisdom that having your jugular slashed by a knife is not healthy. I know, it wasn’t slashed, it was just a small hole made very carefully by someone who has done this many times before, but the subconscious imagination demands its say.

Several people have said I look well at the moment. It is even suggested that I have lost weight. I do feel well, but my treatment starts tomorrow so I probably won’t feel well for long. I am determined to try and stay healthy, but it is a little beyond my control, with all these drugs pumping around, and further drugs to offset the impact of the first drugs. It is difficult to create a reasonable homeostasis with the drug combinations, but the medical staff have – so far – done a pretty good job of it.

I need to keep going for a long time yet as I have a lot to write about – though I am not very good at getting on with it at the moment. Apart from my unfinished novels about the civil war and about working in universities, I am starting on my account of Wingfield Manor, and I am just pondering an idea about how feminists have got the notion of power all wrong – but that is another story. I will just sit here and contemplate my pierced jugular and feel a little uncomfortable.