Cancer 155

It’s funny how good and bad can be held in the mind at any one point. We are away in the Yorkshire Dales, lovely hotel, lovely food, not much snow. I am sitting in front of a log fire on a large settee being lazy. Yesterday in Skipton Oxfam bookshop I found a copy of JB Priestley’s Good Companions, a book I have not read before but am rattling through. He tells a goods story. Last night we had an excellent meal. I had a starter of trout, a main course of beef and a pudding of chicken parfait (I don’t like modern puddings, another starter is usually the best idea). This morning I had a traditional breakfast, which included, heaven of heavens, fried bread rather than that ghastly hash brown US inedible nonsense. We then visited the best cheese shop in the known universe and went to the Grassington bookshop, where again books were bought.

Unfortunately, after breakfast, my abdomen started playing up. I felt and feel an immense pressure that was and is quite painful. I have had to take off my hernia belt. I don’t know what it is, but will try and look on the positive side and think that it is the breakdown of cancerous cells post-treatment, and the damn things are taking longer to disperse than usual. On the negative side it feels a little like the hours before I projectile vomitted after my operation last year. This morning I took Tramadil with little effect and have spent the day not quite in agony (it isn’t gout after all), but very uncomfortable. I walked around Grassington like a cripple, and horror of horrors was unable to eat anything in the cafe we visited. A cafe without food is like a pencil without lead – pointless (sorry Blackadder).

I am desparately hoping that I am fit to eat tonight, as I am looking forward to my brill followed by chicken followed by soup.

Having cancer can sometimes be really shit.