Cancer 230

My apologies. I have just noticed that I claimed 149 rounds of chemo in my last post. Wrong! It is ‘only’ 49, still more than most but it will be a while before I get to 149. I would need to live for another 5 years at least. Ha ha. My last post was written while very tired. I feel the same today. I am in the cancer unit having my drugs pumped into my body as I write. I have just had a bit of a swallow reflex problem, but I managed to avoid being sick or telling the nurses – I just sat very still for a while and didn’t attract attention. Last time it happened I weirdly threw up a lot of thick bubbly phlegm. Unpleasant but not as bad as a full ejection.

I have put weight on again. That is supposedly a good thing when you have cancer, but years of indoctrination by the dietbook-bashers means I am a little uncomfortable with it. I have put on 3 kg.

The problem is that I got up rather early today, around 1230. It is a little early, even for me. I tried going back to bed at 0530 but as my alarm went off at 0600….

This new treatment (I suppose being the 6th round it is not new, it is the length of treatment most people have in total) is still nastier than the previous one. I regularly have a couple of days at the weekend where I feel awful, where I just want to go to bed and die. Ever the optimist I hope that this won’t happen this week, especially as we are out for meals on both Saturday and Sunday.

I am getting on with my History MA. I have a rough structure for the thesis, with a maximum of 25,000 words I have written something over 30,000, but they are not great words. I am going through to create my first full draft. After that I will create another draft that incorporates all the findings and a reasonable discussion. Then I will create a furtehr draft, but which time it should be fit to send to my supervisors. It is slightly unorthodox, writing up the thesis when I don’t have all the results, but it is the way I work, it is the way I can get it finished early, as I do believe it is easier to complete a thesis when one is alive than when one is dead. Anyway, I am anxious to get on with my next PhD. I quite like being a student, though it is a bit of an odd feeling given I have written lots of books and journal articles, and supervised 40 PhD and well over 200 Masters students. I am confused which side of the fence I should be on. The key thing is that I need advice on creating history, which is very different to psychology.

I am also back to writing academic articles, but now as a historian. I have submitted one on a siege in the civil war, and am preparing one on the use of literature in history, focusing on the Battle of Sedan (1870). I have several others planned. I have limited knowledge about which journals to submit to – again I need advice – but I am a little shocked by how low the Impact Factors are for history journals compared to psychology journals, but I suppose historians tend to produce monographs rather than journal articles. It is a different world.

All this is a very slow process. I can’t do a full working day. I can;t work every day. Lioke everything else, it is very tiring. At least I have the motivation. I want to get these things written.

Today is not working too well at the hospital. First I was not registered as having arrived at the unit, so I was brought in an hour or so late, and now, after having my full two hours treatment, I find that one of the drugs has not gone through due to wrong programming – so I have an extra hour to serve. Never mind, these things happen, though not usually twice in a day – I hope it is only twice.