Wednesday, 20th December 2006

Diary extract from Sunday 17th December 2006:

Happiness. My blindsighted opinion on this profoundly inconceivable variable to my mind-set, is that it is immeasurable. "Ahh Beatrice, you're too good to me!!" My chemo is out, FLO.1, call the night nurse, Beatrice!!!

For no shy of four hours tonight (certainly no less), I couldn't sit still. Everything, indeed, every little thing was music to my ears. Yes even the fact that i'm writing in such shameful and unstructured form, fashion and timing. My fingers tap in time with my thoughts, everything is different.

For the past five or so days, since Tuesday 12th December, I've urged myself (with the help of my dearest counterpart, I love you) to stand up and hit the terms of my Ewings straight between the eyes. I'm living in ward T12 at University College London Hospital, UCLH, Euston (Warren Street), London. The panaramic views, by-the-12th-floor-lifts, of sunrise and sunset are nice, but only in the company of Lialin; I've decided, amidst all the foggy apprehension which I so reluctantly consented to fill my personal space, that I will not worry about writing in this beautifully bound present from my mother, and that, furthermore, I will not worry about prose, poetry, it's structure, the timing or how my feelings are to be splattered (If at all?) onto page. Right now i'm as "messy" as Luke Amin and the boys having a rowdy night-out in lewes. My blessed thoughts carry the spontaneity and mystery behind the infirmity of the mad hatters. I mean it.

I love clementines. Lialin bought me two batches today, they're such a breath of fresh air to my area of living. I'm struggling, it's a four-way fight of some sort. I simply don't have the hands or tools to pick up the masses of straw all over my barn floor, to piece them together, in a respectable array of somekind, and present them to everything outside my conciousness.

I'm in no state, no pensieve state, to begin the recollection of my thoughts, memories and emotions for the past week on this ward, travelling to get here and travelling for my biopsy and diagnosis at Stanmore. Nevertheless, I will leave with you a line or two which managed to inspire me start writing in my diary. It should be noted, that this singled out piece of literature is in no way a compensation for J.D. Salinger, and his publishings, who, between them, have occupied my mind for a long and frequent period and are my truer calling.

"You do look, my son, in a moved sort,
As if you were dismay'd: be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd;
Bear with my weakness; my, brain is troubled:
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity:
If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk,
To still my beating mind."

I'm going to say it once, because, it's really driving me nuts keeping everyone on the tip-top...Thank-you. All of you know who you are. Mikki, Rich and Brad, I draw a lot from your family and it's support, and hope our cycles clash so I can continue to be updated.

Schedule-wise, as far as I'm aware, my Ewings Sarcoma/pPNET is aimed to be cured over a 12 month period. This will involve a combination of chemo therapy VIDE for 6 cycles, then surgery or radiotherapy or both, then a further 8 cycle combination depending on my tumour and it's extent.

^That's a nut shell.

^That's a cliche.

Two further thoughts that crossed my mind, as I lay prostrate in the car feeling giddy; Roman roads, and referring (metaphorically) to someone's personality as a "bannana skin".



Simon x