Day 21 (featuring the Monday Mugshot)

The good news is that I’m now through the first quartile of my chemotherapy treatment. The bad news is that chemotherapy sucks; really, if it didn’t hold out the prospect of a ‘cure’, what they do to you and how it affects you surely has to be in violation of the Geneva Convention. But let’s not mince words here; the fight against cancer is a war, and many of the same principles therefore apply. Stock phrases in BBC and CNN bulletins from conflict zones such as ‘collateral damage’ and ‘acceptable losses’ suddenly become all too personal.

To make matters worse, there’s no ‘quick win’ here either. There’s no proportionality; unlike say, four Saturday detentions vs. six of the best, you can’t bite the bullet and select a ‘worse’ punishment to get it over quicker. This is because the only medical treatment option is the worst option. Whichever way you look at it, you’re on a one-way ticket to Ripley’s prison planet in Alien3; the psychology and hairstyling are pretty much identical; it’s just the size of the bugs that’s different.

As there have been a number of emailed ‘complaints’ about the stoic humour-in-face-of-adversity nature of this blog (mainly from other men about how the hell are they supposed to pull off a sickie with a bit of man-flu; what with all this as a reference point, hopefully the equation has been levelled somewhat. Although perhaps not entirely, as the Monday Mugshot scrolls into view…….