Starman

Day 103

General status update

FEC5, day 9:

Anxiety level/insane euphoria (+/- 1-10,000): the steroids are now being tapered off, and I’m slowly coming down to earth – but it’s been a lovely ride. I’m beginning to wonder if I may have been short-sighted in spending my whole life eschewing the use of recreational drugs.

Mouth: very sore this cycle – the steroids can do a lot, but they can’t stop the FEC giving me mouth ulcers, unfortunately. With this painful and hazardous combo of ubiquitous ulcers and the bad tooth, the yoghurt-based element of my diet has been increasing rapidly.

Chemo Muse: you know how she has the whole snaky hair thing going on, what with being the love child of Chemosh, God of the Moabites, and Medusa? So we’re all having dinner last night, and she’s in terrifically good, even glittering form at the moment, what with all the extra Dexys: she’s holding court and being very funny indeed, and she’s kind of flicking her hair about as she talks, it’s quite mesmerising – flick, flick, the snaky locks writhing around, sometimes towards the Despair Demon, sometimes towards the Nausea Demon – almost as if she were flirting outrageously, and playing them off against each other… Oh. My. God.

Chemo Brian: completely oblivious to all the Unresolved Sexual Tension, bless him – he couldn’t see a sexual undercurrent if it came up and bit him on the ankle. The drugs he’s spent his life doing were not performance-enhancing ones, and I fear he may now be having problems with his prostate.

PICC line (deceased): at night its lonely ghost wails at the window, in the manner of Kate Bush: ‘How could you leave me when I needed to possess you? Caroline, it's me, Cathy, I've come home, I'm so cold, let me in-a-your-window.’

State of mind: you can probably judge that for yourself.

Hair: ignored, overshadowed, depressed, but still there.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when you put away in a safe place something important, something you are going to need in a few weeks from now, and must not on any account mislay

- like, just for the sake of argument, a treasured invitation to the Members’ Preview on Friday 22^nd March of the much-anticipated new David Bowie Exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, which is going to be the biggest blockbuster exhibition of the year in London in 2013 -

then you will be sure to forget where you put it.

Yes, it is in a safe place, but a place so very safe and out of the way that you are completely unable to find it again.

I blame Chemo Brian for this.

I do not panic. I stay calm and take deep breaths. I KNOW that the invitation is here somewhere; the only problem is the other 11,967 pieces of paper, books, newspapers and magazines in this flat amongst which it must somewhere be lying. After consulting Twitter to identify the patron saint of Lost Things, I make invocations to St. Anthony of Padua and Ganesh, the Remover of Obstacles.

R has gone out to a meeting, and will be back in an hour. He is a big music buff, and so looking forward to this; today is a kind of special anniversary outing for us, followed by dinner out this evening, on a day when the chemo side effects are finally abating. It’s our big treat. If I can’t find the invitation, it will ruin everything.

It takes that whole hour, and going through every piece of paper in the flat, before I find it, right at the bottom of the last heap of papers, five minutes before R’s key turns in the door…

BUT NEVER MIND ABOUT ALL THAT,

THE BOWIE EXHIBITION IS

JUST

MIND-BLOWING!!!

It was just fantastic - the most extraordinary audio-visual experience EVER. And even better if you're on the strong drugs, like me. You're all wired up for sound in a head set, which tunes in to the music in whatever part of the exhibition you’re in, and the extraordinary costumes are all there in front of you as you watch him performing in them. 

And there are Voices in Your Head – although I'm used to that, obvs. At the end you're in a giant room with a 40' David Bowie singing Jean Genie to you. There are other people there, but it's like you're on stage with him in your own private concert. It doesn’t get better than that.

I LOVED IT SO MUCH.

I had to be physically dragged out of there finally by R - I would have had my Bowie concert go on all day. He wanted lunch. I am planning to go back at least 10 times. It is just AMAZING. And especially if you're on steroids.

Woooooh, WE CAN BE HEROES!

This video is wonderful - it's a live performance of Jean Genie from Top of the Pops in 1973, which was lost immediately afterwards, and only rediscovered in 2011.