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In for the first of five daily treatments today.
So I've mentioned this to my wonderful Substack paid subscribers, but let me give you the bad news first. I have cancer again. Not ball cancer this time, I can't afford to lose another one of those (though I will be doing my show "The Male Eunuch" if it does happen).
This time I have blood cancer. And God is determined to make sure I get the funniest cancers possible and this one is called hairy cell leukaemia.
The other bad news is that it is incurable.
And I am deliberately stretching this news out as long as possible to punish you for not paying for my blog.
The good news is that it's entirely treatable and will not kill me (the treatment has a tiny chance of killing me, but so has loading the dishwasher, so don't worry about it).
I will of course be using the fact that I have incurable cancer for all it's worth for the rest of my (hopefully long) life. I can get out of doing other people's podcasts, any social event I don't fancy and also set up a justgiving page with me with a sad face, hugging my kids and asking for money to help them once I'm gone. Ha ha ha. It's not even a scam. It's all true. I just won't mention that fact that it's treatable.
It's pretty annoying to get another cancer just after the other one is basically at the all-clear stage, not least because I can't do another show and book about it so soon. But this one has been bubbling under for a few years. They found a few of the cells in my bone marrow about 12 year ago, but it didn't get any worse and after five years of being tested the doctor said it was probably going to be OK.
I'd sort of forgotten about it to be honest.
It's not linked the the testicular cancer. Someone up there just doesn't like me. But they don't hate me that much. So keep giving me the flimsiest and easiest to live with and funniest named cancers available. I accept that I am just irritating rather than downright evil, so if they are handing out cancer as some kind of justice system then a) they are doing quite a random and bad job at that generally speaking with lots of nice people getting cancer and lots of utter cunts getting to 80 and having wrestling matches in their garden but b) the punishment level is about right for me.
I am not too worried or upset, but I am not delighted to have had two cancers before the age of 60. What treats await me should I live into the next decade?
To have one cancer elicits sympathy, but getting two starts to look a bit like attention-seeking. At least get a properly dangerous one if you're going to make a big deal about it. I feel a bit embarrassed about it.
Anyway I had an appointment at Lister hospital at 3pm for the first jab of essentially chemo (though it's just injections rather than coming in from a drop - does that mean it's not chemo? It boils down to the same thing if not).
As always I have a mixture of huge admiration for the NHS and their brilliant and funny staff (great jokes and positivity from the nurses today) and continued bewilderment about how inefficiently they seem to run.
I got a call at about 2pm asking if I could come in asap as they realised they didn't have my height and weight. Catie was out and she was driving me to hospital so I couldn't come in early, but I told them my height (given that last time they measured me before chemo they were out by 10cm, this seemed wise) and was about to get in the bath so was able to step right on the scales and weigh myself during the phone call.
When I got in, they wanted to take my blood and weigh me and take my height. I said I'd already done the height and weight bit, but told them again. The nurse said that things were running quite late today (so why had they wanted me to come in early?), and we might want to go off for a walk for an hour, but then someone else came in and said there was a chair available.
I wondered if someone had recognised me as a big celebrity or someone who had raised money for the hospital and had nudged me up the queue. But if so, they must have clocked off straight away because although I had a chair, we had a two hour wait before anything happened.
Apparently the pharmacy had to get the stuff they were going to pump into me ready. Hadn't they known I was coming? Shouldn't that be something that had been got ready for the appointment? All the way through this experience it's felt like I've slipped through the cracks and been left off lists and not informed of results unless someone chases them or given this appointment without making a bit of a fuss. If this is the way they treat people who have raised money for the hospital, God knows how tough it is for everyone else!
Though my hope is that they are making sure everyone realises that there are no shortcuts and everyone gets treated the same by deliberately making me wait longer than someone who hasn't raised money or been on Bake Off. Which is only fair.
I don't mind waiting for my free cancer treatment, though I wish I'd brought a book with me and luckily I had Catie with me. There just seem lots of ways to make the NHS a bit more efficient if only someone would invest properly in the thing. Moving away from posting letters and maybe just having everyone's info readily available on handheld computers would save some time. No one is prepared to invest in updating the computer system (I believe) but that huge one off expense would pay for itself pretty quickly. But then what do I know? And none of this is the fault of the amazing staff, cheerfully and diligently working their way through without complaint.
At about 5.30pm the medicine finally arrived and a lovely woman called Cecilia discretely said I'd need to be injected somewhere with a bit of cushioning and allowed me to suggest my stomach.
It was all fairly painless, though it took a while to slowly inject all the cancer killing poison into me. Then they had to wait to observe me to check I was OK.
There were no immediate problems. I didn't start puking or become confused and I felt just like I had when I came in. The pharmacist came to give me some drugs. She seemed a bit confused about when I should be taking some of them, but she was at least diligent enough to check.
And I am very impressed with the care that is taken to make sure everything is correct and they're giving the treatment to the right person. There were dozens of patients and a handful of staff. I am extremely grateful to live in a country with a free health service, as much as I'd love for it to get the money and resources it requires. Rather than being sold off to Nigel Farage's mates.
As you're failing to be able to afford your treatment under a Reform government, you can at least content yourself with the fact that no fucker in their right mind would want to come to the UK any more due to be it being a dystopian nightmare.
As usual I felt bad about being one of the least ill looking people in the room. Yes, I'd been made to wait 3 hours in the end, but the woman next to me was having treatments all that time, so I am sure she felt very sorry for me being forced to play chess on my phone for a bit.
We were nearly the last people to leave. But she was still there when we went.
First guest announced for Edinburgh Fringe. Mike Wozniak will be joining me at Stand 3 on 13th August at 2pm.
BOOK NOW.
And another guest is announced in the badger secret area or below the paywall of Substack. Please pay for this. I've got incurable cancer.
