NUCLEAR MEDICINE

A blue door with single plaque reading "injection room". Highly inviting. Inside there is a large padded blue chair sitting starkly in the middle of the room. I think immediately of the Andy Warhol print "Electric Chair" (1964 - thanks google). I joke this with the nurses - who, smiling beguilingly, nod and say, "yes, other patients say the same thing"... "you seem a bit tense" noted the nurse with black rimmed glasses. Not half! Two injections - 20 minutes apart - one to prepare my veins (I hate having my veins prepared) and the second when radioactive fuel is administered. 4 nurses at this point. Its designed to make you nervous. Reading out of my details: confirmation of my DOB, hospital no Z458779 (that number is etched into my brain). All witnessed and signed. I am asked could I be pregnant or breast feeding...Oh Lord, give me a break! Do I look like I could be either of these things? I am sitting on the electric blue padded chair; the male Malaysian nurse has trouble finding a vein in the crook of my arm (this is due to thinning of my veins from previous chemo) - so heads for the back of my hand.  Ouch! This is painful. Have to remain still. About a minute of slow transfusion. He pushes the plunger thing too fast - it stings. I am told that my all my veins are now sensitive due to prior treatment - which means the next few months is going to be horribly painful. Needles and Leukeamia go hand in hand. Radioactive liquid mingles round my blood stream, but I don't glow or sparkle or fizz. Thats a bit of a let down. All this, for not much. I am led into scanning room and lay down on the scan bed.  Electrodes are stuck all over my torso and a big camera contraption placed near my heart. I can hear my heart thumping, so it better show up good on the screen. There is a long silence. The scan nurse goes out and returns with two more. Mumbled discussion from behind the back of my head. What! Seems an age before they come over and talk to me. I am thinking: has previous chemo damaged my heart? Is it pumping correctly? Got to have a heart that is in full working order - strong enough to take the Flagida (apparently, the most toxic chemo they have...nice). Ahh, saved by technology. My heart working good, it's the computer that is causing problems and not saving images.  Computer is re-booted and I am re-scanned.

I am out and walking along the south-bank by midday. The place is full of pre-olympic madness. Cameras, ice-creams and wild wurlitzer music. I note particularly a young ballerina in a tutu pirouetting and jumping and flexing (not good on ballet terms). Seems incongruous somehow, her, amongst the clowns, the painted giants and boom boxes. Hot and blue sky, finally. Just in time for the grand parade on Friday. I cross over Hungerford Bridge - Thames is low tide, chocolate brown. My eye catches the Shard and sitting in its shadow lies Guys Hosptial. Not the most welcome sight. I puff some more and head up to Covent Garden and buy myself an iPhone (better not get stolen this time). 3G, 8gb. Note to all those of you who know my tendency for techno-kit  - this is the most basic it gets for an iPhone. I am being very abstemious. I am keeping my £12 sim only contract. Not falling for the bells and whistles of a 24 month tie in!  I have lunch with Joe. We sit in the shadow of covent garden church, eating M&S sandwiches. We talk bone marrow treatment and watch some bare-chested-unicycle-chainsaw-wielding performer doing his thing over the cobbles of the piazza. This is incongruous too. There is a big crowd. Its noisy and hot.

Home by 3 and lay, shattered, on my sofa and look at my July garden (note it needs watering for the first time in weeks) and the cut-out shape of blue sky behind the trees on Grassmount. There is a tiredness starting to creep over me, which just feels enormous. And my legs ache deep down. I hope it is all just psycosamatick (no spell check for this spelling - I beat the computer!). Puff again. I know its not. This is mutant genes doing their thing. The reality of next week focuses in just a little bit sharper.  Lilly, just being Lilly, comes over and sits by my side. Cleans her whiskers with her soft apricot paws. Wonderfully oblivious and demanding food. But her little legs too, are bent and fragile, full of arthritis. Sometimes she walks all wobbly across the floor. Her kidneys are starting to pack up and cat dementia is creeping in.  Me and her. Blimey - what a pair!

Luigi arrives on Thursday. My 5 star camping man. My diamond and my rock. My heart thrills and I put out all the bunting in my head. Yards of it.