HP Sauce

S and I are wondering which god we have crossed. Did our love, and happiness, and lightness of being annoy a grumpy immortal to the point of notice? Two years of intense happiness and joy, that's what we have had. And I know – I know – that I should be saying this is a blip, our love will be made stronger for going through the fire. S says it, and I love him all the more for his determination. But did we have to be tested? Really? We were just so happy; now this love will have fire stains all over it in the best case scenario (the one where I don't die either this year, or it recurs next year and I die, or in three years, or....)

This was our time to still be “in our prime”. To be physically capable, enjoy the exquisite privilege of communing with each other's mind and body, enjoy our worlds, work hard, concentrate on our new blended family. We just fit with each other, we knew we could still have a couple of decades of this togetherness even though we didn't find each other in our youth, and we considered ourselves lucky; just so, so lucky.

In the two weeks since we received the diagnosis (only two weeks today, it seems like a lifetime ago), we have heard that my cancer is triple neg (most aggressive type), that it is possibly not two discrete cancers of 1.2 and 0.8cms, but one of nearly 4cms in total (meaning I now have to have pembrolizomab as well, with the possibility of long term consequences); that having told me I didn't, after all I do have the tiniest (oh so tiny) nodal involvement (that is the scariest of all, lowering my prognosis by a significant percentage). In the meantime S has had an unintended massive mind-bending drugs trip, we have had to cancel our initial wedding, my parents have had their life collapsed in on themselves, and my son – oh god, my poor beautiful M – is catatonic with grief and shock, not going to school, not able to get out of bed. Then S received a call to confirm that one of his main clients, source of much work, has resigned, which will significantly impact his work flow. And then last night the shower upstairs leaked through to the floor below.

I would like to formally apologise to whichever frigging god has laser focused on this household at this time, and just say I'm really, really sorry. For whatever it is that we have done.

Awake at 3am this morning, up at 4am. I'm having the port fitted today. By the time Jack died, his body had lost absolutely all of its fat content and his port protruded out from his collarbone with just a thin layer of skin over the top. On the day of his death, his sister had to leave this house early, having said goodbye to her brother forever, and travel back to her home in the west to accompany her 14-year old daughter to hospital to have her port fitted. She had just that week been diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and had to embark on a year-long treatment in and out of hospital. Some good news: four years later she is now bright and healthy and full of energy. But there may well be consequences of treatment through her adult life, not least in terms of fertility.

Everyone keeps telling me that I will “beat” this because a) I am a strong woman and b) it is just so unfair it simply cannot be. Again and again, I hear that I am strong. Flattering to know, I suppose. But the terror of this journey is that I'm going to be in the hands of the medicine, and my body's response to it. I can't influence that response by being strong, we have to simply hope that I am in the whatever percentage that does respond well. I can eat well, I can “take it easy”, I can minimise possibilities of infection; but I am not a moral or vital influence on this treatment. And as the description of these last two weeks above shows you, you can keep getting bad news, even if our human demand for tender emotional logic in a story would ask that there is a respite.

So I'm very scared now. No control, no agency. Just time and trust in the incipient poisoning.

Meanwhile enough Americans show enough disregard for decency to put Trump ahead in the polls for president. Why would any person get beyond the “grab them by the pussy” audio? Old fashioned redneck men should remind themselves they have daughters. Women should walk away in absolute red-mist fury and disgust. Putin covers his vast country with a blanket of pain and terror, blatantly murders Navalny, and yet nothing changes. The west seems to have got just a bit bored of the Ukrainian fight for existence. Gaza is an unimaginable hellhole. The world's bully boys seem to be teflon coated.

This world is not a place of joy in its current iteration.

Can you tell I'm feeling just a tad gloomy?