The title, C1 refers both to the vertebrae and to the first of the Cancer blogs. Updates later. Motto of the story: try not to walk around for three days with a fractured neck!

They took me off Tylenol 3 (a combo of acetaminophen, codeine, and caffeine), confiscated my morphine and banned my vodka, then replaced them with some insipid and useless pink and beige tablet. The colors should have given the game away. I mean, how can a pink and beige anything be efficacious?

Precisely, I did not die between entering the Operating Theatre and publishing this article. What happened after I published it and before you, dear Reader, read it, is another matter altogether.

…when you’re busy doing other things.

Hermetic philosophy revolves around the awesome catch-all phrase, ‘As above, so below.’ This captures the similarity or even congruity of the macro-cosmos and the micro-cosmos, the great and the tiny; the similarity between a galaxy and an atom, between the veins in your arm and the branches of a tree.

The mask bit is interesting. Once you start to pay attention, it is amazing how many people cough, splutter and sneeze on a frequent, regular and near-vicinity basis. Nasty germs are everywhere.

…of course, the diagnosis of cancer could be a death-warrant, but so could walking downstairs, tripping over the cat, or driving in Bali or Mumbai. No one is immune from the Grim Reaper. Nor ever will be.

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” said Prospero and he was probably right.

First, grate cheddar cheese into a frying pan. Extra mature cheddar is best, the stronger the better. Then spread it around the pan so that there’s a ‘hole’ in the center into which you can crack one or two eggs. Next, drizzle milk, more or less to your taste, around the outside so that it interplays with the cheesy bits.

I suspect it’s what happens when people ‘die peacefully in their bed’. They gradually get weaker and weaker, becoming enveloped in an aura of emptiness, but some fight the downward spiral while others passively succumb to the insidious malaise and allow themselves permission to cease resistance. The choice is peaceful acceptance or, in many cases, futile battling against a relentless foe.

today is the end of chemo cycle 3 of the six, so half-way. Time for a 15-minute break, a quarter of an orange, a swift once-over with Dettol and a wire brush, a generous swill with the magic sponge, a rub-down with The Sporting Life, and a quick pep-talk from the Gaffer, whoever that may be. Game of two halves and all that.

Fear is not pleasant but it’s a condition I can deal with.

I did mention that if there was a large gap between ‘C’ chapters, then I was no doubt having a bad time, didn’t I? I wasn’t joking.

‘Those who know’ continue to be a source of strength. I don’t envy anyone who has been further down the road, but I do know that ‘out the other side’ will be a degree of enlightenment not possible without the nasty journey.