Urban Surrealism: The end of round 1.

Chemotherapy bouts last around 1 month, during which time a team of very nice doctors and nurses get tooled up in bio hazard waste disposal suits and pump you full of neon coloured chemicals while masking their obvious fear of a 'spill' through a forced smile. This vague reassurance does little to combat the fact they they're wearing protective gear to administer chemicals that are getting pumped directly into your veins, but the gesture's there all the same.

The most surreal point in my existence would come following my fourth week of treatment, when i'd received the entire month's load of neon chemical abuse. During this time i'd been exported from the hospital to the hotel over the road as i was deemed fit enough to use the day care unit. This hotel room would provide the stage for the most bizarre 48 hours of my life thus far:

To kick things off, natural light became my worst enemy so the hotel's blackout curtains were utilized to block all external light sources from the room. My last blood count indicated i'd got under half the oxygen carrying capacity of a healthy human and my immune system was non existent, factor in that i had over 20 different chemicals pulsing around my body, most killing perfectly healthy cells. The result was that i was pretty much a shell of a human.

The following 48 hour period was spent drifting in and out of consciousness in said blacked out room with sky news 24 on constant loop. I didn't want sky news on, but the remote was probably 30cm out of my reach and i physically couldn't muster the energy to grab it.

This is where it started to get weird. With Sky news on tv, i started incorporating elements of the news into my dreams. I'd then wake up and have literally no idea if i'd been sleeping or watching the news. Then the news loop would come around to a story i'd be dreaming about but it would be different to what i had in my head. Utter confusion ensued.

Everything came to a head when i finally had to get up for a shit. As i summoned all the energy i had to get off the bed i saw the tv clock offered me the time as 6.24. Staggering past I realized i had absolutely no idea if that was morning or evening.

I collapsed onto the toilet and surprisingly all went well at this critical stage, well, until my eye caught a glimpse of the contents. I later found out that impaired liver function was to blame for this but at the time it was just another beautiful element in my surreal landscape. Basically i'd laid a selection of pale pink turds floating in a sea of almost black, slightly viscous urine.

Unsure if i was actually awake and unaware of if it was day or night this didn't help my state of confusion. The final blow would come as i exited the toilet en route to bed. As i left the bathroom i was greeted by a full length mirror. Thus far i hadn't really looked at myself in the mirror and i wasn't exactly expecting what i was greeted with.

My skin was totally yellow, and the whites of my eyes had turned the colour of tea from my poor fucked liver. My face was almost perfectly round and my belly had ballooned so i was epicly fat, all courtesy of a mammoth dose of cancer killing steroids. My arms were littered with puncture marks from the numerous daily injections and my leg muscles had withered so much i looked like two tooth pics supporting an apple shaped body.

Luckily for me my body had selectively turned off any ability to contact emotion, so this strange image acted as just another surprising vision in my crazy world. I continued to venture back to bed, again seeing the time and having no idea if it was day or night. That sleep concluded the most surreal 48 hours of my life.

I'm currently chemical free and recovering from round 1 at home. Piss and shit have returned to their normal colours, the yellow skin and brown eyes have gone, the excessively fat belly is retreating and the face, well it's pretty fat but it's on the way down.

Round two starts in a week. Lets see what this one delivers.....