When I first started this “journey” I tried really hard to make a diary of how I felt, what was happening in the world and where I was with treatment.

It quickly fell away as on the days that I had something to write, I usually didn’t feel like doing it. And on the days that I didn’t, who wants to re-read that?

So the daily diary turned into occasional blogs, and the occasional blogs turned into silence, all with the promise that I would get round to it at some point. Maybe write a book about the whole palaver.

Which means on a wintry Good Friday I am desperately trying to remember what has happened since January…

Family and football

Previously on SamStaggersOn… I had started cycle five of chemotherapy which marked the halfway point of my treatment and was pretty happy with the way things were going.

The neuropathy continued to be the toughest side-effect and one that I don’t think I will ever be able to fully explain – somewhere between swollen extremities, pins and needles, and electric shocks.

But with gloves, hats, snoods, and thermal underwear, sometimes things were normal-ish.

Six days after my sixth cycle began on the oncology ward, and I was on a little plane over to Exeter to see my niece and family near Lyme Regis.

She’d been in hospital for the first few moments of her life at the same time I was getting my colon chop shopped and I’m happy to say that we were both doing much better.

For me that meant a couple of pints by the seaside, sunny walks and veggie fish and chips. For her, it was the pretty much the same without the booze and food. If you’re lucky, the one thing that ongoing treatment gives you is time, and I was doubly lucky to spend that time with my family.

Where the fortune may have run out is being a Southampton fan. More time than ever to watch lowlights, listen to podcasts and read about potentially the worst team in Premier League history.

So where would I choose my last weekend before returning to work?

Driving three hours up to Ipswich, which felt like double that, to spend a couple of nights at a Travelodge in Ipswich followed by an inevitable defeat and ongoing sadness barely contained by some East Anglian ale.

And while nearly all of that was true, by some miracle befitting the clubs name, on a sunny day near the River Orwell, Saints not only scored two, but managed to only concede one.

After the limbs in the away after the second goal, came the tears. I desperately tried to blink back my non-manly emotion in a sea of Southern testosterone and a touch of BO, but couldn’t stop it.

As the quote from John Paul II goes, “Of all the non-important things in the world, football is the most important”. And being there with my friends, brothers and, for all of their faults, my tribe, this felt like the most important of important moments.

And yes, many ales were drunk, as we trawled around downtown Ipswich into the late hours of Saturday night. It’s a strange place but will also have a special place in my heart.

Heading back to Jersey also meant the closest to “real life” in months.

My last day at work was 10 September 2024, the day before my surgery so 145 days later, nearly 21 weeks, I was due to boot up my laptop and log in.

The struggle is real

One of the things they don’t teach you about being diagnosed with cancer is how much the rest of the world keeps going on without you.

You step off the conveyor belt of life but it still spins round and round. The cost of living doesn’t take a rest because of your treatment, the increasing expense of luxury things like water and electricity don’t have a winter break, and weirdly, my mortgage provider didn’t decide to ignore interest rate rises because I was undergoing chemotherapy.

I also naively thought that I wouldn’t need critical illness insurance for a while so instead of a lump sum paying off said mortgage, I had to weigh up potentially conflicting health and economic situations.

Speaking to anyone and everyone there was one clear winner – focus on your health.

I’m not going to go into the details of how much my monthly income would’ve dropped but it wasn’t insignificant and the Government would’ve picked up some of it.

I definitely could’ve got through it with adjustments like no coffee and avocados but as a sworn millennial, how could I live without sourdough and Spotify Premium?

So in the words of the seven dwarves, “it’s off to work we go”.