The Reward is the Journey

The exhilaration I feel when out and about on two wheels is hard to describe without sounding gushy.  At times, I fear I may even sound evangelical.  That said, I'm going to risk gushing evangelically and share (yet) another bicycling anecdote... I did not conceal my excitement at being invited to take to the roads of Kent on a Sunday morning. The autumn sunshine greeted us.  Whilst it couldn't be described as warm, our meeting point coffees certainly were.  We were off to a good start before we left. The roads were pleasantly quiet, save for a few hurried drivers (presumably making their way to morning service).  I knew not the route ahead of us, but was given ample warning of the sticky climbs and one 'rather naff' descent. For all my evangelising, the only action this bike has seen in over two years has been to be moved from one hallway to stand wistfully in a sitting room - only to return, rather unceremoniously, to inhabit another dra...

There is so much that is so wrong about chemo on so many levels. This dawned on me as I sat opposite my best friend, already far more comfortable and better prepared for what was about to happen than I could even pretend to be. I didn't need to:  I was there, but I was nothing more than a welcome addition rather than anything essential to this morning's proceedings... We arrived on time. We were not the first, and the nurse's instructions (not to mention the 'q word', as it was, at that point, fairly quiet) were not without good reason:  in the three and a half hours we spent on the day unit, it progressively filled up. Soon there was not an empty chair in the house, and this was, it was very clear, just a normal day for all concerned.  There is something about this end of medicine that is (from where I was sitting, as undiagnosed but not, I would say, unaffected, observer) strangely comforting. Or at least resilience promoting. Everyone is getting...