A nurse from Jubeleumskliniken (JK) called yesterday and provided me with dates for further treatment! To start off, my husband dropped me off this morning at JK. I didn’t need to go via the reception this time – I just walked right in as if I hadn’t done anything else my entire life. I followed the signs for the lab, took a “queue number” (very Swedish, needs explaining?) and sat down to wait for my number to be called. They gave me enough time to read a page and a half in the crime novel that I currently carry in my handbag, Krigsbarn by the Danish author Gretelise Holm.

All I went in for was one blimey blood sample. There is obviously no information sharing between ER, Neurosurgery and JK. I don’t know if this is pertinent but I hate needles. I should be used to them by now but I’m not. Perhaps this is too much information sharing; nevertheless, the prime reason why I didn’t take the epidural during labour was for the above reason. When I got to the stage where I was shrieking “give me the f**king drugs”, it was “too late”. I have, withal, very few regrets in life. I am not joking when I say that the extirpate-a-brain-tumour experience was NOTHING compared to afore mentioned. However, the irony is that given the choice, I would choose childbirth any day.

Tomorrow I will go back in to cast “the mask” followed by a CT scan on Friday the week after. Finally, beginning week 13 (another Swedish flippant way of referring to the weeks of the year) i.e. starting Monday, March 26th, I await six weeks of radiation therapy. For the first week I will remain in hospital, so if you are not up to anything, please let me know. I may hopefully have the energy to give you a guided tour of the facilities or, even better, fika.

The one-week hospital admission is mainly due to the fact that when the machine starts nuking my alien, dismantling my ticking bomb (use whatever metaphor you prefer) swelling may occur, which in turn can result in seizuring. They will put me back on betamethasone (“cortisone”) to prevent this. I was prescribed the same drug shortly after being admitted to ER, resulting in a trip to “seventh heaven” (should really come up with a better expression). Adverse events included going from an unexceptional appetite to eating a horse (literally) and feeling, if possible, even more speeded on life and ready to conquer the world. Naturally, with something as good as that, there must be a down-side. I looked about five months pregnant. I gained some three kilos and they evidently didn’t get distributed over my chest. I guess you can’t have all the luck in the world, huh?