"When's the big day?"

".. oh, the 11th of May. It's all booked. The weather should be lovely at that time of year."

That's right folks, book it in your diary - May the 11th is the day where I am split in two and my beloved tumorous spleen is removed from me.

I'll be at Watford General and I'll be going in at the ungodly hour of 7am, most likely incredibly nervously, with many scenes from 'Six Feet Under' replaying in my head.

Tomorrow, I have to go to a pre-op meeting for 'up to four hours', which sounds very tedious. On Friday I have to have my injections at the GP and next Tuesday, although unrelated, I have to go to join a new dentist because I was kicked out of the last one for non-attendance, as a bloody tooth-filling has fallen out and I don't want to be in the position of recovering from the loss of a spleen with sodding toothache.

I hate dentists. I hate hospitals. I hate injections. I hate GPs. I hate big spleens. I hate chemo. I hate the Conservative and I hate Labour. And I really, really hate Chelsea.

I'm back at home today - I left work early because I'm in a lot of pain. The spleen is really hurting. Oddly, the pain also runs up in the left shoulder and throbs like a bastard. Not the greatest simile there, as I'm really not sure how much a bastard throbs, but I never claimed to be any good at this English malarkey.

I never thought this arm pain was related to my spleen but my Consultant asked me some time ago ... "do you get shoulder pain" - I couldn't believe it ... "Yes, I bloody do".

Apparently, There's some nerves up there that the spleen is connected to or *something*. In truth, I wasn't really paying attention. This is how I went through school. I just shut off after a minute or two after getting the gist. So in this case, I got the idea, the spleen is connected to my shoulder and this sodding arm pain, just give me the bloody painkillers and no, I don't care how they work either.

So lots of pain today ... I'm exploring new over-the-counter pain-killers without too much success. I'm back on the chemo couch, looking at the sun out the window to my right and the three day pile of washing up to my right.

I have no desire to sit in the sun or wash the dishes.

That is all.