This is the one where I don’t want any pity or sympathy.

I’m not trying to set myself up as brave or any of that shit.

This is the one where I simply lay down the facts as they are at the moment so that in the future I can read back and see why I chose to disfigure myself so drastically.

Yesterday was a normal sort of day. there was the usual headache, pains behind the eyes and of course the sprig of gorse [furze] up each nostril. I dropped down to the village to top up on milk and painkillers. My diet these days seems to consist entirely on Morphine, Panadol and Nurofen with the odd mug of tea to wash them down.

As the evening progressed, so did the pain. It took over most of my face and led amongst other things to blurred vision. One of my big concerns is that as the nasal swelling increases sooner or later it will reach the bridge of my nose making glasses extremely painful to wear. If for no other reason, I need those glasses for driving. That’s a worry.

Accompanying all this extra pain was another of the cancer’s little tricks – the liquid. The liquid comes in two forms: there are the obvious snots and then there is the clear [well, slightly muddy coloured] sticky liquid that seems to come from nowhere and go everywhere. The snots are a problem as I can’t blow my nose. I don’t have any defined nostrils any more and touching the nose anyway is extremely painful. So I have to sniff and snort which invariably prods the stinging up the nostrils.

The liquid just seems to appear. It will form drops and if I don’t do any mopping, it drips onto my chin and shirt front where it semi-solidifies. The skin on my nose has become very dry and flaky. Disturbing any of those flakes seems to trigger a mini-lava flow of gunk. I am constantly surrounded by messy sheets of kitchen paper which I use to try to stem the various flows, not always successfully.

So on the whole, last night was not a pleasant night. But that was before the neck kicked in.

The glands on my neck swelled up some time ago. But the one on the right started extending itself downwards into a string of swollen glands like a string of onions. These glands are extremely painful and when in full flood they force my head to be lopsided, or suffer the consequences. The neck pain got progressively worse [on top of all the other pains] nearly to to point of despair and tears. I tanked up on as many pain killers and sleeping tablets and went to bed.

I didn’t get a wink of sleep. The sheet and pillow under me became progressively wet and stained from the gunk that was flowing freely. A rather disgusting site. After a couple of fruitless hours I got up again and dashed to grab a load more pain killers. And thus starts my day.

Then there is the visual aspect. That glorious site I impose on the world every time I go out.

Proceed at your peril

Read more: Before the op