I have a cold.

My throat hurts.

My ears hurt.

I have that whole under-the-weather thing going on.

I’m sniffing a bit and my sinuses ache.

Big deal, I hear you cry, people get colds. We don’t come to your blog to read about your colds, even if they do have the slight interest factor of being a little bit out of season.

But you speak too soon, my tetchy and demanding blog-reading friend.

This is an interesting cold, a cancer-related cold even, because…

….I haven’t had a cold since I was diagnosed with cancer.

That’s two years and nine months without so much as a hot toddy.

The first winter, I wasn’t surprised. What with the chemo and having no immune system and all, I kept away from crowded places and public transport, and friends and family with colds kept away from me.

The second winter, people around me hacked into handkerchiefs and looked pale with pink around the eyes and…. still nothing. I wondered whether the herceptin had some sort of bug-repelling effect. Or whether the toothache was so bad that I could be having a cold without noticing.

Last winter, also nothing. I decided that my body, in its through-the-generations wisdom, had decided that as it had had a cancer it wasn’t going to bother with any trivial illnesses any more. A bit like, once you’ve had a half-decent Rioja, you’ll never buy the £2.99 Hungarian table wine from the off licence again.

But now… now I have a cold.

So, following my train of logic….. this cold means I’m really, properly better. My body isn’t sheltering itself any more. It’s hauled its rarified ass down off the cancer mountain and started breathing the same germ-infested air as the rest of the world.

Hooray.

Could you please pass me the Nurofen?