They say that cancer changes your outlook on life. I guess that premise could be broadened to include any event, illness, or disaster that highlights to you your own mortality; brings home just how little time we all have to offer; and comes as a stark demonstration as to just how fragile all of our holds on life really are.

Today I am still feeling physically fine. Temperature is still down. The recovery, it would appear, has started although there is still no light at the end of this immediate tunnel: no sign of my exit from this room.

In addition to the pills I still have to take and the antibiotic drips I am still on, a number of other ingredients have been added to my daily input. Yesterday I was given a small bottle of nutrient rich milkshake, 'Fruits of the Forest' flavour. Two or three of these turned up throughout the day and none tasted like fruits from any forest I have ever been in. This morning a strawberry one turned up and tasted exactly like the previous ones and exactly unlike strawberries. My latest was chocolate. This did taste different. Very different in fact. And if you held it in your mouth and concentrated really, really hard you could just, just imagine that it might once have been near something chocolate.

Along with some of these bottles comes a small round pot, about an inch tall and half as much wide, of a purple substance. At first I thought it was a taster of the stuff inside the bottles so just drank it. Further investigation has revealed that it is a collagen supplement. For those of you now expecting me to return from hospital with lush, pouting lips prepare to be disappointed. Applied in a skin cream, lipstick, or even eye shadow collagen is useless. A waste of money. It does nothing. Ingested however it can benefit skin growth, the formation of tendons and increased joint mobility. I assume therefore that this will help those bones now bereft of marrow to start working things out or maybe it is just to counter the terrible effects being in the same room for a week can have on ones skin. I guess the NHS are aiming for the former.

I have not invested any time in investigating just where anyone would get collagen from to add to a supplement. As it is not something derived from plants, nor something we produce in excess as humans and are want to give away I'm guessing it comes from animals. Animals that may not have openly offered it up and from parts of them that only celebrity Devonshire chefs would ever consider eating. I'm happy to down a shot of it twice a day though; it tastes a lot like fruits of the forest.

Also added to my regime is a shot of a growth hormone.

No, I am not going to come out of this ordeal taller any more than I am going to have fuller lips.

This hormone is one naturally produced in healthy bodies, often when were unwell, and in my case is aimed at encouraging any neutrophils made since chemo that are loitering around in my now roomy bone marrow to come out and start earning a living. Ordinarily new cells come out of marrow because its full of even newer ones and theres not much room. With enough room in there for them to swing a cellular cat they need a little coaxing.

Last on my list of rare, if not new, experiences, for today at least, was a shower. Enjoying its warmth for a good twenty minutes I emerged feeling human again. Taking them every morning before work it is easy to regard them as the norm and forget how great a restorative effect they have, not just on the body, but also on the mind. Without them we soon decend into a smelly heap. Our minds never cleansed, as time goes on, become more aware of how our skin feels getting dirtier, how our clothes no longer hang on our bodies without sometimes sticking, and how, with human vanity as it is, that others may perceive us as lesser people.

Having Cancer does change your outlook on life. It makes you reassess that which is important and that which is trivial. From now on any working day that starts with a shower is a good day; anything else from there on is just a bonus.