Fat Virgin

Have been whiling away the long weekend (it's president's day) looking at Villas in the Carribbean. We're planning on taking some kind of vacation once treatment is over and of course therein lies the rub. We don't know when / if treatment will be over.

Chemo should be finished in May. It's then quite likely that I'll do radiotherapy too. That could be anything from 6 to 12 weeks. Of course there's then a 50% chance that I'll be in full remisssion (can't clam 'cured' for 5 years as 80% of people relapse). If the flip of the coin doesn't go my way we start to look at weird and wonderful new treatments - like stem cell transplantation - which can take another couple of months (locked in a room)

All of this needs to be balanced with the fact that it's been a tough year, it's sub zero outside, Jude's been working 100 hr weeks and we're running on fumes. We need a break - and I think that we'll take one at the beginning of August.

The brief - warm, clean, close and absolutely no cruise ships. Having stayed in Nassau I have come to detest both the floating pollution chambers that are the ships themselves and the badge wearing locusts that disembark from them - devouring all tourist tat in their wake and believing that a country's culture can be found within a half mile of its Duty Free shops. These are the people who take their homes with them and believe that they've travelled the world; and they fill me with more hate and resentment than is healthy for a man who owns as many Buddhist books as I.

So we've discounted St. Martins and all of the US Virgin Islands and are now looking at the British Virgin Islands generally and Virgin Gorda (the fat virgin) in particular. A villa will give us some privacy and autonomy, our own pool and a saving over a hotel and might even mean that we can invite a couple of friends to join us. I miss taking a bunch of people to a sunny paradise island for the weekend.

To that end I'm also looking at Necker. 26 of us could take over an entire island for about US$1000 each. Staff ratio is 1:1, we'd have our meals cooked, our own boat and helicopter transfers to wherever we want. But do I have 26 friends? I guess when it's a cheap private island jaunt on the line I could find them.

Anyway the question - do I say 'screw it' and book for August or do I play sensible and wait and see how the chemo goes before doing anything? Decisions.

An aside... whatever I do, I won't be getting travel insurance. Cancer ridden chemo patients booking months in advance are a pretty high risk of no show apparently - who'd have thought?