By mid-January, my body felt completely unfamiliar. Pain, neuropathy, nausea, swallowing problems, cold sensitivity, and fatigue all fought for attention like competitors in a misery pageant. But beneath the turmoil, something else was beginning to form: structure.
January didn’t bring progress.
January brought discipline.
That distinction would end up saving my life.
The Cold, the House, and the Quiet War
January in the UK is cold even at its best. January with oxaliplatin in my veins was something else entirely. My nervous system reacted to temperature as if I were made of exposed wires.
Walking into our downstairs bathroom felt like entering a freezer aisle. The air cut my throat like a blade. I couldn’t touch anything metal without flinching. I couldn’t open the fridge without my hand spasming. Cold air outside felt like swallowing electricity.
So we adjusted.
We added an electric radiator in the bathroom so I could use it safely. Ana stayed close with a protective vigilance that appeared calm but was fueled by pure adrenaline. Our house became a fortress of warmth – blankets, heaters, kettles, thick socks, warm drinks, all arranged around a nervous system that had become sensitive to winter.
Pain was constant.
Cold was dangerous.
Food was difficult.
But the house held me together.
Small adjustments turned into survival strategies.
January is made of those.
Survival Mode: The Daily Routine That Kept Me From Unraveling
Jan didn’t give me the strength to be motivated. So I built routines that didn’t rely on motivation at all.
HBOT
I kept attending HBOT several times a week. At that point, it wasn’t about shrinking tumours or boosting my immune system – it was about having somewhere predictable to go. A chamber where pain felt dull. A space where I could read, breathe, think, or simply exist without anyone needing anything from me.
Breathwork
Every morning, without fail, I spent 15 minutes doing Wim Hof breathing. Not for enlightenment. Not for Instagram. When you’re fighting to stay alive, breath becomes the one thing you can control.
Vegetarian Keto & Fasting
Food was still hard to swallow, but I did my best to maintain ketosis. It gave my days a rhythm.
And, even when I wasn’t sure if it was helping, it provided structure. January is impossible without structure.
Sauna
The heat felt like punishment, but strangely, it gave me a sense of control.
Red Light & PEMF
Nights on the PEMF mat became a ritual. A place to breathe.
Red light felt like a gentle reset for a system that was under chemical attack.
Supplements
Not the off-label medications yet – those wouldn’t start until the last week of January. But the core supplements and nutritional interventions were in place. In a month where I felt like a passenger in my own body, taking something proactive each day mattered.
January is the month when survival mode becomes a method.
Grief Has Its Own Timekeeping
The grief for my mum deepened in January. Not in a dramatic, cinematic way.
In the quiet, relentless way grief really works.
Hospitals look different when the person who knows them best is gone. My mum spent her life as a palliative care nurse, helping people through what I faced.
She should have been there.
She should have been guiding me.
She should have been telling me which nurse to ask for, which questions to push, which red flags mattered and which didn’t.
Instead, every waiting room felt empty.
Every hospital bed felt like an echo.
Every time I was admitted, I felt my mum’s absence more sharply than the cannula needles piercing my skin.
Grief doesn’t wait for the right moment.
It arrives when your body is already burning, and it starts its own fire too.
January is when I felt both.
Duke’s Absence
Duke’s absence hit hard as well.
Our house had a dog-shaped rhythm for two years. He was 70kg of pure love and chaos, a harlequin Great Dane who thought he was a lap dog.
Letting him go in November was best for him, but January made the absence unbearable.
Cancer makes you painfully aware of who’s missing from your life.
The big silence where he used to be felt as loud as any side effect.
I missed him more in January than in December.
Perhaps because I needed comfort.
Perhaps because I needed distraction.
Perhaps because January is when the truth of what cancer takes truly sinks in.
Financial Reality & the Small Relief That Changed Everything
December had been a blur of paperwork mixed with pain, chemo, and grief. We filed for critical illness insurance, applied for my pension, and submitted the claim for my life insurance under the sub-12-month prognosis clause.
In January, the news came in:
the critical illness payout was approved.
This mattered more than anyone outside a cancer diagnosis can understand.
It meant:
- I didn’t have to work in January.
- We didn’t have to fear losing the house.
- Ana could focus on the boys and on me.
- I could fully commit to treatment without guilt over not earning.
It didn’t make cancer easier.
But it lifted a weight that could have crushed me.
Sometimes the most life-saving thing isn’t a drug – it’s breathing space.
Mid-to-Late January – The Plan Begins to Take Shape
January was hell. But it was also the month the plan started to fall into place in a meaningful way.
The Mistletoe Therapy Begins
After my NCIM consult on the 14th, mistletoe injections were added. Not with fanfare – quietly, methodically.
One more pillar.
The Interpreted NGS Data
With the Datar results from the Astron report in hand, I reviewed every page, every biomarker, every metabolic pathway.
For the first time, I could see:
- what drugs made sense
- what interventions were compatible
- what to ignore
- what the tumour was likely to respond to
- which off-label strategies had biochemical reasoning
- how my specific tumour actually behaved
January didn’t give me strength.
But it gave me clarity.
The Off-Labels Arrive
Finally, in the last week of January, my off-label medications arrived.
Not all at once.
Not with ceremony.
Just quietly, in the mail, like any regular package.
But to me, they were the first true weapons I’d held since my diagnosis.
For weeks, I’d been building the foundation – keto, fasting, HBOT, supplements, lifestyle, breathwork. Now I finally had the pharmacological side too.
This was the moment my treatment became a strategy, not just a schedule.
The Dentist, the Mercury Filling, and Control
Removing the mercury filling wasn’t motivated by fear.
It was about control.
January leaves you feeling like your body is a house with all the windows blown out.
You cling to anything that gives you a sense of patching something back together.
A filling was symbolic.
It was me saying:
“I’m not leaving any question unanswered. No angle unexamined. No door unlocked.”
Even with tentative science, the psychology was solid.
And January is a month built on psychological survival.
Support: The Unspoken Backbone Behind the Month
Throughout January, Ana was the backbone of the operation.
She drove me to chemo.
She learned cannulation while still healing from her lung surgery.
She kept the boys’ lives feeling stable.
She held the house together.
She kept me alive in a hundred small ways that won’t make it into a research paper but made all the difference.
And Jo appeared quietly, like a hero in scrubs.
She stepped in when we needed her.
She monitored.
She reassured.
She stabilised the chaos.
January wouldn’t have been manageable without them.
But their full story is the next chapter.
January’s Ending: A Line in the Sand
By January 31, nothing in my body felt “better.”
Pain was still high.
Neuropathy was still hell.
Fatigue was still a weight I couldn’t lift.
Swallowing was still painful.
Sleep was still broken.
Cold sensitivity still made winter feel harsh.
And the losses – Mum, Duke – still hurt every day.
But something had changed:
- I had a routine.
- I had information.
- I had a team.
- I had mistletoe therapy.
- I had a growing metabolic protocol.
- I had HBOT, fasting, breathwork, and daily disciplines.
- I had financial breathing room.
- I had the off-labels in hand.
- I had the NGS results that outlined the battlefield.
- I had a quiet, stubborn clarity I hadn’t had in December.
January didn’t bring improvement.
January brought direction.
And sometimes direction is enough to keep you alive long enough for improvement to come.
January was the month I nearly broke.
It was also the month I began fighting back.
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