Tomorrow morning I report back to St Jimmy's to start my treatment for Hepatitis C, the bloody virus that has taken so much from me. I feel like I've waited so long for this day to come and yet now that it's here I'd be bloody lying if I didn't admit that I'm terrified.
Not the pain, I'm even ready for that too. And in some ways I feel I need to feel pain to justify the enormous battle I'm fighting. I'm ready to feel my bloodied knuckles stinging and the rips and cuts of my bleeding body from the teeth and claws of this bloody thing I'm fighting.
And I'm ready for this long war of attrition. The week after relentless week of going back and fighting it again and again and again. 48 weeks of sticking myself with needles and gorging on pills and no matter how many loved ones are there for me, it will only be me who presses the needle into my skin and pushes down on the plunger. It will be a lonely battle but I'm ready for that too.
But it's the thought of defeat. That if, at the end of all the fighting and all of the pain that it might not be enough and I may need to crawl away to lick my wounds before I can return to fight another day. I'm aware I'm the underdog, that the odds are against me, but I need to finish this now, once and for all.
I don't want this life anymore. I don't even want my old life back. I want a shiny new one please, with a winners Challis to prove it.
And I'm coming to get it you fucker, I'm coming to get what's mine!