One-sided.

As with my time in Glasgow, my memories of those spells in hospital are a bit blurry, and the order of things even more so. But I do remember how this particular chapter started… With a sip of orange juice.

It was late in the evening, and I’d been craving something cold. My taste buds were still rebelling after months of chemo, but orange juice always seemed to get through. 

Sharp. Sweet. Enough flavour to replace the blandness.

And, because I was particular about these things, it had to be a Tropicana from the hospital shop.

I took the first sip and stopped.

Something felt off.

It wasn’t the taste.

It wasn’t the smell.

It was… something else entirely.

So I took another gulp, swished it around my mouth, and waited for the usual sting of cold to hit – and that’s when I realised.

Only one side of my mouth had felt it.

And the other side? Nothing.

I sat for a moment, bottle in hand, trying to reason my way out of what was going on.

Maybe I’d taken too small a sip. 

Maybe it was just in my head. 

Maybe this was what happened when you spent too much time in hospitals – your body started inventing new ways to keep you on edge.

But when I took another drink. And then another.

It was the same thing every time. 

The left side: cold. The right side: indifferent.

It wasn’t painful. Just strange. Like part of my face had quietly clocked off for the night without telling me.

So, when the nurse came round for my obs, I mentioned it. Trying ever so hard to play it cool and keep my tone casual. 

“Umm, funny thing happened… half my face’s stopped working.”

In response, she gave a small smile, wrote it down, and told me to get some sleep.

We’d see how it felt in the morning.

So, always the obedient patient, that’s what I did.

But when the morning arrived, and I'd told the doctors it hadn’t gone away, they exchanged that look I’d seen too many times before – the one that’s supposed to be subtle, but never is.

A few hours later, I was in radiology waiting for an MRI.

Naturally, I was an old pro when it came to these scans, but I'd never had one of my brain – a detail that made me incredibly uneasy. The brain feels like the one part you can’t afford to mess with – it’s what keeps you going, what makes you, you.

Fortunately, the scan itself was fine. Loud, claustrophobic, uneventful. 

Still, I lay there, barely hearing the muffled music through the headphones, clutching my little emergency buzzer and praying to God: please let them find nothing.

Then came the waiting.

Back in my room, I tried not to think about it – about the image of my brain now sitting on some computer screen downstairs, waiting to be interpreted.

But later that evening, the consultant appeared by my bed, smiling in a way that told me, before he even spoke, it was good news.

The scan was clear, he said. Nothing to worry about. We’d simply keep an eye on it, and hope the feeling passed.

However, somewhere between that fragile moment of relief and the following morning review, another test had been arranged – “just to be certain.”

Certain of what, I didn’t ask.

Because if I’d learned anything from cancer, it was that certainty was rarely a comfort – it was a warning.