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There’s a strange little club they never advertise,
No joining fee needed, no glamorous prize.
Just triplet treatment, metastatic flair,
And the constant suspicion you’ve soiled your underwear.

The hormone pills start with a muscular ache,
Like you wrestled a gorilla while fully awake.
Your hips and your shoulders all groan in the night,
As sleep packs its suitcase and disappears outright.

Then suddenly WHOOSH… like a tropical storm,
You wake in the bed no longer life-form warm.
The duvet’s abandoned, the pillows all damp,
You’re sweating so much you could irrigate camp.

At 3am sharp comes the radiotherapy gift,
That subtle bowel rumble… that dangerous shift.
You launch from the mattress with all of your might,
Like an ageing gazelle in desperate flight.

But the legs won’t cooperate. Muscles all scream.
The staircase now feels like an Everest dream.
And halfway upstairs with a grim little squint,
You discover your timing was slightly too mint.

Then just as you’re settled and thinking “thank God,”
Your bladder declares it’s still running the squad.
You’ve barely sat down when you’re back on your feet,
For a wee that feels like passing hot razor blades neat.

And people still tell you with cheerful delight,
“Well at least it’s not chemo, you’ll be alright!”
Because from the outside it’s pills and a bed,
Not the Amazon sauna and sprinting in dread.

Still somehow we laugh, because what else can you do?
When life hands you hormones and radioactive poo.
So here’s to the fighters, the sweaty, the sore,
Still climbing the stairs for the twentieth tour.