Thursday and the first day of the week I can rest properly. As a result I rise late, do my vitals and make breakfast with my morning meds. My son messages me and asks if I am free for a chat so at the appointed time we have a long chat over WhatsApp about all sorts of family matters. Its a long and complex conversation but hopefully constructive. It neatly lead into a lunchtime bacon sandwich and some thinking time.
The Americans are ready to publish the latest collection and I was thinking about what I am going to do in the future. I think five collections in one year is quite enough and so I will have a break unless something comes along out of the blue to inspire me to publish anything else. I take a stroll over to the post office to send a letter and then return to spend time in my daily routine of doing the days crosswords. It was a good day, no Google required. As I finish reading the paper I become aware that an ambulance has parked across our drive and then I notice police cars arriving and more ambulances, the big type not the first responders. I go up stairs to get a better view, but I see my neighbour shepherding her son and scooter in home and then driving off somewhere. In the meantime police direct traffic, ambulance staff appear to load someone into the back of their ambulance and slowly all the emergency vehicles disappear and the village main road returns to its usual evening rush hour. So what actually happened to cause such a conglomeration of blue lights and uniformed folk is a mystery but I expect it will all be round the village in no time if not the local newspaper. After so much excitement I return to the sofa and start to draft the blog, feeling sluggish.
The evening feels like a challenge, I am not sure why but I need to find something to engage me, perhaps its lack of inspiration that is sapping me, although I have bought Nadiya’s latest cook book and made an attempt to plan next weeks menu to the extent of ordering some of the more niche ingredients in next weeks Tesco order. But for tonight I shall conjure up my baked egg tortillas once there has been a quick trip to the shop. This is all part of my trying to get engaged with cooking again and to tempt my appetite.
Nadiya’s new book, a mixed bag
The evening is tortilla filled followed by a lazy evening of TV and planning. From cars to pressure washers and fantasy private planes there is lots to consider. The evening ends as always with night meds and a sandwich to keep the dugs settled. Tonight is a super moon.
This Wednesday and I am awake quite early because this is oncology review day, a day for hugs and to train. So I check my vitals, which are all good and then get up and into my training gear. I down my morning meds and head for the garage. My session to day will be 60 minutes which means I can listen to two episodes of Mark Steel’s in Town. So I set off at a sensible pace and get into a steady pull. The hour goes quite quickly and I am soon taking a photo of the monitor. Ten kilometres plus and over seven hundred calories burnt so not a bad session at all, not my best but good for a post jab session.
Not bad for a post jab sessionI’m pleased with that.
I record the session and make a late bagel breakfast before checking that I have all the things I want to explore with the oncologist at this afternoons review. Satisfied that I have my arithmetic sorted I go for a shower. Feeling crisp and new if a bit achy I sit and start the draft of todays blog. My oncology call is due about 13:45pm but they have started giving two hour time slots so I could be siting here for quite a while. I wonder at what point I should tell them I have acknowledged their efforts in the acknowledgement section of the next poetry collection that is coming out fairly soon. Perhaps I will just send them a copy or two. I’m not sure I have shared the cover for the new collection but when it comes out it will look like this:
Moved way from the original series cover to something more … colourful.
To my surprise the oncologist rings on time. He tells me that he can see the results of my heart scans and that there is no sign of ischemia and no reason to do anything more. He asked how much medication I have left and we agreed that he would prescribe another cycle and he would see me in eight weeks. I noted that the blood test would also be for a check on my heart. We discussed the rise in my blood pressure over the cycles and he noted that I would only need to take a week off the meds to effect a lowering of blood pressure, he also said that if my blood pressure really did rise to a level of concern he could increase the medication specifically for it. So when all was said and done it went to plan, brief and concise but moves things forward. With the excitement of the day done I have lunch.
In the afternoon I write letters adn scribblings before an evening of lone football watching. Night medication and then I retreat to bed. to sleep perchance to dream.
Monday its jab day and I need to be at the GP surgery for 9 o’clock. I am up early, shower and out the door having had time to take my morning meds and a couple of paracetamol. I check in and I am called in to the clinic room straight away. My usual nurse prepares the injection and has trouble finding an area that is not lumpy from previous injections. We get the stuff in and I leave to return home via the village shop to pick up a paper.
Once home my partner and I go to the gym where my partner trains and I sit in the lounge and eat bacon rolls while doing the days crosswords. I have time to think about a to do list and think about the coming days and my oncology review. I’ve still not heard from the cardio boys and girls. My partner and I go to a nearby garden centre for a late lunch before going home where I crash out, my injection site is getting sore and I need more paracetamol. I nap and stay napped until its time for tea and my partner has her singing lesson.
While my partner is in her singing lesson I watch Dune 2. It is my way of switching off before taking my night meds and more paracetamol.
Tuesday and after a reasonable nights sleep I find myself alone as my partner has gone to work. I take my vitals which are good and then get up as there are things I need to do but as I get out of bed my injection sight reminds me that I am sore and tired. I take my meds and then organise what I can before go to the local pub for a full English brunch. When I get home there are chores to do in readiness to take in the Tesco delivery. On cue the delivery arrives and then I am free to go to the post office to get a paper and send a letter.
The bulk of my afternoon is spent editing the final final draft of The cancer Years: Breathless. It appears that the collection is now ready to go to publication. I now wait for the Americans to get the mechanics rolling. With that done I select a poem to take to this Saturdays Poetry Stanza. I go for something less cancer driven than usual. I run off copies and as this coming Stanza meeting is a face to face one. I share the one I have selected.
409 I misheard “Titanium skull” for “New soul” and thought, I’m up for that . How relieving it would be to recycle the sins of the past for an empty virginal one. Do new ones have a distinctive Smell like a new car/ Do new borns sniff the world And take in the aroma of innocence? If I ever had one It’s been mislaid along the way, Dropped somewhere along the Grey brick pragmatic way, a sort of wizard of Oz without a Dorothy and her red, take me home , shoes. Fly my pretties fly, I hear myself call And wonder where my journey will end.
409 03-08-202
Having done all my poem work I turn to getting some rest and fall asleep for a while until my partner returns from work. Tea follows and the Great British Bake Off but I am distracted by drafting the blog and an increasing awareness that my injection site is getting more sore and I am running rapidly out of spoons. I take my night meds but I resist the temptation to take pain killers. Tomorrow is my oncology review. I have spent today updating my blood pressure spread sheet and reviewing my blood results. I need who ever I talk to, to listen to what I have to say and take it seriously as I do not want to go on taking the chemotherapy to the point where the side effects make me so fatigued that I stop to function, which is one of my hypotheses. The other hypothesis is that I got a bout of COVID. My guess is that the oncology boys and girls will prefer the COVID hypothesis. My guess is that they will let me finish the current cycle 17 and go onto cycle 18 and then see me again. I will find out soon enough.
Sunday and I will keep this simple as it is the preparation day before my 28 day jab tomorrow so my priorities are to train hard and long, rest and be organised so I can cruise for the next two or three days as I work through the injection side effects. So I take my vitals, which were good, and I get up and get into my training gear.
I have a brief toast breakfast and take my morning meds and then I head for the garage and the rowing machine. I strap in and set myself up for 60 minutes. I choose to listen to two episodes of Mark Steels in Town. Once I started I just ground away at a steady pace, trying to push myself a bit. At the end of the hour I am surprised to find I had gone 11k+ and had burnt 700+ calories, my best hour yet since I started training again.
Oh yes, this is more like it.
After the session I record it and then rest for a while before getting my washing in. I watch a rugby match and go for a walk with my partner to the village to pick up a paper and some goodies. I go back to resting, watching rugby and football until its time to eat in the evening. It all sounds very lethargic but somewhere in me is a poem fermenting called “People Soup” an extension of my thoughts about “Seminal moments” in life, but at the moment I cannot grasp it enough and neither will it just flow from me. Along the way I gather up my washing and get organised for tomorrow. The evening is spent with my partner watching TV until I take my night meds augmented by paracetamol in preparation for the side effects of tomorrows jab. I draft the blog. I focus and prepare.
Saturday and I wake up late having stayed up last night to get my blood results. The outcome was a good one with my PSA reducing slightly. My resulting sleep was filled with some very weird dreams of Kafka like Turkish hotels and mislaid luggage. I finally get up after a long chat with my partner and make a late breakfast. There are chores to be done, like de-hairing the Hoover and then Hoovering through the house and having a general clear up. With the the humdrum stuff of life done I watch a rugby match and eat an early lunch in order to have my afternoon free to shower and prepare to go out to the theatre in the evening.
As is usual, now I and my partner, and I with our eldest daughter, got an Uber into town to the theatre. The conversation with the Uber driver was enlightening as he talked me through everything I needed to know about hybrid cars. By the end of the circuitous route he took to get us to the theatre which enabled him to show off the prowess of his hybrid I was open to the idea of owning one. After a small morsel of lemon drizzle cake we took our seats and watched Ghost the musical. It was a very good production, however by the end, even with a half time ice cream, I was Rom Com’ed out for the week. We Ubered home and I resisted another conversation about hybrid cars. Once home it is Blog drafting time, toast to settle my stomach and night meds. Tomorrow I prepare for jab Monday with some pre-emptive paracetamol, it’s that time of month.
Friday, its a big day, blood tests day and a day to train, so I am up early and breakfasted ready to trot down to the GP surgery to have my bloods taken. I take my morning meds and then head down to the GP. Once I am in the surgery I am called in quickly and find my usual two nurses, one takes stuff out of me and the other puts stuff into me, sharing a clinic. There is banter and I am soon a couple of vials short of blood. It was not till I was walking home that I realised that I had not pre loaded with water, which means some of my bloods results might be down a bit.
This is a big deal, these bloods. Todays bloods will tell me if the half cycle I have taken has stopped the rise in my PSA, or slowed the pace of the rise. If it has then the strategy of me going back on the cancer chemo pills is working and will also justify me not taking any of the other drugs that have been prescribed me, especially the angina (friendly angina! clearly a medical madness) medication. This is a crucial time.
Once home I do the days crosswords and then I fill my drugs wallets for the next two weeks. Come lunchtime I and my partner and eldest daughter go for lunch at one of our favourite garden centres. It is a pleasant break before returning home to find some presents that I had ordered for my eldest grandson in Sweden had arrived. My first chore was to repack the goods and get them to the post office to get them on there way.
With the chores done it is time for me to train. I really do not want to but I can feel myself slipping back into an inertia of inactivity so not training is not an option. I get into my gear and go to the garage and get on board the rower. I am tempted to do just 30 minutes but I know that is not enough so set myself up for a 45 minute session. With another Mark Steels in Town episode in my ears I begin. Once I make that first pull I am committed and stopping cannot be an option. So I get on with it and in the end it turns out to be a reasonable session.
8k+ is okay
I record my session, change out of my gear and eat tea with the family before watching a rugby match, some TV, including an Aretha Franklin concert in black and white, what a singer she was. As I listen to her I start to draft the blog and my partner goes to bed knowing that I will not be gong to bed until my blood results come in. They get posted at midnight when the hospital does its up load. So now its about filling in time while I wait and wait.
The results are in and I am relieved. My PSA has dropped, not a lot, just 0.1 but it is a drop after only 17 days of this cycle. This is good news, my strategy is good and the way forward can be positive. My bloods are not perfect, Urea is still above normal but dropping and my platelets are below normal (due to dehydration) but that is it. I am holding my own, I stand.
This is as good as I could have hoped for, now I move forward.
Wednesday and I get up late to not much to do having done my good vitals. My morning is spent sorting out the Amazon deliveries for the garden and carrying out some admin tasks. While my partner is at work I and my eldest daughter go to the pub for lunch. We have a good first course and a chat and we both go for a pudding. I, in my innocence, selected the Mars Bar Brownie. That was a mistake, I never thought it was possible to pack so many calories into a rectangular block that could fit on a plate.
On the way home I picked up a paper and some stuff from the chemists. The crosswords keep me busy for a while until the evening rolls around when my partner goes out and leaves me to watch a Batman film I’ve not seen before. Inevitably I reach night meds time and the equally inevitable grope around in the dark to remove the various instruments and contraptions from the bed while my partner snoozes blissfully. My last act is to stick my nose strap on and settle down.
Thursday and I wake up late, I had planned a great deal but now I am buggered. By the time I have checked my messages and up for my morning meds its nearly noon. So I have a a quick breakfast and then I head for the garden. For the next four hours I beaver away erecting a new willow screen, planting new camellias, putting the new bird feeder up and stowing the bird seed in the mouse proof bin. Then the newly delivered compost needed housing in the greenhouse and the garden furniture put under cover for the winter. Eventually I had no more spoons of energy and returned to the house. Suitably refreshed I fill my drug wallets for the next two weeks and begin to draft the blog.
The evening will be filled with, hopefully food, and England football team taking on Greece in some competition or other. Along the way I found myself writing a poem but I am not sure what I am going to do with it yet. I am still waiting for the Americans to come back to me for the final final draft of The Cancer Years: Breathless. I’m getting itchy to be moving the process on.
Tuesday and I wake with my partner having gone to work so I take stock of how I am. I seem to have slept okay but feel I have few spoons today and so it turns out. After a breakfast I set about what I can do with the spoons I have, which is as follows, 1. clear the kitchen, 2. put the bins out, 3. Edit the final draft of The Caner Years: Breathless, which the Americans still have not got right much to my frustration. 4, take in the Tesco order and squirrel it a way, 5, train for 45 minutes and 6, finally organise my eldest grandsons birthday present.
This was a hard session, my body resisted, but I got to the end.
I have nothing left by the evening so it becomes Rom Com night. Two unashamedly Rom Coms in a row that the household watch back to back while nibbling After Eight mints. All Rom Comed out the family go to bed while I draft the blog before downing my night meds and have shower. At last I get to bed and hope f or more spoons tomorrow.
Monday and I wake up after a good nights sleep and fairly soon I am up and getting ready to accompany my partner to the gym, she to do sensible exercise and me to have breakfast and sit in the lounge and write letters. On arrival I order a bottle of water and a bacon brioche bun to be told that they have run out of brioche buns, I can have sourdough bread toasted or not. I opt for sourdough untoasted with brown sauce on the bacon. When it arrived I discovered that I know sod all about sourdough bread. One I should have had it toasted and two I should have chosen something else altogether. My consider opinion is that sourdough bread is an aberration and a baking abomination. It is tasteless pap that is beyond bland and tasteless, it is a pointless food best suited to being used as blotting paper. I can’t believe it has become a “thing” amongst a certain group of people.
While a chewed my way through the sourdough wedge I wrote a letter on my laptop to a friend up north. While writing I also listened to another episode of Mark Steels In Town. So this is what I do until my partner reappears, showered and ready for lunch. We go off to one of our favourite garden centres that does the best food in their restaurant. On arrival we discover it is “Golden Monday” where anyone over 60 can get a cheap meal and as a consequence it is pact with people who look like they are on an outing from either A&E or the care home. My partner and I eat and before we leave I buy two camellias to finish off the garden master plan.
On returning home my partner goes off to the dentist and I finish my letters. There is of course a quick trip to the post office to send my letters and to pick up a paper and a box of Tunnock’s tea cakes. Back home I do the days cross words and then sort out some life admin like ordering my usual monthly drugs. With the return of my partner and the evening coming we dine and my partner then goes off to do her singing lesson while draft the blog. I have Mark Steels in Town in my earbuds as I draft the blog nibbling a Tunnock’s tea cake. With this done I take to Amazon and order the goods I need to undertake phase one of project 2 in the garden, so by the end of the week I will ready to go, the only the weather is likely to throw a spanner in the works. This strategy means that I can devote tomorrow to training and further letter writing. While I draft the log I get a message from m y friend who is still recovering from long COVID to say she has caught COVID again, it is such rotten luck. So the evening will pass to the point where I take my meds and go to bed hopping for another good nights sleep. Tomorrows excitement will be the Tesco delivery, which I must remember to update before going to bed.
Friday and I wake up after a reasonable nights sleep. There is a plan for the morning so I take my vitals (all good, continuing the trend) and then I am up showering in readiness to the GP surgery to get my autumn COVID and Flu vaccines. I have time to walk down via the village shop to pick up a paper, I plan a village café full English as a reward once I am jabbed. At the GP surgery I try to book in but they have not got my paper work ready so I hang around while they produce some for me. After a few minutes I am handed a sheet of paper head with the number two and told to wait to be called. Instantly I am waved at and as I walk over to jab station 2 I remove my fleece. A couple of questions and the COVID jab is in my arm adn a woolly cloud attached as I have bled a bit. Within a blink of an eye I’ve got the flu jab in my right arm and this time there is no blood. Fleece on I am directed out of the back door of the surgery.
With the major job of the day done I head for the village café for my full English. I am mortified to find the village café is closed, the owners have had the temerity to go on a three week holiday! I feel slightly crushed I always enjoy the breakfast there and the fact that they only deal in cash. The local pub has opened up one of its bars as “L___’s Café so feeling disloyal but hungry I head for the pub. Actually the place is quite nice and the menu slightly more “fancy”. I order eggs royal and settle down to do the crosswords. That is me for a couple of hours before I meander home, meeting a neighbour on the way who had just returned from Spain to promptly catch COVID. Lucky I had just had my jab!
Once home I am soon joined by my partner and we go off to a garden centre for lunch. There is some shopping to be done and we meander a bit. This particular garden centre seems to be running down and many of the things we were expecting to see are not there. I wonder if it is going to survive its parent companies woes. We return home where I settle down to watch a rugby match and drift into the evening which includes a new series of Have I Got News for You. The household goes to bed and I am left to take my night meds and get ready to go to bed however I stumble over the film Joker and I am hooked. I had not seen it before and I just watch it entranced by Joachim Phoenix’s performance. It is a tour de force and spell binding. Needless to say I had a late night.
Saturday I woke up and felt very stiff from hard row on Thursday, I take my vitals and they are once again good. I breakfast with my partner and then we both head for the garden. My partner plants the flowers we bought yesterday while I get to grips with the piles of rubbish and old pots that have mounted up by the top shed. This is Hippo Bag time So I wheelbarrow out load after load of stuff to he Hippo Bag where the garden stuff joins the disassembled exercise bike that was already in the bag. Its a long several hours as the bag gets filled and finally tied off ready for collection. I am knackered and after clearing everything away I flop on the sofa and stare at the TV where there is a rugby match on. I finish writing a letter and then its time for Strictly, film week. I am not sure why I like it, I think it is the frustrated dancer in me, shame I have no sense of rhythm, or tune and two left feet. I go to bed feeling very stiff and absolutely spoonless. My night meds taken I settle down.
Sunday adn I wake up and damn me I am stiff. I lay in bed waiting for my back to ease and then take my vitals, (all good there). I get up slowly and have breakfast with my partner who then goes off to shop while I clear the kitchen. With my chores done, I get my arithmetic up to date. When I look at the cycle average blood pressure readings its clear that for the last two or three cycles there has been a clear rise in my blood pressure. Since having a break from the cancer meds and starting a new cycle my blood pressure has clearly and significantly declined, by the time of my next oncology review I will have the information I need to argue for staggered cycles to avoid the fatigue building up. With my sums done I watch todays rugby match but I can feel myself getting stiffer. While I watch I order new work trousers, book tickets to Stuart Lee v Man Wulf and renew my PC cleaner software. In the end there is only one thing to do, and that’s to bite the bullet and to train. I get myself into my gear and go to the garage to strap into my rower. I am only going to do 30 minutes so I get on with it. At the end I am rewarded by my best thirty minutes yet.
This is good, almost 6k and I have cracked 1000 strokes.
I am surprised by this session. When I look back at my performances since August when I started to train again I find that I rowed a full kilometre more today. That’s good progress over exactly two months. So despite my feeling stiff and not like training I have come good. Its very reinforcing to se these results so I need to continue to train regularly and to be confident enough to push myself a bit more.
The evening meal is followed by the Strictly results show, no spoilers here but for once the great British public seem to have got it right. The TV provides the wallpaper against which I draft the blog that I have neglected over the last couple of days. The evening passes and then its time to take my night meds and see if I can get a good nights sleep.
