Saturday and Sunday are days of frustration, there is no sign of my blood results. I fear that I have been ghosted or excluded from the “patient knows best” website. It is run by the Kidney and Urology departments at the Leicester Royal Infirmary and I think I might have been taken off the list of clients due to my discharge. If I am right then it is poor timing as at this moment in time my kidney efficiency is in question. So I feel bereaved as knowing what my blood results are enables me to assess my situation and gives me direct and relevant feedback about my situation. It plays to my high Locus of Control score which means I respond better to intervention when given the means to affect my behaviour, denied the data it makes being proactive and positive much more difficult. I may need to find a new way to access my blood results, perhaps via my GP surgery or the specialist prostate nurse.

Most of the weekend has been spent watching sport, FA cup semi finals, the London Marathon (first ever sub 2 hour marathon, a truly historic moment.), and of course the world snooker championship. My partner has of course been to visit her mother in hospital, which has been tough. My one real effort has been to train on Saturday. I had to do two ten minute sessions due to the set up of the monitor but I managed to do 3.8 kilometres over 21 minutes so I feel I had a reasonable session. This and preparing Saturdays evening meal took most of my energy and left me to while away Saturday evening watching the end of Young Sherlock. I took my meds and headed for bed with the hope that my bloods would turn up, they didn’t.

Sunday is overshadowed by the fact that tomorrow is 28 day jab day. So I am preparing myself for the grim two days that follow the jab. Apart from Tesco delivering I also have six bags of chippings for the garden arriving, so its going to be quite a busy day. In the meantime I fill the bird and squirrel feeders and draft the blog. The rest if the day will be a meander until I have taken my meds and gone to bed ready for an early jab start to the day.

Thursday, another day that seemed to speed by after a very lazy morning and a brunch of pizza and snooker. My aim of course was to train again and I manged to get into the garage gym about 2 o’clock. I was not looking forward to my fourth day on a row but it turned out to be a reasonable session. I was not expecting to get near yesterdays personal best but I came relatively close. I actually managed 3.6 kilometres and burned off 234 calories. I was pleased with this and took my self off to shower happy with myself.

I had time to rest in the afternoon before my partner returned home after a visit to her mother in hospital. Things are still not moving at the hospital and my partner and her brother had a difficult time pinning the staff down and getting any sensible answers. After tea my partner and I plus our eldest daughter go off to the De Montfort Hall to see Darren Brown’s new show Only Human Live. On the way to the venue I had to stop and change into my driving shoes as my wide fit Sketchers slip ins were a nightmare to drive in. When I tried to brake the trainer was catching the accelerator, with a very tricky outcome. So with my driving shoes on we make it to the venue just as the car park opens. The problem stems from the car being built by the Chinese. Small feet and smaller car pedals. My big western feet and wide trainers do not fit. I am fortunate that I had my elegant driving shoes in the car.

There is time to have a drink and watch the audience arrive before we settle into our seats. All the seats had a green and yellow card on them, which later on we had to choose a colour from. I am not going to put any of the content of the show on the blog as people may be going to see it, but I will comment on the audience and the general skills displayed. Darren Brown is part magician, part hypnotist and part cold reader, with a dash of psychology thrown into the patter. I suspect he is also adept at using modern search technology to inform his act. What was interesting about the audience was how the suggestable members of the audience were happy to identify themselves without any idea that this is what they were doing. Of course they get chosen to be on stage and to “assist” the magician. As for the actual illusions and reveals I was personally underwhelmed and felt the various themes that were woven through the act were not cogent. However it was a night out and it was good to be out and about again. I drove the family home and spent a bit of time reading the mildly disturbing pop up Darren Brown programme and eating the Maltesers I had saved from the show. Finally it was time to take my meds and get to bed, tomorrow is busy.

Friday and I am up with the lark, 7:30am and getting an early breakfast and meds before going to the GP to have this cycles pre oncology review bloods done. I drive down and in and out of the surgery in minutes. My nurse who takes my bloods is a wizard. So quick and painless its almost a pleasure. I drive home and relax until its time to go and have my nails done with my partner. We arrive at the gym where our beauty parlour is, have our pre-emptive and then present our selves to have our nails done. At the moment I cannot have polish on mine due to the ridging the chemo is causing. So I settle for being tidied up, hand massaged and a sunshine painting on one of my nails. I arrange the next session and pay before waiting in the gym lounge for my partner to finish. I indulge in a bacon roll and a drink as I catch up with drafting the blog.

On retuning home, minus my partner who has gone to the hospital to see her mother, I have a nice surprise. The Clematis has flowered.

I settle down to do the days crosswords and then read the meters and send off the readings. I think at some point I nodded off but recovered to draft the blog and think about cooking tea tonight. This evening is going to be a slow one, the end of Young Sherlock will be watched and couple of Friday night regulars before I will take my meds and go to bed.

Wednesday and I wake early knowing my partner is going to see her mother in hospital today, however once she has gone I fall back to sleep again and wake mid morning. I check my vitals which at the moment are a bit erratic, sometimes average and at others elevated and I cannot work out why they are varying. I get up and get into my training gear before making my standard two toast and Marmite breakfast. My morning meds slip down and then I am doing odd jobs like bringing in the bins and emptying others. I check my messages and social media and respond where appropriate. There are a couple of quick calls with my partner who is with her brother and carer at the hospital as they try desperately to sort out the future plan for my partners mother. Eventually I get to the garage and get myself ready to row my days twenty minutes. With my ear buds in I set off to the sound of a Pace Setter track. It feels smoother that yesterday as I just ignore the rowing and focus on the beat of the track. At the end of the session I am pleased to note it is my best yet.

I am really pleased with the distance, it is 497 metres more than I managed on the first session 8 days ago and 32 more calories, which in calorie terms is good. This is about a 15% improvement. I have to keep doing the figures as it provides me with feedback and hence the motivation to keep going. Of course being me I am already looking to either upping the resistance level back up to 4 or to extend the session by 5 or 10 minutes. All of this is about how it affects my bloods on Friday and on my response to the chemotherapy, so the next few days are important.

I sit on the garden swing seat with an orange Lucozade and watch the squirrel feed himself from the squirrel feeder. The magnolia remains beautiful and a real fillip to the soul.

Despite it being sunny the wind is chill so I retreat to the sofa and start to draft the blog. Not long after my partner returns from the hospital along with the carer. Its been a long day at the hospital and a frustrating one by the sound of it, with different professionals giving different answers to the same questions and making different discharge plans in the absence of any care plan. So it looks like there is going to be an ongoing dialogue to sort out a credible discharge plan.

Late afternoon arrives and I finally change out of my training gear and ease into the evening . There is young Sherlock to finish. I plan an early night so that tomorrow I can train early and be ready to go and see show in the evening. It will be the first night out I have had in quite a while.

Tuesday and I wake up irked by the fact that I have over slept again, it’s 10:30am. I am immediately on the back foot. The house is empty, partner at gym, daughter at work. I take my vitals. It requires time to relax and get my blood pressure down but it does eventually come down to an acceptable level. My heart rate continues to be elevated, I’ve no idea why apart for it being a side effect of the chemo and maybe an interaction with my lack of fitness/training. I get up and climb into my training gear and then make myself a breakfast salmon omelette with orange juice. I take my morning meds and then settle down to fill my medication dosettes for the next two weeks. Its a slightly tricky task as I have to include the next lot of Chemo steroids into the mix. Mostly it is straight forward, I just have to remember that once I get to Saturday I swap onto the next dosette.

I clear away the drugs rubbish and then head for the garage and the rower. My motivation is low and I really do not feel like rowing this morning. My ear buds get put in and I select a motivational training track from the BBC and set myself up to go. Its a tough twenty minutes. One of those days when every pull is an effort and there is never any rhythm. The end inevitably comes and I find that it has been a reasonable row. Not my best but good enough.

So after what felt like a tough session the figures say I did okay. I have not yet worked out the balance of training days against rest days at the moment. It feels like I should get as many days in as I can, I have bloods on Friday and it is there that any difference will show up. The problem is that it is far too early for any real differences to show up due to training, its going to need at least another cycle before I can expect any observable difference, and even then that maybe too optimistic. Patience is the key here, patience and perseverance. I just hope I have the strength for the perseverance. I sink a Red Bull and relax to recover.

My partner returns from the gym and has lunch while I recover. Once recovered a little I change into real world clothes and drive myself and partner to the local branch of Nationwide. I chat to a bank person and explain that I need an ISA cancelled as it never had anything in it. After a productive chat and a look at the relevant paper work she taps away and then smiles. The ISA is no more but of course it will take five days for the system to catch up, that’s modern tech for you. Its a kind of exercise in learning to live in parallel universes. I realise that this is the first person outside the household that I have spoken since I started cycle 6 of chemo, 10 days ago, that can’t be normal.

With bank stuff done I drive myself and partner to a local garden centre where I head for the grit, gravel and chippings department. I peruse the available bag of chippings to select what will go into the bamboo retaining trench. As it is going to be hidden at the top of the garden there is no need to consider aesthetics. So the cheapest stuff will do and fortunately the cheapest stuff is just right.

In a moment of inspiration I take a photo and head for the tills. “Do you deliver” I ask the till wrangler. “We do” she says and joy was unbounded. So its all arranged, next Monday my chippings will be delivered, so I have no humping to do and Elsie (the car) does not have to bear the load on a journey. I drive away from the garden centre chuffed. I know its an ordinary thing but it gives me pleasure.

Once home I relax and start to draft the days blog, and as I do so I begin to feel fatigued again. I have jotted poems but they are dark and inward, not a pretty sight. I know that they will make it to the next collection, they all will, but for now they remain quietly resting. I ease into the evening with no plan knowing that the next few days are supposed to be sunny. It could be that I spend more time in the garden and the writing Shed. For now I re-read Forrest of Noise by Mosab Abu Toha, a collection of poems that keep drawing me back to them. I shall end my evening as always, taking my medications and heading for bed in the hope of a good nights sleep. With the bins out and the gates shut nothing else is going to happen tonight. That’s a rule.

Sunday, and my partner and her brother go to see their mother in hospital. I lay in and take my vitals before getting up to make breakfast and take my morning meds. I am not feeling as chipper as I could bit I shower and pull on real clothes as I prepare to meet friends for lunch. It should be doable and I am about to leave when I check my messages to find that one of the group has had to go to A&E to sort out a hearing implant that has become detached. As result the lunch gets cancelled. It is a real shame but cannot be helped. It means that I have missed both the poetry stanza and the friends lunch, which is dissappointing.

My partner and I drive to a garden centre and have a meal before we buy some garden boxes and fibre pots to move some of the seedlings on. On return home I get out of me real clothes and revert back to trainers and T shirt. I do nothing, literally nothing. Eventually I watch more of a current drama, which carries on into the evening until the days football highlights are on TV. Then its meds and bed. A day that started with lots of promise that turned into ash.

Monday, I wake to an empty house. Eldest daughter at work and partner once again visiting her mother in hospital. I take my vitals, change into my training gear and make breakfast. I was looking forward to toast but as there was no bread I satisfied my hunger with a scone. I took my morning meds and then made my way to the garage and strapped myself into the rower. Its three days since I last trained so I was expecting a tough twenty minutes. As it happens it turned out alright.

The session is okay, I go further than I have before since restarting and I burn a few more calories. I rest on the sofa for a while until I go out into the garden and sit on the swing seat listening to old radio comedy programmes. Its actually quite cold so eventually I return inside and make myself soup. The post brings me two and one half litres of wood oil and a big bag of peppermint creams, which I stash away. My partner returns from the hospital where it appears that the ward team are not sure what they are doing with my partners mother. It is a source of great frustration. I begin to draft the blog for the last couple of days while waiting for the Tesco delivery and thinking about what processes there might be to apply to my partner’s mother’s situation.

My evening sees a meal and the final episodes of Strangers. A straightforward TV fest although I did scribble the bones of a poem, but I think this one will remain with me. I take my meds and get to bed, tomorrow is a training day again.

Friday, a rest from training day. I am hoping to be fit enough to do things at the weekend. The reality is that I get up late, eat pizza for brunch and take my meds feeling pretty crap. I write a poem, which is not blogable and then spend my time trying to keep myself organised. In the afternoon my partner and her brother go to visit their mother in hospital who continues to try and recover from a stroke.

The garden guy turns up and I get him to start digging out some of the bamboo in the to end of the garden. I make him coffee and we chat for a while about his food bank work. While he is hacking and digging I fill the bird feeders and the squirrel feeder before retreating to the sofa to rest. I feel very tired. The garden guy fills the garden waste bin and donates a couple of loafs of bread to the household before leaving. My partner returns and reports on how her mother is. The stroke has been confirmed and there is now a period of monitoring before she returns to her previous hospital placement for recovery. We eat tea and settle down to watch some TV, Grace and Beyond Paradise before I take my meds and go off to bed feeling decidedly off it. It does not feel as if my rest day has had much effect on me.

Saturday and I wake to a partner struggling with the shower. The water pressure is low and the downstairs shower needs to be cleaned. I get up and adjust our heating system and the shower then works. I’ve had a poor night, needing to get up several times as my gut is off colour. So back in bed I take my vitals, which given the circumstances are okay except the high heart rate. My partner brings me a hot water and I scribble a poem.

519
There is a void,
a deep vacuum 
where who I was
sits empty.
Not lost,
but inert.
This poison
disables me
robs my taste,
speeds my heart
and fatigues me
beyond my limits.
The flow has stopped,
Everything is a distraction
and I am bushwhacked
from all sides
through every sense.
The smelling salts
of optimism
are denied me.
I am slumped in my corner
with four more rounds 
to go.
Across the ring
the opponent grins.
						519 18-04-2026

I get up and make myself breakfast and take my morning meds. I then start to draft the blog for the last couple of days. I have still yet to shower and reset the heating system and have a shower. I still do not know if I am going to go to the poetry today or the lunchtime meal tomorrow. Its all about effort and whether realistically I have the energy or that my disturbed gut will allow me to travel.

At the end of the day I did not make it to the poetry Stanza. I watched a lot of football and rugby. I ate pasta and spent my evening watching The Murder Line, a very improbable Canadian drama series. eventually I take my night meds and go off to bed hoping to sleep. Tomorrow I shall see if I am well enough to meet with friends for lunch.

Thursday, this is going to be short. I wake late and do my vitals and then get up and put on my training gear. I make brunch and take my meds and then get myself up for training. I strap myself onto the rower and get going very slowly.

My afternoon is once more spent working on the laptop and phone to once again re-establish my emails from BT. Its a nightmare journey of BOTS and real remote people. I do learn along the way how to surf the internet incognito. Yes there is an incognito mode. It turns out that my browsers had become over cookied and bunged up with history. So clearing all my caches and histories has helped. By the evening I am just about sorted in time to eat pie and chips and watch the last episodes of Slow Horses. I draft a quick version of the blog, take my meds and go to bed. Tomorrow must be a rest day, no training, just ordinary activity. Tomorrow everything hinges on how my partner’s mother responds to her night in hospital after her latest malaise.

Wednesday and I seem to have slept alright again, thankfully. I am slow to come round but once I do I take my vitals. I seem to be getting back into the habit. A necessary one if I am going to monitor my numbers as I continue to train and take new supplements. My blood pressure remains above what it was before I stopped training on the 1sr of December 2025 but my SATS has risen to 98%, always the first thing to show when I go back to training. So I check my messages and news feeds and then get up. I dress in my training gear not knowing if I am going to make it as I feel fatigued already.

I make breakfast of toast and take my meds before tidying the porch. The snow shovel goes back in the garage along with the compactor tool but I keep the rock salt in the porch. As I pull out weeds from the block paving I pour in some salt to the crack and it stops anything else growing in it. It really works. My tip for the day. I notice the food refuse bin handle is detached from the bin and been left by the waste collectors on the ground. So I set about mending the locking handle. With that done I move my new delivery of compost to where it can be moved to the garden. I think I am about clear of my morning chores when my new delivery of training underwear arrives. So I rearrange my underwear draw and then begin to think about training. My partner goes off to see her mother in hospital with her brother and son after my eldest daughter brings me a paper. I do the first crossword and then get myself ready to train, but a poem interrupts me as a result of the horrible taste in my mouth left over from breakfast.

517
Degarelix kills
the taste buds,
so the world
of food becomes 
flannel and lint.
Oh peppermint, Oh peppermint
You are my oral 
stimulint!
Like Lydia, Oh Lydia
You are my 
encyclopidia
of taste.
Chew or sip
once between the lip
there is no flavour,
no smack, no tang,
no zing to relish
every morsel hellish.
Oh peppermint, Oh peppermint
You are my only
Oral 
stimulint.
						517  15-04-2026

Its a stark choice, train and miss the theatre tonight or not train and go to the theatre. I do not have the energy to do both. In my head there is no real decision to be made. If I do not train my vitals will not improve, I’ll not be able to fight the fatigue as well and I will not make any improvement in the toxicity. So its training for me. I go to the garage, get on the rower, plug Iggy Pop into the ear buds and set myself up for a twenty minute row again. I set off with good sounds in my ears. By the end of the twenty minutes I have improved on yesterday’s figures. Not a lot but enough to be encouraging.

I get out of my kit and down some Lucozade and some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. I take up my place on the sofa and start to draft the blog for the day. There are more crosswords to do. My afternoon is a fucking nightmare. I cannot get into my emails on my laptop or my phone. I spend hours on line to the BT guides. It’s a long afternoon and in the middle of it there is a hail storm that sets my partners car alarm off. She rings me to tell me her car app has told her the alarm is going. This is at the point I am trying to download an install the Chrome browser as suggested by the GP Guide on line. Its just a croc of crap all at the same time. I’ve eaten the tea time pizza and opened the chocolate mini eggs but still no emails. I uninstall everything and then start over trying to use Chrome. Eventually I get to my inbox on the laptop and the phone using Chrome on both. I have no confidence that things will work in the future. I settle down and watch TV until the football comes on. My partner and eldest daughter have gone to the theatre, me not having the energy to make the theatre. I sip cold Coke, take my meds and slide towards bedtime just wanting the day to be over and for sleep to engulf me.

Tomorrow must be a day of rest with at least a small training time.

Tuesday and after a reasonable nights sleep I wake up and do my vitals. For soem reason they are better than the last three days. My partner brings me hot water and then goes the gym. I get up and dress in some training gear before making a toast breakfast and taking my morning meds. The window cleaner turns up and is in and out in no time, its a rip off. I order some new training underwear and then I go to the garage to find the rower.

To be frank I am scared of starting training again and I am hopeless at judging what is sensible so I am unsure what I am going to do. Reason or cowardice wins out and I decide to do twenty minutes on level 3. That’s less resistance then ever before and the shortest time, but I figure I have to start somewhere. The first few pulls are tentative and slowly I try to get into a rhythm. All I can do is grind my way through the time and see how it goes. So I grind away and get to the end of the time. My old routine drops in and I take a picture of the monitor. For a first session since the 1st of December it seems to be okay.

I retreat to the sofa to rest and recover as I start the draft of the blog. All I need to do now is clean the shower head and see what I can manage to do this afternoon. Unfortunately the showerhead is not an easy job and needs more attention. Having got into non training clothes my partner returns and we go off for lunch at a local garden centre.

My lunch selection is chilli con carne in the hope that I can taste something. I am deeply into the stage where my taste buds are wiped out so anything spicy is my choice. I am not disappointed by the chilli that at least provided a tang and a dash of cold sour cream. My body begins to complain about the earlier rowing so once I’ve eaten I just need to rest and my partner drives me home so I can flop on the sofa and listen to I’m Sorry I Haven’t Got a Clue, until I am recovered enough to draft more blog and get ready for the evening. It is a world cup qualifier for the English women’s team against Spain. So my evening will be a mixture of sport and Slow Horses. The crunch will come tomorrow when I assess whether I can train again. Of course there will be night meds to take and with luck I will get an early night as tomorrow evening I’m at the theatre.

Monday, I wake late feeling crap, the chemo is giving me a tough time this cycle. I do my vitals, they are okay but need to be re-trained. I make a brunch and then just set about a list of things to do, life admin mostly. I book my next 28 day injection, my next set of hospital review bloods, I sort out an ISA and then order oil for the wooden gates. I move on to fill the bird feeders and the squirrel feeder before Amazon deliver my new sock collection. I immediately re organise my sock draw and throw out all the old ones, I am now summer sock ready. My eldest daughter has re-organised the garage gym so that I can use the rower, so tomorrow I can begin to get fit again. Following up my research on toxicity I order Resveratrol and copper supplements to take to counter some of the toxicity. Its an experiment, so I will see how it goes. I also ordered my regular monthly drugs haul.

In all this busy activity I forgot to take my morning meds, which I discovered in the evening. My evening was all Slow Horses followed by drafting this short blog and then bed. I did scribble a poem at some point which kind of summed up the day and my fatigue.

516
It’s Cycle 6 
and I am tired.
My taste has gone,
fatigue high
and I’m irritable.
I research toxicity
and discover
Resveratrol and copper 
can lower the poisonous effects.
No oncologist told me this,
it was my nosing around 
that found a research review.
I order the supplements,
no idea what dosage to use
but I guess that’s experimentation for you.
The rower is back in the garage
and I have thirteen days to 
get my blood pressure down. 
This is a crucial time,
a time to find new ways
to fight and to survive. 
All the while the drugs get ordered,
the bloods and injections booked,
the ISAs managed,
new socks installed,
gate oil ordered,
the bird feeders filled,
the garden organised,
shingle ordered, 
and I still hanker after 
a linen suit. 
All the things normal people do
still need doing,
I just need to nap
a little more often
and stay alert 
to what might be my 
last straw to grab at.

					516 13-04-2026