Wednesday and I wake early and do my daily phone life admin while I drink a coffee. I add a Tesco order to that task list and very quickly life is sorted. All I have to do now is eat breakfast, take my meds and I am ready to select this months poem for the Stanza meeting on Saturday (a face to face meeting) and read the instructions for tomorrows PET-CT scan. At the moment I know that I cannot train within 24 hours of the scan so I will be training this morning. So the day is off to a flyer and to my delight I get a message that my new Neil Gaiman novel is only two stops away, so my idle pre scan time is now filled. Life can be good at times. I look over some whiskeys and select one as a birthday present for an old colleague of mine. It might arrive slightly early but I think better early than late.
My new Neil Gaiman book, Anansi Boys, arrives before I leave to go to the garage to train. I am very tempted to start to read but I know I must not get hooked so I grit my teeth and go to the garage.
I settle into the rower and set myself up for an hours row at my soft level. It goes okay, I burn off 800+ calories and go more than 12 kilometres. My new fit bit tells me that I have a 231 PAI (100 PAI necessary for an increased chance of avoiding heart disease, and a whole host of other conditions that fitness wards off) and the same App tells me my fitness age is now down to 45! I am beginning to believe that I am the fittest stage four meta static prostate cancer guy around for my actual age, but I know that some where a fellow fighter will be running an ultra marathon across a desert with only Kenda Mint Cake and a thimble full of water to survive on, so I’ll try to get over myself.
Post session I bring the bins in and then change into my casual reading lounge wear and feed myself chicken soup and cherries. Nothing left now but an afternoon of reading, feeding the hedgehog, or at least checking the hedgehog canteen. I know there is a football match to watch tonight while my partner is out with a friend dining but I suspect Anansi Boys might divert me. That and trying to decide which, if any, poem I take to the Stanza on Saturday.
I was right about Anansi Boys diverting me but I did decide on my poem for the Stanza this month. I copy it here as it is related to both poetry and cancer. Its night meds for me and then bed before tomorrows adventure scan.
I can’t write, I’m uninspired, It’s the cold, the sleet that hangs around my heart. Somehow, I am not working, frozen and iced up. The world holds no interest, no flow or inspiration. So, this is winter Snowed in and Snowed under. When I lose my poetry I’ve lost engagement, I no longer notice, I’m emotionally immobile. It is a little death, the other end of orgasm. Around me the world is 2D And reality is debatable, Nothing tugs, knocks, impinges, I’m hard wrapped in a shell. Inside are unmet needs that dare not say their names, and the Dark and Tricky ripples ominously, whispering, “You are mine”. Gone are the days When a brandy and a decent shag would see the world right. This is what being at war with cancer in your balls does to you. Fuck cancer? I should be so lucky.
