Monday and I struggle to get out of bed after what feels like a crap nights sleep. Eventually after drifting in and out I finally get up at 10 o’clock and down a bowl of muesli and a coffee along with the morning meds. Apparently I’m going out for lunch. I try to ring the specialist prostate cancer nurse with no joy. I am suspicious as there should be some kind of message service. On checking the number in my phone against the information card I find it is in my phone wrong. I finally redial and get a message service that wants all sorts of identifiers. My message is duly full of information before I get to leave the message I want to leave. Now its another waiting time. My post arrives and every single item is recycling, clearly there is something wrong if all I am doing is throwing the majority of my mail away as junk. To fill the time before I’m taken for lunch I start to draft the blog and in doing so I realise what a cranky mood I am in. Perhaps a cultured lunch in town, the Tesco delivery and a training session will oil the wheels of the chirpier me.

I had forgotten to include over the previous couple of days that I had checked my garden camera for my hedgehog. Not only did I find my hog but I found it with it annual lover. Its quite rare to capture two hedgehogs together as they a solitary beasts and only come together in the spring to mate. Last year I was fortunate enough to get it on camera so I was surprised to get it again this year. Its a sure sign that spring has sprung and indicates that there is still a hedgehog community alive and trying to thrive in the back gardens of Desford.

My partner takes me to lunch in town, actually that’s not quite true as I drive us and pay the bill at the end of the meal. However my salmon starter and tagliatelle bolognaise was tasty and the conversation worthwhile. Once home there is barely time to recover when Tesco comes knocking and delivers. Only one change this week, I get 24 eggs rather than the 18 I ordered as they have run out of boxes of six. Its a random world but I am sure we will eat them.

I return to the sofa and read an article on stereotactic ablative radiotherapy in the Sunday Mail of all places. Apparently a Belfast hospital has found a way of using high dosages of radiotherapy in five sessions as opposed to the usual 20 sessions it takes. They inject a spaceOAR behind the prostate to protect collateral damage to the bowl by the radiotherapy and prevents in continence from the high dosage. I am under no illusions that this will be available to me when I go to my appointment on the 18th of May. I think I am in for the 20 sessions over four weeks no matter what if they accept me for treatment. I guess I take heart that gradually medicine is taking its finger out of men’s arses and doing something useful about prostate cancer.

My partner goes out to meet a friend and to go onto the local speedway meeting. Its a first for her but her friend used to accompany her father to the meetings for years before he recently died. I’m looking forward to the outcome. For my part I am gearing up to go and train despite the fact that my very lunch is having a soporific effect on me.

I always surprised by the way I can distract myself from doing the difficult things. This evening I chose to clean the windows in the lounge. In fairness to me I am fed up with looking at the windows and thinking I’ve fallen foul of glaucoma. I rummage through a cupboard and find the relevant cleaner and then set to. The difference is blinding enough for a St Paul effect. Satisfied I go and get into my training gear but even then then the resistance is there so I decide to look at what is on at our local concert hall. There is a concert that has both Schehrazade and Rachmaninov’s piano concerto No.2 in it. Irresistible so I book tickets. A night of wordless brain feed, what could be better. I finally make it into the garage still feeling sickly full of my lunch and the pineapple juice I washed it down with. I set the session for an hour on my “jogging” level and set off. There was a point when I thought I wasn’t going to make it with out throwing up but I got through it and ended up doing a reasonable session once my stomach had closed down. So over 12k and 800+ calories burned. That will do nicely.

Cool down takes place on the sofa while I up load the pictures to the blog and continue to draft it. My evening will now drift as I recover. This drifting will see me lounge and fill my environment with the equivalent of culture fast food, trash media and thoughtless wall paper until my partner returns from her first speedway meeting.

When all is said and done the only thing that actually mattered today was that I got a response to the message I left for the specialist prostate cancer nurse. My required scan referral has been made and accepted but yet to be dated. So far so good then.