Wednesday and I wake up feeling reasonable. I make drinks for my partner and me. I check my vitals and then we chat about breakfast and the day ahead. We eat croissants and strawberries before taking stock of what food we have in. The crisis is that there are only three tea bags left so shopping is a priority. I take my morning meds and then we wander off to Tesco to pick up our needs. We take the long way round and on the way we pick up presents for my partners friend and I grab some more postcards.
Back at the apartment we store the goodies and I set about the crosswords. Today I am on fire and zip through them. By lunchtime it is decided that we will have fish and chips so we wander round to the chippy for their boxed meal. Clutching the boxes we return to the apartment only to find that the mushy peas had been missed out. We managed without. Post late lunch I wrote the postcards. There will be some surprised people who have not heard from me for years and perhaps others who will be surprised by a second card. My partner and I walk to the post box and get there in time for todays post, mission accomplished we walk along the seafront path to the “haunted house” and back to the apartment. My gut does not feel right and sure enough there is blood in my urine. I am gutted, I wanted to exercise to day but cannot now, it’s becoming wearing this unpredictable symptom of god knows what. All I can do is drink water and rest.
My partner and I go to the ice cream van and sit in the evening sunshine with our 99’s and soak up the sun as we watch the tide recede and the beach gradually appear. Back at the apartment I drink more water and monitor myself while beginning to draft the blog. There has been odd emails to solicitors and agents to do today but not much else life admin. I slip into the evening where I and my partner will finish watching A Spy Amongst Friends, eat supper late and go to bed hoping for sleep to engulf the night. I’m tired already and feel drained, it feels mental as much as physical and it probably is. I’m aware that tomorrow is our last day of holiday during which we will do things for the last time this holiday, pack, perhaps load the car before going out to eat in the evening. At the end of a holiday I get twitchy and reach a point where I just want to be on my way and get home, I’ve a strange urge to row, collect my next lot of drugs, attend the poetry stanza and see my garden again. It boils down to being in control and able to manage in the space that I feel is safe. That’s the underlying anxiety associated with managing my cancer as best I can.
