Monday, injection Monday and its 7:30am. I am not at my best as I get up and dressed to go to the GP to get my 28 day injection. I walk down and log in and wait for the nurse to call me in. There is no waiting time and I am soon in handing my boxed injection to the nurse and making small talk as I bare my midriff. This month is the left side and the nurse hunts around for a non marbley area. She finds one but has to withdraw the needle as for some reason the original entry site wont take the injection. The nurse goes in again and is successful this time. I get sort and then ask about the texts I am getting about flu and COVID injections. The nurse skips to the fridge and in a flash I have a flu jab in me. I walk to reception and book my COVID jab for early October. I walk home via the Co-op to pick up a newspaper.
Once home I eat breakfast, take my meds and do the cross words in the paper. I settle down with my latest Toshikazu Kawaguchi book, Before We Say Goodbye. And that is me for the morning, I read it cover to cover in one go. It is the fourth book in a series, sensitively written and very Japanese. I eat toast, and then scrambled eggs for lunch. I get myself to the outside and go to the post office to buy stamps so that the postcards written on holiday can wing their way to their respective recipients. On the way back I move my car off the drive so that Tesco can deliver later. I can feel my injection site getting sore and get myself sofa’d and start to watch more of The Good Place. My watching is interrupted by Tesco delivering so there is some humping of baskets and squirreling of food before I return to my philosophy TV series.
My partner cooks tea and we eat in front of the TV, I am now feeling decidedly crap and sore. I draft the blog as quiz TV was on in the background, followed by a Laura Kunesberg documentary on Boris Johnson. I’m flagging fast and have an eye on the clock and I thinking of going to bed. My number one strategy of sleeping through the worst of the injection side effects is what I will do. Over the next 36 to 48 hours I shall experience what I call my “withdrawing junkie” state as my body copes with the amount of drugs in my system. So sleep and paracetamol see me through.
