Monday 1st of January 2024, New Years day and after Hootenanying last night I wake up late. I throw on my Santa blanket and join my partner downstairs who is well into this years jigsaw. We have toast and coffee as we tease away at the tricky Wentworth puzzle. The pair of us nibble away at the puzzle and are joined by our eldest daughter towards the conclusion. Finally we are there, except there is a piece missing. All of us search diligently for it but it appears lost. We repeat our search and miraculously it appears in a place under the jigsaw board where we thought we had already looked. Triumphantly my partner place the last piece to complete the puzzle. It is another stunning puzzle from Wentworth who include “whimsys” and strange shape cuttings in their jigsaws.

Having finished the puzzle I went to get dressed determined to be active today. I suddenly felt breathless and tight in the chest. I retreated to bed, took my vitals and there I stayed for the next three hours monitoring my vitals. My blood pressure had spiked as had my heart rate. I repeated my vitals frequently until I had evened out. While laying there between measurements I listened to meditation music and the the Madonna top fifty songs on Radio 2. By 4 o’clock I had evened out and felt ok about getting up again to draft the blog and think about the evening to come.

I do not know why I spiked like I did today. It could be a combination of several things, the chemotherapy’s biggest side effect of concern is raised blood pressure so it might have been that. I finally decided that I was fine to get up and re-joined my family in time to do todays crosswords and begin to draft the blog. I note that it is raining yet again and the weather bleak so I am looking forward to watching the televised film of the ballet Beaky Blinders, the Redemption of Thomas Shelby. It is the ballet that I was too ill to go and see in Birmingham last year, when my partner and eldest daughter went to see it. So there is a treat in store for me tonight before night meds and hopefully a good nights sleep.

This is not the way I intended to start the new year, but it is as it is. All I can do is fight on, tomorrow I go to the dentist and hopefully reacquaint myself with the rowing machine and a Tesco delivery. Right now a healthy mundane life will do me and time to get my poetry book done.