Its Thursday and am up early (for me) as my partner goes to work and I re-park my car off the drive. I am just about home again when the tree folk arrive and park their big chipper on the drive. After a few minutes of unloading their fearsome looking tree kit they set to on reducing the trees, hedges and stumps that we have contracted them to do. I eat breakfast, while they fire up the chipper beast, and then I start to draft the blog to a background of Olympics, where our plucky Brits get going. As I sit and type increasing amounts of tree pass by the window to become fine chippings in the blink of an eye. All I have to do now is not panic as the work progresses and see if there is a window of opportunity to go and collect my next three cycles of chemo from the hospital pharmacy in town. Unexpectedly my GP surgery rings and tells me that they are doing an assessment on my blood thinner usage as they have me blood results back. Apart from asking me my weight and whether I am bruising or bleeding its all straight forward. We agree that I am happy to be reviewed again at some point around the end of the year or at the start of next. I thought that was the end of it but suddenly we are onto my cholesterol levels. I point out again that I am borderline and dropping so going back to training and changing my diet is my preferred method of tackling it. I sense I am not going to get away with it and I am right, there is determined effort to get me to try some statins or an alternative but I resist and eventually I settle for some information to be sent to me. With that over I make lunch and watch more Olympics.
The tree folk beaver away until after lunchtime, the trees are reshaped or remove and the hedges are all clipped and trimmed with straight and exact edges. There is one hiccup, they drop a tree limb onto the roof of one of the sheds and goes through it. I am not surprised the shed is rotten and very mossy. The guy is very apologetic and asks if there is anything he can do. Oh yes I reply and fish out a roll of roofing felt and flat head felt nails with a hammer. Between us we manage to re-felt the shed so at least the roof is water tight for now. It just brings forward the need to replace my sheds, in fact carry out phase two of the garden upgrade. The tree folk leave and soon after the boss of the tree folk arrives to stump grind a stump from a big tree that was removed sometime ago. We have a quick chat and then he gets on and does his thing with his beast machine. By mid afternoon everything is done and I am left to do some odd bits of clearing up.
My partner returns from work and I retrieve my car from its temporary parking place and close up the gates for the night. Of course there is the Olympics on and as I drift into the evening the athletics get going. The evening passes to the point I take my night meds and look forward to tomorrows visit to the dentist to get my new crown fitted. I flunked out last time and postponed it so I hope I am able to complete this time. After that is the collection of my chemo drugs from the hospital pharmacy. So its going to be a full day of challenge and somewhere in there I need to train. Now of course I have a cholesterol issue to juggle, bugger me anything else!
