Friday and I wake up after a reasonable nights sleep. There is a plan for the morning so I take my vitals (all good, continuing the trend) and then I am up showering in readiness to the GP surgery to get my autumn COVID and Flu vaccines. I have time to walk down via the village shop to pick up a paper, I plan a village café full English as a reward once I am jabbed. At the GP surgery I try to book in but they have not got my paper work ready so I hang around while they produce some for me. After a few minutes I am handed a sheet of paper head with the number two and told to wait to be called. Instantly I am waved at and as I walk over to jab station 2 I remove my fleece. A couple of questions and the COVID jab is in my arm adn a woolly cloud attached as I have bled a bit. Within a blink of an eye I’ve got the flu jab in my right arm and this time there is no blood. Fleece on I am directed out of the back door of the surgery.
With the major job of the day done I head for the village café for my full English. I am mortified to find the village café is closed, the owners have had the temerity to go on a three week holiday! I feel slightly crushed I always enjoy the breakfast there and the fact that they only deal in cash. The local pub has opened up one of its bars as “L___’s Café so feeling disloyal but hungry I head for the pub. Actually the place is quite nice and the menu slightly more “fancy”. I order eggs royal and settle down to do the crosswords. That is me for a couple of hours before I meander home, meeting a neighbour on the way who had just returned from Spain to promptly catch COVID. Lucky I had just had my jab!
Once home I am soon joined by my partner and we go off to a garden centre for lunch. There is some shopping to be done and we meander a bit. This particular garden centre seems to be running down and many of the things we were expecting to see are not there. I wonder if it is going to survive its parent companies woes. We return home where I settle down to watch a rugby match and drift into the evening which includes a new series of Have I Got News for You. The household goes to bed and I am left to take my night meds and get ready to go to bed however I stumble over the film Joker and I am hooked. I had not seen it before and I just watch it entranced by Joachim Phoenix’s performance. It is a tour de force and spell binding. Needless to say I had a late night.
Saturday I woke up and felt very stiff from hard row on Thursday, I take my vitals and they are once again good. I breakfast with my partner and then we both head for the garden. My partner plants the flowers we bought yesterday while I get to grips with the piles of rubbish and old pots that have mounted up by the top shed. This is Hippo Bag time So I wheelbarrow out load after load of stuff to he Hippo Bag where the garden stuff joins the disassembled exercise bike that was already in the bag. Its a long several hours as the bag gets filled and finally tied off ready for collection. I am knackered and after clearing everything away I flop on the sofa and stare at the TV where there is a rugby match on. I finish writing a letter and then its time for Strictly, film week. I am not sure why I like it, I think it is the frustrated dancer in me, shame I have no sense of rhythm, or tune and two left feet. I go to bed feeling very stiff and absolutely spoonless. My night meds taken I settle down.
Sunday adn I wake up and damn me I am stiff. I lay in bed waiting for my back to ease and then take my vitals, (all good there). I get up slowly and have breakfast with my partner who then goes off to shop while I clear the kitchen. With my chores done, I get my arithmetic up to date. When I look at the cycle average blood pressure readings its clear that for the last two or three cycles there has been a clear rise in my blood pressure. Since having a break from the cancer meds and starting a new cycle my blood pressure has clearly and significantly declined, by the time of my next oncology review I will have the information I need to argue for staggered cycles to avoid the fatigue building up. With my sums done I watch todays rugby match but I can feel myself getting stiffer. While I watch I order new work trousers, book tickets to Stuart Lee v Man Wulf and renew my PC cleaner software. In the end there is only one thing to do, and that’s to bite the bullet and to train. I get myself into my gear and go to the garage to strap into my rower. I am only going to do 30 minutes so I get on with it. At the end I am rewarded by my best thirty minutes yet.
I am surprised by this session. When I look back at my performances since August when I started to train again I find that I rowed a full kilometre more today. That’s good progress over exactly two months. So despite my feeling stiff and not like training I have come good. Its very reinforcing to se these results so I need to continue to train regularly and to be confident enough to push myself a bit more.
The evening meal is followed by the Strictly results show, no spoilers here but for once the great British public seem to have got it right. The TV provides the wallpaper against which I draft the blog that I have neglected over the last couple of days. The evening passes and then its time to take my night meds and see if I can get a good nights sleep.
