Wednesday and I wake after a decent night’s sleep, check my socials and take my vitals, which are all good. My morning routine no includes physiotherapy exercises for my hand. I now do repetitions of “the hook, the duck and hand star jumps” every two hours, so I before I get up I do the first session and then set my phone timer for two hours. Where ever I am or what ever I am doing when the timer goes off I stop and do my “duck, hook, star jump” routine. So with my timer set for the day I get up and make breakfast and take my morning meds. The highlight of my day is going to be visiting the dental hygienist but first there is time to do some odd chores and have a shower. Sounds simple but I am not allowed to get my bandaged hand wet, however I have found the ideal way of keeping my hand dry with a freezer bag and my old friend gaffer tape. I made the mistake today of using the American version of gaffer tape which is far more heavy duty and stickier than normal gaffer tape, so all went well until it was time to take the bag off my hand. I now have a bald ring around my right wrist where the gaffer tape took all the hair and a layer of skin off when I removed the bag from my hand. Next time I will stick to the thinner UK gaffer tape, it will be kinder to my skin.

Feeling refreshed and having unblocked sinks and refilled the soap dispenser I got dressed and took my hair out of its plait and put it back in its pony tail before settling down to start to draft the blog. I realise that this is a lot of trivial detail but I suspect that this is me dealing with my anxiety about going to the dental hygienist. I am sure that all that metal on gum activity cannot be good for me, nor can the jabbing needles into my gums and hearing the word “bleeding ” is useful. What actually pisses me off is being patronised like a five year old and treated as if I do not know how to clean my teeth and the insistence that I should be spending precious time buggering about with those little “flu” brushes every day cleaning between my teeth like some Mary Poppins chimney sweep. With stage four metastatic prostate cancer I do have other things to concern my self with, like staying alive, exercise and making the most of life. Of course I will give my teeth and extra clean before I go but it is futile as I know I will get the same comments from the hygienist about my 76 year old nhs dentistry mouth. The only thing that gets complimented is the 6 crowns I paid for and I know they are itching to get to my one nhs crown which has been in since 1981 and is still pearly white and glows in UV light light a fang.

I return from the dental hygienist having experienced all the things I predicted except the cost, which was high for the time and attention that I got. Due to the practice having a training time I had time to pop into my local Co-Op and buy a paper and some lunch before returning for my overpriced teeth attention. Having returned home I ate and did the days crosswords and then began to research ISAs spurred on by the rumours that the government was going to raid them soon for extra revenue. By the end of he afternoon I had a plan, which means I will have to go to a building society branch and have a chat. Having constructed my plan I rang the hospital that are taking my stiches out of my hand tomorrow to ask if I will be okay to drive after their removal. After being bounced around a bit I got the message that I will be fine to drive, so all that remains is to get myself across town in time for the appointment in the morning. the traffic is very unpredictable so I could be really early or embarrassingly late. With all this out of the way I settle down to read the letter from a friend which arrived today. It is my friend who writes in green ink and she brings me up to date with what she has been doing and how her preparations for her garden in Spring are going. I just love getting letters, its such a buzz to open them up and read them slowly in a quiet moment knowing the effort that has gone into them.

My returns from visiting her mother with her brother and after time to decompress we eat tea and hunker down for the evening, me to watch the last ever derby between Liverpool and Everton to be played at Goodison Park. After that it will be night meds and bed for me as my hospital appointment is and early one. I will perhaps be able to share on the blog my operation scars or not depending if they wrap my hand back up again.