Saturday and I wake up in the hotel bed and prepare for breakfast by downing my morning meds and climbing into jeans as the weather is cloudy and a bit nippy. My partner and I go to breakfast and dig into the full range while sitting almost alone in one of the dining areas. The staff seem a bit disorientated as one of them did not realise they had two breakfasting rooms. It feels like a continuation of yesterdays comic dining experiences at the hotel. Breakfast was adequate and uneventful apart from my partner nicking someone else’s toast that they had left in the toast, no doubt to locate where the marmalade was. Apart from that all went well.

With the car packed we paid our bill, messaged our daughter that we were arriving imminently and set off on the ten minute drive. We arrived to find the youngest grandson happily playing and appearing to be happy to see us. Having settled in, unpacked and had a snack the family went off to a garden centre that has a huge pond with enormous carp in it. We had a snack and a drink and then bought two bags of fish food so that the youngest grandson could feed the fish. Like all garden centres these days this one had a vast array of other goods, some related to gardens and gardening others to anything that the management think they can get people to buy, so there is a mixture of useful stuff and extraneous crap. We duly explore the centre until we had had enough and the youngest Grandson was showing signs of sleepiness.

We return home and before long there is pie to eat before the small one’s bath and bedtime. We whiled away the evening until it was time for bed, when I went into my usual meds and finger splint routine before trying to settle down. I did not succeed very well and I found myself unsettled and having difficulty sleeping. This sometimes happens on the meds I am on, but eventually I got to drift off in a rather on off sort of way.

Sunday, the 200th day of CHEMO II THE REBOOT, the day I had decided would be the last of this phase of the blog. Two hundred days of a reboot is long enough and it is time for a rethink about where I am at with my continuing fight against my cancer. Its serious stuff and quite complex given the goodness of my arithmetic, vitals and so on and the ups adn downs of of my energy levels according to where I am in both of my medication 28 day cycles. Today the family are going out to a mini railway in the forest that has attractions and activities to do, I have been looking forward to it but I wake feeling absolutely fatigued. I have no energy whatsoever and just want to sleep. I am so frustrated but it would be stupid of me to go out, I would only spoil the family day out so the family go with out me and I end up laying in bed trying to sleep. The problem with this kind of fatigue is that at times it won’t let you sleep, so the brain keeps going but the body stops. Its tricky. I try and capture it in a poem, more a scribble than a poem.

441
Every once in a while my cancer
gives me a kicking.
This Sunday I lay in bed as family
go for a day out.
I slept poorly and when I came 
to look in my cutlery draw of energy 
it was empty.
Not a single spoon to sustain me.
There I was thinking things were
getting as good as they can get,
when this happens.
I could weep with frustration .
I've no creative juice
to come up with a dazzling line
or memorable phrase to bury 
this in another's brain,
to touch their soul
or tug at their being. 
It's all flat and prosaic
and once again I slump
with the thought, 
"not again".
                                                      441 13-04-2025

The family return and eat the crock pot meal that was put in during the morning to have in the evening. Once again the youngest grandson is bathed and bedded before the rest of us watch a film together and then go off to bed. I do not bother with my finger splint as I want to give myself the best opportunity to sleep.