Sunday and wake up after a late night watching Strictly on the i-player. Todays the day I start my recovery properly. There is weight to be lost and fitness to be gained before I can declare myself body fit for Christmas. So no more sweets, biscuits, puddings or nibbles till Christmas and regular exercise, for me that means the rowing machine needs to be used and oiled. I g o to the bathroom for the first of the day and then weigh myself. Its horrific, fat boy weighs in at 104.9 Kilos, that is unacceptable. It is a combination of comfort eating sweet stuff during the misery of 8 months of chemo therapy and the bucket loads of steroids I have taken during that time. All of this must change. I get into my training gear, put my ear buds in and march towards the garage and my rower. I strap myself in and set the rower on level 3, the last level I trained at pre chemo, and set the time for twenty minutes, and then I am pulling away.

It goes okay, I am of course tired but happy that the calf muscle I strained three weeks ago has held up and I have managed the full 20 minutes. I sit on the rower giving myself a minute to recover and then take a photo of the machine’s monitor, so I can compare the data with the last time I trained. I make my breakfast muesli and open a fresh bottle of water. I take my steroids with the food but today is special, its the first day of reducing my steroids below five milligrams, down to four. This is the beginning of the tricky bit of tapering off steroids. At levels below 5mg it will become apparent whether or not my body has switched on its own adrenal system or whether I am going to suffer from adrenal insufficiency. Time will tell and I shall be watching out for fatigue and the other symptoms of the insufficiency.

I check how long its been since I last trained and it turns out that it was on the 30th of April this year, that’s 150 days ago. When I compare my performance today to the last training session back at the end of April I find I am only ten metres short of the April session and expended 1 calorie less than in that session. Given what the last 150 days have contained I am pleased with todays session. In a months time when I reduce my steroids again by 1mg a day I will increase the level of effort to level 4 on the rower. If I keep tapering my steroids dosage by 1mg a month I shall be free of them by February and if I am persistent a few kilos lighter.

With the morning exercise and reduced meds done I record it all in my journal and think about cooking tonight’s meal, I ‘m going to cook my special smoked paprika chicken one pot using the smoked paprika that our Hungarian guest brought us, but in order to do so I need to go and get red wine and bacon. My partner who is gardening decides to accompany me so we walk off to the village shop. This is something I have not done in a while and is a symbol of my perceived inability to do things due to the chemo fatigue. My partner and I arrive at the village co-op quite hot as I had worn my leather biker jacket and she her fleece. We gathered up the food we needed and managed the self check out but not before some one came and ratified that this 78 year old was old enough to buy alcohol. The walk back home was slow. I stowed the goodies and then took to the recliner to start the draft of todays blog before watching the Leicester Tigers play Saracens.

My team lose at the rugby and I make my way to the kitchen where I prepare paprika chicken one pot. There is some football to watch while the food bubbles away. The food is good and moves my partner and I onto watching Zero Day starring Robert De Niro. It keeps us going till I take my meds and head for bed. Day one of the “body fit for Christmas” has gone well, I hope day two goes as well.