DVT DAY 27
Well that was a day. Life has its bad and relatively good moments. The most important thing is that we got news that someone close to the family died this morning. He is the brother of my youngest daughters boyfriend. It is terrible to lose anyone but to lose a brother only slightly older than yourself is a dreadful thing. Being in the situation that we are we have few options to be supportive, we just have to trust them to look after each other and bed themselves. The isolation in this sense is all the more difficult to deal with and feels like true isolation. Of course, we send flowers and a card but somehow it never feels enough, and isn’t.
I sort out my morning injection, have breakfast and then head for the garden shed to write my daily letter. I get half way through a letter and I check my e-mails and to my surprise both Sainsburys and Tesco are offering my a priority delivery slot now that the government has shared their “Shielded” list with them. I immediately get on the web and try to get a Sainsburys slot as that is where we usually go. Could I get a slot, could I buggery, no matter how I tried? Sainsburys had filled the coming week and not released the following two weeks. So I try my luck at Tesco. Not a problem at all. Straight in, I fill my basket, get a slot for Monday and we are a family that can eat and order food for the foreseeable future. So given the ease of Tesco’s I should not think that we will return to Sainsburys any time soon.
In the midst of this I get a letter from the DVT clinic telling when my appointment is going to be and telling me that it will be a virtual consultation. So on a Thursday later in April I will get a call from a consultant who will divine my wellbeing or lack of it over the phone. I will try and be helpful by measuring my calves beforehand and by that time my weight training may have kicked in.
With that small victory under my belt I return to my letter writing. I find I can write letters only for a limited period before they start to sound like idle gossip on a front door step between two people who are being polite but cannot stand each other really. It degenerates into mundane mumbling about the weather, the cost of soap powder and the state of Mrs X hair since she went blonde. So I stop and route out my weight lifting bars from the dark depths of the garage. The collars are rusted and need WD40 to free them. I strip them down and wire wool the rust off the bars and then wash and dry the collars before storing them in the garden shed to keep them dry. The weight are plastic coated and need just a wash and will not rust. All I need now is a new weights bench so I start to surf the net. I find the perfect bench but it cannot be delivered until July!!! I try several outlets and they are either out of stock or cannot deliver now. It is very frustrating but I shall surf deeper and be successful in the end. This is all in preparation for mem to start training again once I reach the 28 day mark of my DVT. I am supposedly able to start to train again after four weeks of self-stabbing. I need to strengthen my upper body and try to build core strength to combat the longer-term damage to my spine inflicted by the cancer. Ultimately if my back goes, I might become upper body dependent, so seriously starting now is a good idea and I have 10 weeks of house arrest to do it in, so with luck I can make a good start.
Time to rest for a while, close the temporary greenhouse and retreat to the house for tea. So the evening begins and I continue my hunt for a weights bench before settling down to watch Joker. Joachim Phoenix is just brilliant in this dark and cleverly layered film. So its blog time and a time to reflect on the day.
