Monday and I wake up after what feels like a crap night although my fitness tracker is saying I’ve slept for 9 hours. That is quite concerning because I feel tired and like I have not slept. I get my phone and start my days to do list in bed, my partner brings me a coffee I book next Mondays injection at the GPs, check my prescription order and see what e-mails I’ve got. I check WhatsApps and get myself up. Jeans or loungers? Its a crucial decision. If I go for loungers I could be in them all day and that would be a disaster. I go for jeans and just to try and get myself up for the day I pack my training kit.

A second coffee to take my drugs with and then when I go into the lounge I find my partner has bought me presents and a card. Its the second anniversary of our civil partnership ceremony. Two years ago 17 days after I ended chemo we had our ceremony. I was fat and bloated from steroids and glad to be over the treatment, but it was crucial we were legal and my affairs in order as we did not know how long I had. We still don’t. Apparently a second anniversary is a cotton one. I have cotton scented candles to put in the Shed. I have not bought anything, perhaps my memories of that time get in the way. In September we will have been together for 40 years! That is an anniversary I will not forget.

I’ve just about surfaced when a friend calls who is on the way to Ikea to get chairs. We chat for a time about managing energy and making decisions about what is a priority and what cannot wait. We chat until she arrives at Ikea and goes off in search of what is on her list. I continue to get ready to go to the gym when a work colleague rings me up. We talk about work and how we are both managing it and our future plan for it. Its all about balance, what we want to do and what we have got time to do. Both of us are retired from full time work but both are doing stuff while our partners are still working. I am thinking seriously about what I want to do adn how I want to spend my time so that it balances the time both my partner and I have to do what we want to do. Its a useful conversation and reminds me that I need to have more thinking time. By the time we finish our conversation its bout 12 o’clock and I still have not eaten so I have some soup while my partner adn eldest daughter go for a lunchtime walk.

I finally get away to the gym, and I am feeling very unlike a gym session. I get a large bottle of water and head for the changing rooms. The one good thing about training in the day is that there is room in the changing rooms with only a light sprinkling of the foul mouthed macho arseholes whose brains have yet to ripen. So I change and get up on the floor of the gym. I cross train and do an hour. Its a grim experience, I feel crap and cannot get going, but I grind out the hour. I burn 693 calories and travel 7.26 kilometres. Its an average session and it will do. I use a weights machine briefly and then descend to the showers. I dress and get to the lounge and grab a sofa and a large black americano. On checking my phone I am surprised to get a message to say that Tesco are not going to delivery our order today due to a problem with our bank card. I start to phone and get to talk to folk and at the same time move money to the right account. By the time my local branch gets through to me I have sorted out any problem so when the branch agrees to rerun my order it goes through without any more problems. An interesting interlude while I recover from my session. I finally leave and drive home.

I drink another coffee, light the fire and hunker down to get warm. I do the days crosswords and then watch early evening TV. We eat tea and watch TV during the evening and I start the blog early with the intention of getting an early night. So here I am at ten o’clock working my way towards my bed. Perhaps time to start to read pre sleep. Tomorrow I have a work meeting and then I will need to make the effort to train again. This feels like a long haul and I remind myself that my immediate focus is my oncology review on February 22nd. I feels like the out come will have a large in fluence on what I decide to do about work and my life balance.