Monday and its jab Monday. How quickly it comes around. I’ve taken my prophylactic paracetamol yesterday and this morning I take more with my usual morning meds. I tuck into a muesli breakfast and then walk down to the GP surgery clutching my Degarelix injection pack. Its 8:50 and on the dot the nurse appears and we debate which side its going in today. After some toing and froing and some consultation of notes and diaries we agree that this month its going in the let side. Apparently the current wisdom is that the injection now goes in to one side of the belly button and not the lower flabbier bits of the belly. After the stuff is in and I have a small fluffy cloud next to my navel we discuss a shingles vaccination. Apparently they come in a live and a dead version. The nurse is keen, I’m cautious so we agree that I will raise it with the oncologist on the 22nd. I return home and settle down to do my admin and have a coffee when my phone rings. It is my friend who is battling long COVID. We chat about the COVID situation and how long COVID is draining and tiring not to mention the frustrating of constantly balancing how to spend what energy is available. While we are talking my partner appears holding our house phone and tells me the hospital are calling. I take the call to find that I am being offered my bone scan this afternoon at 1 o’clock rather than on the 10th of February. I accept, my reasoning, in for a penny in for a pound. The cost will be not going to the gym as this scan comes in two parts.

So I set off to the hospital, to the nuclear medicine department. Its a familiar journey now and easily done. I park and look to see if pay and display is required, not that I have any change with me and the last time I was here there was no IT to take the toll by card. I remember raving about it in the blog. To my surprise the pay stations are all taped up and there is a new brand spanking pay shelter by the exit. There are state of the art cameras which clock you in and then out, if you have paid before you leave at the shed. I skip to the nuclear medicine department with the relief of not having to worry about finding change. I arrive at reception and book in where I ask to abandon my trend built in filter mask for “one of ours”, a bog standard blue thing. Not trendy at all. A nurse appears and takes me of to a clinic room. There is the name, birthday and address check and then the nurse plays seek a vein. Actually with me that’s easy as I have good veins even if they are a bit “wobbly” as one nurse put it while trying for the fourth time to get a catheter in. This nurse pops the catheter in my arm and then disappears to get the radio active marker injection. She comes back and screws the metal keeper into my catheter and then injects me followed by some saline to flush it through. We agree that my come back time will be 3:30 and I leave to tackle the car park IT. Its a breeze once I get my head round it. I pop in my registration plate, tap on the photo of my car and then wave my credit card at the machine, job done. I drive to the barrier and after a short anxiety provoking wait the barrier raises and releases me.

I get home quickly and have soup for lunch as the advice was to drink a lot of liquid. I clear the kitchen, do a cross word and puzzle and then its time for me to go back to the hospital. I arrive about 3:20 and go to the scan waiting area. have The Lost Daughter with me so I settle down to read. A nurse comes out and tells me that I am up in five minutes so I need to go for a piss before the scan. I do as I am advised and then wait to be called. I have taken all my jewellery off and left it at home and changed into a pair of soft trousers so there is no metal on me anywhere. The nurses check my identity again and then I get laid out on the machine. We are about to start when the operator appears and says that they have to put the last woman through the scanner again to capture the images they need. So I clamber off the machine and return to the waiting area and my book. Time passes until the woman appears again and then I get recalled to the scanner room. They tucked me up on the scan bed and lower the camera over me. My response is to close my eyes and drift off, the only thing I need not to do is move, so a bit of a controlled nap seemed in order. Twenty minutes later I am told its all over but to lay tight until they have checked that they have the pictures that have been ordered. A couple of minutes later the nurse is back and tells me I can go. So I return to the car park pay shed and have my second go on the machine. I drive home feeling tired and aware that my injection site is beginning to feel sore.

That soreness progresses. No one wants to cook so we order take away from our local Indian. It arrives in record time and takes us by surprise. Putting the ironing aside we sit and eat our meal. There is NCIS to watch as we wait for Tesco to deliver, which they eventually do and the family do the empty the trays race in double quick time. There is more TV but I am feeling sore and like I have been through the shredder so I head for bed once I’ve done my meds and more paracetamol.

Tuesday, its bin day round here. I wake up feeling decidedly ropey, my gut is sore and I do not feel I have slept particularly well. In fact my fitness tracker tells me I have slept 8 hours 54 minutes but I do not feel like it. I hear my daughter go to work and shortly after my partner goes to the physio having brought me coffee. I check my mail and messages and finally get up for a muesli breakfast. I am due to be in a meeting at 10 o’clock but I have not got the link so I am emailing folk to get the link. Nice people send me the link and then I sit and wait my turn. A drug worker is delivering some drug and alcohol refresher training. Its really good and I now know how to administer naloxone to a passed out heroine addict. Always a useful skill to have if you happen to have some naloxone to hand. Its either a jab or an inhaler up the nose. He also introduced the drugs wheel, which I found really useful.

So the team I am talking to are now refreshed about alcohol and drugs and I do my bit about Enabling Environments. I feel slightly woolly headed but I get through it. I have the over riding sense that the team do not care really, some really sour faced individuals in there looking bored and disinterested. I really am getting tired of dealing with people on teams and zoom, it all feels disconnected and open to abuse. I did a TC review last week and one of the review team never put themselves on camera, rarely spoke and used the “chat” function to make comments. For me that’s just fucking rude and disrespectful to the service she was reviewing. That may not be very woke or compassionate or tolerant or caring but either your able to do a job professionally or not and hiding yourself from colleagues and clients is hardly normal. Its the equivalent of my oncologist seeing me with a paper bag of his head and talking at me with a megaphone from a hundred yards away because he’s feeling a bit “not like it” today. Anyway I finish my stuff and log off.

I do some admin and then I go for a lunchtime walk with my partner round the village, picking a paper and some food up from our co-op. We lunch together and then I get ready to go to the gym. I arrive at the gym feeling sore and fairly crap. Thankfully the club is sparsely populated as the pool is closed. I get a cross trainer and start out accompanied by my randomised i-pod. It goes better than expected , there is a dip in the middle of the session and then for some reason it feels like my lungs open up and I get second wind. It goes well, very well in fact as I set a new personal best. I burn 740 calories and go 9.25 kilometres. Nobody is more surprised than me. I swab down my machine and head for the showers. I am in the lounge drinking my post session americano, black, when my friend rings and we chat about long COVID and what is and is not available to support her. I had read an article on the subject today and shared what i could remember. She had another call so I moved on to the drive home.

I get home, put the bins out, park the car in the drive and then unpack my kit. I’m feeling progressively more sore and tired and head for the sanctuary of the sofa. My partner cooks tea and we sit and eat. I start to write the blog while the family watch the Bay. Its going to be an early night for me as I have a report to write tomorrow and more training to get in.