Sunday and I crawl awake at about 10:30. Missed coffee is cold by the bed. I get up and go to the village shop for a couple of newspapers while my partner prepares a bacon bagel and fresh coffee. A long call with our youngest on the i-pad before we head for my partners mother to see her and to chat with her carer. She is looking well and appears to be ready to set a new Zimmer frame sprint record. Good care seems to be working well and setting her well on her way to her 93rd birthday. We return home to coffee cake and coffee on the patio. While sipping coffee I mend a car key. New battery and re-tensioned contact springs, easy really. We unpack the CO detector which we intend to take on holiday, apparently AirBnb recommend it. So in the unlikely event that I am saved from CO poisoning in the middle of a pandemic lets all be pleased. I start the holiday rituals, getting the cases out, ordering socks,checking I’ve got enough swim wear and thinking about what I am going to wear. I mend the zipper on my case and retreat to the lounge. Soon dinner is called and then I settle down to read the papers and get my appointment letter out for tomorrows bone scan. I had forgotten that this scan means getting loaded with radioactive crap and have to wander around for three hours before going back and being scanned. I have to avoid pregnant women for 24 hours. Should not be too much of an issue. So this evening we sit and watch a film about a single father bringing up his daughter called Fatherhood. Imaginative tittle.
I’m tired of this shit but my options are limited. So tomorrow I’ll plough on.
Friday and I get up early as today is the last good weather day before the weekend and that means my last chance to repair the asphalt drive. So a quick muesli breakfast with coffee and I am out in my front garden to start the repairing of the drive. So from 9 till 3:30 I spend my time asphalting the eroded patches of the drive.
Before
After
No holes and bald patches so hopefully it will see the winter through.
During my coffee breaks I watched the garden under the watchful eye of the resident robin and took pictures of some of the plants.
My resident robin
The door step lavendar
Sea holly in full bloom
One of my resident bees
I put the tools away and change just in time to take a call from sister whose birthday it is. We chat for an hour before my eldest daughter continues the conversation. Before I can settle down for an evening of football quarter finals, I get a call from the hospital checking that I am COVID free prior to my bone scan on Monday. I take time out from the football to take a call from a friend to catch up. The football ends and I take to writing the blog. I am confused a trifle as I was expecting more blood results but I suspect that I will have to wait till after midnight before any more are posted on the app. Tomorrow I need to recheck my presentation for Tuesday and perhaps add fish to my community now that I have given them a heater that works.
Thursday and I wake early determined to drink more water before my blood taking at 9:05. A swift breakfast and I walk down to the GP surgery. I get called in and the nurse says she did not recognise me “with my hair down”. The bloods taken I walk home and set about working on my presentation before logging into an online meeting. The meeting meanders and ends with a brief chat to a colleague. I return to making my presentation before lunch. In order relax I garden for a bit and retreat to the shed to write a letter. A quick trip to the post box and I am back at the presentation. I work the evening away waiting for midnight to see if my bloods come through.
12:26 some of my blood come through: GGT (Liver test) 23, in normal range. Hb (Haemoglobin) 122, in normal range. WBC (white blood cell count) 6.8, in normal range. Vitamin B12, 2000, normal range. NeutroP (Neurophils) 3.61, Haematocrit/PCV 38.30. Plats (Platelets) 130, slightly low but not dangerous. So far so good.
Tuesday: England beat Germany 2-0. Roland does work training and works on his presentation and breaks only to train on the bike for an hour.
Wednesday and all day work on the presentation and its still not good. I write up some training notes and then I get a welcome call from a friend and then plough on. Andy Murray wins at Wimbledon, I work on until my head stops so I write the blog. I’ve not trained to day deliberately and I have been drinking water like a camel as I am having a blood test first thing in the morning and I am determined to be hydrated this time and hopefully have better results. After that it will be more meetings, presentation work and if am really lucky a little tarmacing.
Monday, its a work day, so muesli and revision before getting in front of the screen to start a training session. The team log in and we grind out a session till 1:30 when we run off to a new link and debrief. As a team we were not pleased with our performance. There is only one way to recover from a bad session and that’s with a bacon sandwich and coffee. It partially worked. I unwrap my tarmac flattening iron and a pack of work gloves and order enough cold tarmac to complete patching my drive way. While I am ordering things I order a new heater for the fish tank as I am convinced that the current one is not working and contributing to my fish community struggling to maintain an adult population.
I change to train and go to the garage to have an intense thirty minutes, it goes well.
Time & Calories
Metres & Strokes
This was a hard session but necessary
I recover on the sofa and watch a cracking football match till tea and then watch an even better one during which Tesco deliver. I spend some time putting together some materials for my presentation slides and then write the blog. I have one more day of training work tomorrow and then I intend to spend Wednesday writing and preparing my presentation for the 6th of July that will leave me time to deal with my next set of blood tests and the new bone scan.
On this basis the old need to grow faster, I must get growing.
Saturday, its hunt for salad day as we are entertaining in the evening. So after a bacon bagel I and my partner head off to the garden centre and buy salad plants. Its not the most exciting thing to do on a Saturday but hey that’s life sometimes. Once the goodies are stored we shop for a newspaper and a sticky bun for a mid morning break. For me the challenge is then to clean the fish and to start them on another healthy tank regime. So I roll back the carpet, gather up the fish box and set about cleaning their glass and filters. I remove about a third of their water and replace it adding a magic potion to inhibit algae growth and to promote plant growth. So my fish end up being able to see the the outside world and I get to watch them in idle moments when I am in “Power Save” mode. Because I have chosen a menu that requires a burst of frantic activity for two of the courses at the same time I start to prepare the kitchen for the onslaught. I weigh out all the ingredients that I am going to need and get them strategically lined up ready to go. I’ve decide to do individual cheese souffles to start with and they are a bugger to get right but they are to be followed by stuffed chicken breasts with salad and new minted potatoes which means the two dishes over lap in cooking time but once the souffles are in the door cannot be opened. I decide to use both ovens on the range, something I have not done before. So by the time Wales kick off against Denmark I have stuffed breasts in the fridge alongside the Benedictine chocolate mousses I made yesterday and a new fresh salad. They are now embellished with strawberries and whipped cream. The potatoes are in a pot ready to go so I settle down to watch the game. A disappointment for Wales loosing 4 nil. I start to cook and right on cue the guests arrive. My partner who laid the table with our best crockery plays host and provides nibbles and drinks while I whip up the souffles and get them into the oven at the same time as I pop the chicken in. In an “it will be alright on the night”burst of activity everything comes together beautifully. My souffles rise majestically and are the right texture, the chicken takes a little longer than planed for but allows for time in the garden and some chat. The meal goes well through the main and into the pudding meandering into cheese and biscuits, coffee and mints. We repair to the lounge and continue our conversations. It is the joy of cooking a meal for friends and having the time to talk idly without needing to give the table back to the restaurant after a paltry two hours. As midnight looms our guests depart with hugs all round. I go to bed having put food in the fridge and stacked the kitchen.
Sunday and I wake surprisingly early. I weigh myself and get a rude shock at 23.3 kilos, I did not think I had eaten that much last night. I go downstairs and get stuck into clearing the kitchen of last nights debris. I load the dishwasher and then wash our good crockery and glasses separately. The later I stow away carefully until the next time. With the kitchen clear and clean I make drinks and wake my partner. A Sunday morning chat and then toast and peanut butter before I gear up to do a spot of tarmacing. I clear the potholes in the drive and spray them with cold tarmac sealant before splitting open bags of cold tarmac and scooping it out into the potholes. The art is to compact it using a five pound club hammer and a flat trowel to even it off. I’m in my work clothes, steel capped rigger boots, baseball cap and work gloves, today I am making these look good as I artistically fil the worst potholes in my drive. Eventually I am done.
So I make a start on my drive. More will follow.
I have some materials left but I am going to see how my first efforts wear and then I will set about covering the areas that have just lost there top layer. I put my gear away, wash up and dress with the intention of watching a rugby match, but due to COVID in the Scottish team it has been cancelled. So I write the blog and look forward to the evenings football and the revision I need to do for the training session that the team are doing tomorrow and Tuesday. My partner and eldest daughter go to to look at some of the village gardens that have opened up for the weekend. We have been adopted by a thrush fledging which has been sitting on our path for at least two hours. Apparently some fledglings have to spend up to two days on the ground in order for their flight feathers to fully develop. Its tempting to think rescue but the RSPCA is to leave them alone.
This young one is dicing with nature, or next doors cat.
My evening is full of football as the Netherlands crash out against the Czech Republic and I get ready to watch Portugal play Belgium. My coming week is full with training days, consultancy meetings, blood tests, presentation construction and birthday presents to organise. Time will fly and I have to try to keep training. I’ve been reading a lot of stuff about posttraumatic growth in preparation for my presentation on the 6th July. What I’ve read has made me rethink some of my presentation, which might come as a bit of a surprise to my fellow presenters.
Friday, breakfast and a delivery guy brings me the cold lay tarmac I ordered. Then I taxi my daughter to the train station before going to the bank in town to pay a cheque in. Of course I stop in Costa for a coffee and a lemon muffin on my own. I good experience and I am prompted to write a poem on a serviette. This is a good sign of life returning, of spaces in which to think and respond to the world around me. I go home and find I have a new bone scan appointment the day before my birthday. A quick rummage through the cupboards tells me what I need to get to make tomorrows evening guest meal. My partner and I make a dash to the big Sainsburys and gather up the missing ingredients before returning to work. My partner goes off to have her hair done and I head for the garage and the rower. I’m irritated and listless so I set the resistance to a higher level and set out to have a hard hours row. That’s exactly what happened with the result that I row a personal best.
The first time in a long time that I get my HR up to 133
I take a long bath with a bath bomb and let my back soak till it feels easy. I’m just about out when my partner returns and we eat. I give myself time to recover before clearing the kitchen and preparing Benedictine chocolate mouses for tomorrows meal. They sit chilling in the fridge. I return to the lounge and watch a film based on a true story of a Mexican orphanage team who won a marlin fishing competition, which used the prize money to pay off their bank debt and start a girls programme. Its time to fill my drugs wallet for the week and write the blog while the best of Glastonbury 1999 beats out on the TV.
Thursday and it starts with a muesli breakfast and then I am in front of the screen doing the first meeting of the day. A useful meeting but then its on to the next one where we sort out some team arrangements. The morning has flashed by and so after a soup lunch I settle down to read my new book that has arrived this morning. It’s Tedeschi et al’s Posttraumatic Growth: Theory, Research and Applications, and it is a treasure trove of information that I can use in my presentation that I am putting together. I read and make notes until about two o’clock when I drive my partner over to her mothers where I tend the patio pots and she sorts out some banking issues. We go to the local building society to collect a cheque and return to have coffee with her mum. We return home to cook tea and my partner have her singing lesson. This turned out not to happen due to the teacher who had not sorted herself out after recently moving. I watch TV and then start to write the blog. I’m bored, I order a tamping iron and work gloves as I anticipate delivery of cold repair tarmac tomorrow. When all the materials come together I shall resurface some of the drive and fill the pot holes. It will be a relief to have something “solid” to do that has an outcome. More immediately I am thinking about what I am going to cook for our guests on Saturday night. Just the main course to sort out. I send flowers to my clinical supervisor who has just won an award with her company as “The Best Mental Health Consultancy”, which is a great achievement and richly deserved. I’ve not trained to day and I’m tetchy and irritable as a result.
Wednesday and I am awake at 7 o’clock and ready to study. I get my laptop and watch the complete recording of the last training session that the team and I did. This is in preparation for the training session that the team are doing this afternoon. I note the things I want to carry over into the next session and then treat myself to a late breakfast bacon bagel. I read some Posttraumatic Growth literature before getting ready to train in the garage this morning. I decide on an hour long row at a lower level of resistance. Today I choose Radio 4, anything has got to be better than Jeremy Vine.
Metres
Time & Calories
A reasonable mid week row.
I head for a post row shower and get into my latest outfit including a shirt and tie ready for the on line training session. A quick cupcake lunch and I am in front of the laptop eager to perform.
If ever there was a a disastrous non training session this was it. This is part of a national development training, a mandatory training; two staff turned up and clearly had no idea what the training was about and their changing role as a service. The team worked well to maximize what we could get out of the situation, including a new date and commitment to getting the staff there.
The team spent some time processing the aborted session and what we needed to consider for the future. After quite a long discussion we went our various ways. I moved the cars off the drive so that our garden guy could shear the hedges in the drive. There is just time to start the blog and take a call from a friend before tea is ready. and then I move the cars back to the drive. The evening is going to be a football match.
Tomorrow there are meetings to go to but I need to decide to get back on the bike otherwise my back will not take rowing every day. There is also Saturdays menu to be thought about as we have friends coming to dinner for the first time in over a year.
I started to write this blog as a way of dealing with my cancer diagnosis and the journey that this will entail. It was also meant to keep family and friends up to date without having to ask. As I wait for new scan appointments based on my last blood test and my oncologist appointment that has been brought forward I feel that this has become a strange time of a normality set in pandemic isolation. I have a sense of unreality that my blog reflects what must appear a normal life yet I experience it as one of constant threat that has to be considered all the time. Its now 735 days since my cancer diagnosis and 681 days since my first chemo and the start of the blog. My oncologist said the chemo would give me an additional 18 months or 548 days, so I’ve used that up and I am on my own time now. When I think about it like that it just makes me determined to do what I want to do regardless of any pandemic or restrictions.
