Tuesday and I wake to the sound of my partner going to work to be quickly followed by the arrival of the builder badgers who have started work on the front drive and building the new entrance pillars. I take my vitals and take some time to write and to read. I read the first section of rupi kaur’s “the sun and her flowers”. She is a poet made reference to in the book Yellowface that I have just finished reading. I was intrigued so ordered it and thought it might be a an interesting way to find new brain food. The collection traces the aftermath of a broken love relationship. This collection contains sketches by the author as well, it was apparently a Sunday Times best seller and was published in 2017. I am intrigued by the style and the format.

Whether it was reading poetry or reflecting on the family at the moment I find myself jotting one of my own.

393
I wake up expecting poppies
the platoon has scattered
each wounded in their own way 
and all seeking safety.
The battlefield is strewn with dangers,
survival is tenuous.
Bound together by blood 
it’s the fear of loss
that pushes one foot forward.
Some wander seeking aid,
a nurturing, saving hand
that will guide us back 
to the regiment of family.
Field dressings have been applied
with promises of care to come.
No need yet for a stretcher
or the surgeon’s skill,
yet here we are hurt
and disconnected
our individual  pains
driving wedges between us
as we crave care and attention
but feel unable to reciprocate.
So tired
so exhausted
by the pain
that no one can take away.
We are isolated
fearing stepping on a mine
as we look out over
the killing fields
of life, right now. 
								393 21-05-24

Finally I get up, breakfast and give the badgers coffee before taking to the sofa office. It is here I attempt to settle and to do so I start todays blog but to be honest I feel ropey. Soon its time to oil the badgers again with more coffee. I clear the kitchen and settle on the sofa where I start the days blog and tidying up my paper work. My meds are taken and note that I am back on the blood thinners after my three days off them to aid my recovery from the Uluru (Bladder stone) attack. Lunch time comes around quickly and then I start to try and record a video letter to a friend. Initially I have trouble with the sound level and some interference, but eventually after trying various solutions I change which laptop I use and the start. It takes me three goes to get the letter recorded through a mixture of inept techno management and dissatisfaction with the content. Finally I get a one that feels about right. Once the letter is on a USB stick I get it in to an envelope and take it to the post office. The short walk is a real challenge for me, I return home spoonless, it disturbs me.

Just as I settle down to do the days crosswords I get a phone call from a friend who I’ve not had a chance to chat to recently. It is a brief conversation as she has to collect her daughter after some shopping. It is good to hear another voice adn to hear someone talk about how they are and what it is going on in their lives. After the call I get on with todays cross words until the builder badges wave good bye. The front drive is beginning to take shape.

The evening arrives and I am still feeling under the weather, mostly my gut aches, but it’s having to have to deal with a lot at the moment in terms of the drugs in my system. I eat tea and return to the blog to a TV background and the wait for Tesco to deliver. Again I shall work towards taking my meds and having an early night. I will of course watch the great British Sewing Bee.

Monday and I wake earl to find my partner has already got up and moved her car to accommodate the builder badgers, but she is not feeling. I get up and have breakfast, check my vitals and then clear the kitchen. My partner goes back to bed to try to sleep. The badgers arrive and I make them coffee before they start to finish off the slab laying on the patio and the back apron of the house. Its looking good and I am feeling good with the decisions we made to do this work. I am still in rest mode and think, tentatively that I am recovering from my latest Uluru attack, although I am still felling quite sensitive but I am not in pain. So while my partner rests I continue to read Yellowface. A brief lunch and more Yellowface until at 3:30pm I finish the book. It is a cautionary tale and satire on the publishing industry, given to me by a friend to warn me of the dangers of success should my slim volumes of poetry ever sell. We both know that won’t happen so the book was a kind thought and a tease. It though worth a ready and has it quite funny in parts. Its a soft read and easy read, something that you could take on holiday.

Having finished my book reading, I replaced batteries in the blood pressure monitor and started to draft the blog while my partner kept track of how her mother was doing in hospital. She has recovered well and is due out late in the evening and will be greeted by her original carer from Greece. Hopefully that will go smoothly.

The builder badgers leave for the day with the patio nearing completion and the back drain re-configured it is looking good and with luck will be complete apart from the electrics on Wednesday. Tomorrow they start work on the front drive. So the early evening arrives. I had toyed with the idea of going to to the local family history group, which meets in the village library tonight, but I am not up to it. I do not feel well enough yet to be meeting strangers and talking family histories and genealogy, so I shall pass on that and save it for another Monday night. So far there is nothing from the Americans only an acknowledgement of receiving my edited draft of Herod’s Children Crumulent Collection (HCCC), so all I can do is wait for them to send me a cover design and a final draft to edit, after which we can press on with The Cancer Years: Some Rough Stuff. Going forward I think it is likely that I will just write for the Cancer Years series, it feels as if I have mined my other poems as much as I can unless I decide my juvenilia is interesting enough, but I know it isn’t, its more like Vogon poetry, hideously juvenile and toe curlingly embarrassing.

Tonight is to be a rest night, all I need to do is amend the Tesco order for tomorrows delivery, take my meds and get an early night if I can. Recovery is slow so I need to be patient and remain focused on doing the right things.

Sunday and there is no lay in, I get up early so I can have breakfast and take my antibiotics and my other meds. I find out very quickly that my bladder stone (Uluru) is still at work giving me pain but at least the hematuria is abating. My day is slow, I try some time on the garden swing seat in the sunshine while my partner goes to the gym. I tidy the kitchen before retuning to the sofa to rest. I am really trying not to take co-codamol but the pain gets to me and I give in, they are pain killers after all. So I meander, I write, read and watch sport, all interrupted on a regular basis by my discomfort. My partner cooks tea and we eat but against the background of my partners mother being taken to hospital, so the evening will be an anxious one. It seems that this is one of those difficult times, so I need to breathe and be as proactive as I can. I share my poem of the day and that will be the blog for today. My usual routines will now kick in and will culminate in my night meds and bed, providing my partner and I do not have to get up in the night. It feels as if this is a time to dig deep and do whatever is necessary.

391
Half man half medication,
not even half man 
since my chemical castration,
still trying to contain the noise, 
the emotional flack 
from family faltering.
Encouraging the living to live
and to go into the world. 
All I crave is peace and quiet, 
to be in the moment 
as my blood pressure monitor
hums and pumps to reveal
if my arithmetic is good.
There is me and there is 
Co-codamol me
alongside all the other
drug me’s. 
A nasty mix of mental 
states and constipation,
listlessness and anxieties, 
that I do not recognise 
but others have to live with.
Save yourselves,
take to the life boats
and row for shore
far off where mermaids sing
and pixies dance.
Where ripples of me 
can come from the moment 
of joy when the stone 
dropped into the mirror pool
and there was the wonder
and excitement
of a me that 
sang and danced full of curiosity.
Bright colours and not a drug
in sight.
This transition is up hill
as slowly I am no longer
Sisyphus but the rock.
Let it roll, no one
need any longer labour,
go and play while you can
and let the boulder 
come to rest. 
The peak was always precarious 
and the view, to be honest, 
was not that great.
It is erosion that will take me,
shelter yourselves from the elements
and take warmth by
others fires, for this is nature
on chemo and pain relief. 

						  391 19-05-2024

Saturday, I am up earl to shower, eat and take my antibiotics. I check my messages and then I print out the last remaining poem for the afternoon Stanza meeting. I spend all morning editing the draft of my next poetry collection, interrupted by my bladder stone (Uluru) from time to time. Gradually my hematuria appears to ease. My afternoon is spent at the poetry stanza, a zoom event today. Again this is interrupted by Uluru. This current bout of discomfort is debilitating and I find myself running out of energy quickly. There was lots for me to think about in the Stanza meeting, I had not thought about how my poetry might effect others but today I was confronted with the fact that some of my stuff has influenced at least one person to write a particular poem with some difficult content. The evening was just an evening to get through, all I could manage was this brief blog and taking my night meds. I’d give anything for a night of straight eight hours sleep. When I get this fatigued from my body attacking me I get vulnerable and distressed, which I deal with by withdrawing into myself, the Chinese box.

Friday and last night I slept in the spare bed as I fought off a Bladder Stone attack. Uluru has come out to play. For those new to this page, Uluru is the name I have given my bladder stone. Bizarrely I thought I was alright in the morning, at least well enough to re-park the cars off the drive in anticipation of the builder badgers arriving. However I soon found I was passing blood again as the pain was back and it was very noticeable. I take co-codamol and ring the doctor. No I am not well enough to come to the surgery, yes I can get a urine sample to you, yes I will take a telephone call this afternoon, and so it is done. After a while I take a urine sample and it is very red with blood. My partner immediately takes it to the surgery and in a few minutes I get a call to say the doctor will ring me in the next few minutes. In the meantime I go to the toilet again and this time its even bloodier. I start to draft the blog while I wait, I think this might be a long day one way or another. At least the builder badgers have started to lay the patio slabs.

Never rains but it pours, my son messages me to say Swedish immigration has rejected his residency application. That’s what Brexit has done for my family! All this while I wait for the GP to ring me.

By lunch time and early afternoon I am still waiting to hear from the doctor. Uluru continues to make itself know as there is no diminution of the hematuria but a little less pain, so there is something to be thankful for. The last time I went through one of these Uluru attacks it took ten hour before the blood stopped appearing and by the look of things it’s going to be at least that long this time around. So I continue to rest, drink hot water and keep myself amused by checking and sending emails and drafting the blog. The builder badgers are cracking on and slowly the new patio is being paved. Every so often I get the urge to nap but I am afraid I will miss the doctor’s call and/or worryingly just slip into a deep sleep or coma.

The GP rings. Its all a bit predictable, as I thought I am prescribed antibiotics as I am a high risk person. We agree that stopping the blood thinner for three days is good and that if my hematuria continues into Monday or Tuesday I need to go back to the doctor. If I get fevourish I need to get seen. The antibiotics are prescribed and sent to the village pharmacy to be collected in two hours. My partner goes down a bit early and picks them up for me. While she is doing that I fill my drugs wallets for the next two weeks, omitting the blood thinners for the next three days. On my partners return she cooks me filled past as I cannot take the antibiotics on an empty stomach. I eat quickly and get my first does down me. All during this my bladder takes me to the toilet regularly and continues to show hematuria and provide some discomfort.

As early evening arrives I return to the blog and draft some more. My evening is predestined to be one of constant water drinking and some TV before taking my night meds and trying to get a nights sleep. I feel exhausted, it is really debilitating to experience the hematuria and the pain every time I go to the toilet, so I keep reminding myself that this to will pass. Tomorrow is a poetry stanza meeting over zoom, I’m hoping to be mended enough to attend.

Thursday and its oncology review day, after a crap night, when I got up for pain killers to help sleep, I get up early. There are cars that need to be moved so the builder badgers can receive a load of building materials to finish off the patio and the driveway. Having moved the cars I make the badgers coffee and then I have a breakfast of muesli in the hope that it will settle my stomach. With the basics out of the way I check back through the blog to be sure about the dates of my recent antibiotic interludes and re read the urology report. All of this in readiness for the telephone appointment with the oncologist somewhere between 9:20 and 11:20. I know my arithmetic is good but I’m getting worse in terms of life quality and I want to know why they did not pickup on the bladder stone and the possible connection to my Hematuria. So with my ducks in a row I start to draft todays blog while I sit and wait for “He who made a pact with the devil ” or one of his minions to ring me. That’s when the arm wrestle will begin, except there will an oncological shrug of the shoulders, three more cycles of “chemo” prescribed and a promise to ring me in three months time. What else can they do? They could acknowledge the over sight of my bladder stone as a contributing factor to my Hematuria, but they won’t, I do not think they are big on candour. So I wait.

About 11 o’clock the phone rings and the voice of the oncologist says hello. I tell him exactly how I am and he express his regret, however as predicted my arithmetic is all good. We discuss the most probable cause of my hematuria, a cancer v bladder stone discussion. He does the equivalent of “not me gov” as he argues that it is most likely the the bladder stone because my arithmetic, in particular my PSA containment, is so good the bladder stone is the most likely cause. We agree for another three months of the “Chemo” and a call in three month. And that was it, as predicted.

I immediately ring the urology department and try and get an idea of how long I am going to have to wait for my surgery. No one can tell me. It all depends on a surgeon reviewing my case and putting me on surgery list for a particular date. Not until the surgeon has done this will they send me a letter with a date. There is no way of predicting how long this will take, so all I am expected to do is wait.

The rain is falling and the builder badgers leave to cut slabs to size in the dry of their depot. My partner finishes work for the day and we decide to go out for lunch but not before she gets wrapping paper for her brothers birthday present and has wrapped it. This done we go to our local garden centre for lunch. It is pleasant enough but my back aches and I feel tired from the terrible nights sleep I had last night. To make it worse I think I am beginning to get an attack of painful pissing although there appears to be no blood. I drive my partner to her brothers house and we pop in to deliver his birthday present and have a chat. Its all very pleasant and its nice to chat to someone other than my partner and eldest daughter. When I get home I am desperate for the loo and its painful. I return to the draft blog but I am soon interrupted by my bladder demanding an emptying. I obey and find it painful so without hesitation I down a co-codamol and continue with the blog, whilst drinking copious amounts of water. This could be a long backend of an afternoon and evening. As the evening goes on its clear that I am having another bladder stone attack. It going to be along night and more co-codamol.

Wednesday and I am roused by the sound of the Big Grabber working away and eating up the spoil pile on the drive. Big grabber was supposed to do this last evening but did not arrive to the builder badgers surprise. So I am awake and watching as Big Grabber goes to work, nothing like watching a plan come together. The operator is extremely dextrous with the monster machine, it is worth watching and appreciating.

My partner misses the spectacle as she has gone into work for the morning and will later visit her mother as usual on a Wednesday. Just as Big Grabber leaves so the builder badgers arrive, whom I make coffee for before I make my own fried egg sandwich breakfast to go with my morning meds. The Badgers finish the brick work on the patio and I start to tidy and organise my sofa end office ending in a bout of shedding. I am not feeling good today, I feel tired and breathy and it is difficult to get going today, its like having indigestion all the time, maybe it is. At 10:30 Big Grabber returns bit this time it is here to tip a load of base material for the path and the patio. The badgers are delighted as they have just finished the brick work on the patio and so they are ready to spring into action distributing the base material over the drive and patio. They go at it full tilt until about 4o’clock. Tomorrow is the big day when the block paving arrives along with the patio paving. Its creation time.

I finish my office organisation and then have a shredding session to get rid of a load of old documents. every so often I have to clear the decks and rejig my working space and the things I need close to hand when I am not feeling that good or need to rest a while. Todays effort will see me through for a while, at least until the builder badgers have finished their work and I can get back into the Shed or on the new patio.

Trying to keep up with my emails I check in and also send a few to family and friends while watching the big pile of base material get spread over the shape of the new driveway. It feels like real progress is being made. Lunch time comes and goes, I watch a couple of opera excerpts, one of which is from the Magic Flute by Mozart. Some people thought he wrote it as a joke but people actually managed to sing it. It is the Queen of the Night Aria and it just astounding.

JUST AMAZING THAT A HUMAN CAN PRODUCE THAT SOUND AND IN SUCH A CONTEXT.

I read for a while before starting to draft todays blog. The builder badger have worked hard and hit their target today, so going from a bomb site they have reach the creative stage where the top layers go onto everything they have done so far, now it is possible to see the vision, and I like it.

I promise no more building pictures until it is complete, I am guessing people are bored with them by now. My eldest daughter needs a lift to the GP as her foot is troubling her where her tendon is injured so I prepare to be “dad to taxi”. When we arrive at the GPs there is only one other person waiting to be seen so my eldest daughter is called in immediately. No panic, just more movement required. We return home relieved.

I have forgotten to say that yesterday there was a very important event in family, namely my youngest grandson made his first proper crawl. I am of course doing proud grandfather.

My partner returns home from work and seeing her mother and so the evening begins, which will include Race Across The World, anything else will be random and subject to change on a whim. Except of course the Tesco delivery, which the delivery guy will have to lug over the base material of the new drive. It feels like a long day when I have not been on form so I am hoping for a bit of a read and an early night. Of course tomorrow is my oncology review, clearly I have left the best to last, but I am feeling fatalistic, its difficult to feel you are being taken seriously over the phone. The message is in the media as Marshal McCloughan said and being treated for metastatic stage 4 cancer over the phone feels very much like “we don’t give a toss as long as your PSA is down and your blood pressure is not up”. The reality is that they have no more magic to offer so why would they bother when their potions and spells will work on others more saveable. So it is increasingly difficult to get myself up for an in depth chat when I know they just want off the phone having prescribed me the next three cycles of “chemo”. I am buggered really because all my “arithmetic” is good, especially now that my hematuria seems to have abated and I am not getting pain when I urinate, which is good, and I am just waiting to have my bladder stone removed. It feels like a Mexican stand off. In the meantime I put on weight, get less fit and become more sedentary. Yep it feels like a Mexican stand off.

Tuesday and I wake from another disturbed night. I also wake late so take my time doing my vitals before finally getting up and having breakfast. This is a big day for the builder badgers they have to level everything and take delivery of all the hard core for the front drive and the patio. By the time I am up they well and truly moving the earth but the big grabber has not turned up.

I start to check my emails and find that some poems have come in for Saturdays poetry Stanza meeting, which I file. I send messages to a friend whose daughter is having her tenth birthday today and wish them well and then I set about deciding which, if any, poem I will take to the Stanza. I read through some of my recent stuff and decided I’m not brave enough to go public just yet with some of it so I write one for the meeting inspired by reading my own stuff. This disease I have drives me to be very self obsessed and I feel uncomfortable about that, I think this one almost avoids it, almost!

390
Its Stanza time 
and I read through
my latest.
Fuck me they are miserable
and self-obsessed.
I do not really want 
to take these to nice people.
I know they are adults,
I’ve read their poetry
And Googled them.
Perhaps this is more;
more me again,
or that life long 
career of looking after others
and trying to be useful. 
It would be different 
had I been a marine biologist,
I’d be all dolphins and whales
and wonders of the 
natural world.
I’d write “hello birds and trees”
poetry and wade
in hosts of golden daffodils.
Unfortunately, the mirror
No matter its frame
Reflects the same.
Bugger me, it's me again. 

								390 14-05-2024.

Not a classic but believe me it’s a more comfortable read than some of the recent stuff, it’s why I’ve called the next collection in the Cancer Years series Some Rough Stuff. I start to read the surprise book I received from a friend yesterday, Yellowface, and soon become engaged with it, who wouldn’t when someone chokes to death in a drunken pancake eating contest. I am distracted by the big grabber that eventually turns up to remove the overnight spoil heap. I watch fascinated like a child and admire the skill of the operator.

Once the big digger is done the badgers get on with making a new pile to be collected this evening, they work all day to create another spoil heap and eventually wave us good bye for the day saying “Big Graber” should return to night to remove the new heap. Apparently tomorrow a load of stone for the foundations arrive and Thursday all the finishing materials arrive. I just hope it all goes to plan. I return to reading Yellowface for a while before starting the blog for the day. So I drift into the evening not knowing if this is to be a TV night, a Rom Com night, a mindlessly violent film night or whether I shall read, however I have an oncology review over the phone some where between on Thursday and I need to think about what I want to ask or know before hand. I’ve spent part of this morning inputting data into my blood pressure and vitals spread sheet so that I can work out my averages over this cycle so far. There has been no change, my blood pressure is still within limits for me and has shown no changes, which is good news. So once again my arithmetic looks good but my subjective feeling is that due to my inability to train I am becoming fatigued and fat, which of course is a vicious circle, but if I train, I risk hematuria due either to my overlooked bladder stone and/or my cancer. Its been five days since I’ve experienced any discomfort and it was the 29th of April that I last noticeably bled so I have no idea what’s going on really. I have moments of being tempted to just get on the rowing machine and see what happens. Perhaps I will wait till after the review. Until then I remain on course with the Americans to do my books and to keep my head in good shape. In the immediate here and now its food, medication and entertainment. Roll on the Olympics.

P.S No sign of big grabber yet I have feeling the badgers maybe very ungruntled in the morning.

Monday and I wake early to a sunny day. My partner is up and on her way out to work leaving me to take my vitals and then get up lazily. The builder badgers have arrived and are soon into full on digging up the front drive. I make them coffee and make bloke type chat, you know the sort of thing, “how are you sleeping”, “would you like some camomile tea”, “did yo watch Eurovision?”, to which they respond “that would be nice and I was pleased Nimo won”. I watch one of the them cut through the tarmac on the drive with an absolute beast of a machine and think “that will ruin his nail job”. So a real blokey start to the day.

Back indoors I put in my earbuds to protect my ears from the destruction going on outside and make breakfast. I have gone back to having muesli, yoghurt and honey for breakfast, it seems to be a better option than toast and other options. The badgers busily dig as I watch them from the lounge and chat to my eldest daughter. As the noise of the badger burrowing gets louder my daughter retreats to the back room and I turn up the volume of my ear buds and start a to relook at the first edit of the Herod’s Children Crumulent Colletion (HCCC). With that done I start the days blog. I have not got much, if anything on my days to do list so I expect to have a slow reading and writing day.

All the while the drive way becomes more and more like the Somme, boy do these badgers know how to dig. By lunchtime it looks like nothing will ever be able to be made good again.

After lunch I get on with updating my poems. I have two or three that need to be put on file and are the start of what will be the third in the series of The Cancer Years collections. As I am transcribing two poems the head badger draws my attention. He asks me if I knew I had a manhole. I tell him there is one down the side of the house to which he responds “no not that one”. It appears there should have been a proper manhole cover over it but who ever put it in just put a concrete slab over it. I am as surprised as he was at the find. We then do man talk over a hole to consider its state and what corrective action is required and how it can be done. We reach a solution and a manly understanding. The badgers have also found that the front drive Tarmacing has been done over soil, which means another spoil heap needing to be moved before the drive foundation materials can be laid down.

So its back to some editing and updating the blog. Here is a new short poem.

388 
Like a dog in a new basket
I circle to get comfort,
sniffing the new scents
and being unsure. 
Like any hound I want food,
not scraps of life,
but meaty on the bone sustenance,
the stuff of vigour. 

There you go a short one that just picks up the need to feed on things that will keep me healthy and vigorous. The builder badgers leave quite early for them as they need the big lorry to come and move the spoil heap they had created. I try to rest until my partner returns from work followed shortly by an Amazon delivery. I was expecting an order but I was not expecting a book. To my surprise and delight a friend has sent me a book, one I had no awareness of at all, but it looks intriguing. So I now have a small pile of books to read, which will take me through the next few days.

My evening is filled with laptop admin and a film, Cold Pursuit (I wouldn’t bother) a Liam Nelson nonsense film. I work towards taking my night meds and getting myself to bed. Tomorrow is a big day in terms of how the badger project goes, if all goes to plan it means all the clearing will be done and I will begin to see the final shape of what it is going to look like when completed. It is also a potentially important day for my son in Stockholm who has been told to expect a letter informing him as to whether or not he has been granted residency status in Sweden. His citizenship application depends on getting residency so its a big deal. Fingers crossed. Ticking away in the background is my waiting for the Americans to respond to my edit of the first draft of Herod’s Children Crumulent Collection (HCCC).

Sunday, a sunny Sunday so after checking my vitals, all okay, and having breakfast with my partner, taking my meds, I get some washing in and then tidy up my wardrobe. I head for the garden to sit on the swing seat and just watch my garden. After a while I am joined by my partner who sits with me and we chat and sit until lunchtime comes around. We return to the swing seat to eat lunch and chat some more. There is a period of reading and putting mire washing out and clearing the washing line as the sun dries one load after another. Around us the garden continues to flower.

After a while I watch part of the women’s FA cup. A step backwards really but sometimes that happens. Tea time arrives and of course being Sunday there is Country file to watch and this week is a special, mental health and suicide in the country side. Well that’s cheery. My partner lasts the first award of the Television BAFTAs, some one I’ve never seen who just fragments on stage in a nauseating display of surprise. As a result we end up with the excitement of picking something to watch as an alternative. I draft the blog to the background of what ever it is before a coffee and posh biscuits.

I’m sure the evening will go well and end up with me downing my meds and going to bed hoping for good weather for the builder badgers to continue their work.