Saturday and my blood results came in just before midnight last night. stayed up and made my results sheet up as I was eager to know how I am doing. The answer to that is according to the arithmetic I am doing well. Crucially my PSA has dropped to a level that it was 18 months ago. My platelet count is now in the normal range for the first time in ages. Even those elements that are outside the normal range are moving towards the normal range, so I should be looking good. Add to this that my vitals are normal with a monthly average blood pressure of 127 over 76, heart rate about 70, temperature a constant 36.2 and my oxygen saturation rate that averages 98% everything should be tickerty boo. Of course its not if I am passing blood when I exercise but the arithmetic says that I should be in a happy shiny place. The reality is that the side effects of fatigue due to the chemo drugs is a real drag. Psychologically its tricky to keep positive when feeling tired and I find myself avoiding making decisions and seeking increasingly periods of quiet rest and reflection.

I get up and make warm drinks for myself and my partner. I shall my latest result with her and wish a relative happy birthday before checking my messages adn emails. All that done its time to get back to the women’s world cup. I catch the tail end of Spain beating Switzerland 5-1. I go straight from that to the Japan v Denmark game. A good game that sees Japan come out 3-1 on top. These are nock out games to get into the quarterfinals so they have a real urgency about them. Both are good games. My partner and I eat bacon and sandwiches during the post match analysis. It appears that female pundits are as patchy as the male ones, no surprise really the agenda is the same, good television.

My partner does some pre gym ironing and then leaves me while I start to draft the blog. Having stayed up till 1am to do my results I am feeling a bit off so I am likely to take a nap soon before I try to find the coverage of the international rugby matches later this afternoon. It continues to rain and I realise I have no handy snacks or treats to see me through. I shall improvise.

My day is then full of rugby internationals, a bad film followed by When Harry Met Sally, which is a great film to end the day on. I take my meds and go to bed to read. I wont be up for the first world cup game tomorrow but I might catch a later one.

Friday I wake early to shower so as to arrive at the GP’s fresh and smelling sweet. I have time for a swift decaf coffee and morning meds adn then I am off to have my bloods taken. My GP system works really well and I am soon in chatting to the vampire, who is actually highly skilled. I clench my fist and slap my vein as she gets the vial ready and then its on with the tourniquet and in with the needle. In no time at all my two vials are filled and I am holding down the fluffy cloud on my arm while she labels my bloods. That done my fluffy cloud is taped down and I am released. My blood form has “PRE CHEM URGENT” written across it so I am hopeful that the results will be in just after midnight. I walk home via the village shop and get a paper. I contemplate breakfast at the village café but cannot face it so go directly home.

Once home I complete the cross word and puzzles before feeling up to muesli. There is no football to watch today so I idle for a while as my laptop reloads itself properly. There is nothing urgent to do so I wander over to the post box and send my latest letters. Task completed, I consider my rejection of the RACs exorbitant renewal fee and cast around for an alternative. I settle on Green Flag and cover both my and my partners cars for a relatively moderate sum. My partner and I have tuna sandwiches for lunch and then we go to the gym so that my partner can try out working from the club lounge on their WiFi. Before we leave I go for a pee and am disappointed and distressed to see blood in my urine. We drive to the gym where I settle down with my laptop and a book as my partner tries out the work laptop on the club WiFi. I spend a long time restarting my laptop and read while it takes a tediously long time to wind itself up. My partner’s experiment fails as her work fire wall will not let her through on the David Lloyd member network. She decides to go up to the gym floor to train for a while. I go to the loo and to my surprise there is no blood. It is becoming difficult to know what is triggering it. So for the moment I am relieved (no pun intended) and happier with life. While my partner trains I settle down to drat the blog. As I type I get messages from a friend on holiday who seems to be having a great time with her wife and children. It sounds like the sort of seaside holiday that the children will remember for a long time, as it is full of crabs and fossils and the exciting things to do. I down load my new Green Flag documents and all the other cyber paraphernalia that goes with it so now if anything goes wrong I can use my phone to summon help.

If I follow my usual habit my evening will be long as I wait for my PSA result to come in just after midnight. Here is hoping that at least there is good news here and I dip below 5.5.

STOP PRESS: The results are in. PSA down to 2.3 a drop of 3.1. Full results tomorrow.

Thursday and a glimmer of sunshine so I am into my shorts and down for breakfast and meds in the shake of a lambs tail. No football, at least not until 11 o’clock so I have time to fill. I do my usual check of messages and emails, nothing exciting or demanding there. I stare in to space and then notice the objects strewn on the coffee table before me. They seem surreal and I get an urge to write, a sort of poem. Its one I might take to the Poetry Stanza so they can spend ten minutes playing with.

Twenty three and a half
By twenty three and a half inches.
A measuring tape.
Two laptops and stands
With mouse and mat, top layer.
Down.
Used envelop, deceased RAC card,
Hard drives, external.
Hair band, rubber band, box cutter,
Ear buds, biro, gimlet.
USB stick, glasses, glasses reading,
Bulldog clip, paper clip, expended paracetamol.
Paper note, post office receipt, postage stamps.
Sticky note flags, silver ring box, 
Remote and coffee glass;
Almost overlooked the fifty pence pieces, rare.
This is the archaeology of a dying life,
Or, another instillation by Tracey.

If you think £50, 000 is a joke remember Tracy Emine’s bed installation went for £2,400000 purportedly representing her struggle with a break down, so I reckon that wrestling with stage 4 cancer got to be worth at least £50,000. You see how absurd the world is and must not be taken seriously.

So onto the football and what a game. I’m really enjoying this tournament. Lowly South Korea hold the might Germans to a one all draw, while elsewhere Morocco, who Germany thrashed 6-0 in the first round, beat Columbia, who beat Germany 2-1 in the first round, by a goal to nil, thus eliminating the two time word champions and hot favourites out of the world cup. Columbia and Morocco go on into the knock out phase of the competition while Germany fly home. They did not look happy at all. My partner brings me a lunchtime sandwich and we watch the Moroccans celebrate.

The post arrives and my one piece of post that isn’t automatic recycling is my copy of the oncologist’s report from my last review to the GP. These letters are usually bland but I noted one phrase in it that seemed out of character for “he who made a pact with the devil”, namely and I quote: “I am delighted that his PSA has already started to fall from 8.9 to 5.5”. Its the first time he has ever expressed enthusiasm for anything. I could cynically interpret his delightedness as relieve the drugs are working because if they don’t I doubt he has any more potions up his sleeve. Anyway by just after midnight tomorrow I will know if his delight will be fuelled by a further drop in my PSA or whether our telephone call on the 10th of August will be a tricky one.

I take my vitals, all good there and then go to the Shed. It overcast and cold so I am in a pullover to keep myself warm. I write a letter while drinking water and eating the last of the fluffy wine gums rescued from the car. Letter finished I seek stimulation and find a couple of small unfinished “paintings” and decide to see if I can get going on them again. So I spend what must have been hours working on them. By the time the garden guy arrives at tea time I am almost done, I can concentrate no more so I pack up the Shed, undecided whether I had finished the two little boards. Here they are. There are two others in the same vein somewhere. The idea (yes there was an idea) came from looking down on the Spanish landscape as we came into land many years ago. The little boards have been kicking around in my art bag for years waiting to be finished. I must dig out the other two and see if the all hang together as originally envisaged. Probably not as time has moved on and my internal universe is doing something different with the memory now.

Piet Mondrian’s famous block colour painting Red, Blue and Yellow, which also had a lot of white in it sold for $50,565,000. As you can see my works are small but more complicated. Once again the world of absurdity raises it head. Back in the house I start to draft the blog and think about my evenings entertainment. I shall read for a bit and no doubt TV will play a role. Whatever happens I shall be going to bed early as tomorrow I’m going for my pre oncology review blood tests at 9 o’clock and I shall want to shower before I go, one simple doesn’t go to the doctors surgery smelly, does one.

Wednesday and my partner goes to work, real work to do a face to face meeting. She leaves early and brings me decaf coffee before she goes. I cannot get back to sleep so get up and have time for muesli and meds before the first football match of the day. South Africa beat Italy in a really good match. There is time for me to send emails to the solicitor dealing with my sisters estate and to send her the gas bill for the London house. By the time I have done all of this and unloaded the dishwasher its time to watch Jamaica draw with Italy, knocking them out much to the pundits surprise.

I walk to the post office where I send my letter to the solicitor by recorded delivery and top up my stamp stock. Its a short walk down to the village shop where I pick up a paper on my way to the village café. I do the crosswords and puzzles while I eat my egg and bacon baguette. I always forget the dangers of this combination in the face of the flimsy paper serviettes that the café provides, which also ends up with me getting sticky egg fingers as the yokes seep from the bread. The taste is great, its the eating management that is the stressor. I finish the crosswords and the hot chocolate and wend my way home. I bring the bins in and then flop on the sofa and attempt to read more of Amor Towles’s A Gentleman In Moscow. Recently I have been experiencing more extreme hot flushes, which are uncomfortable and stop me from being able to concentrate on reading and writing. So my time trying to read is not a good experience. I find it frustrating but my vitals are all good and seem not to be affected by the flushes, its a weird sensation and it feels as if my body is playing tricks on me.

My partner returns from work and is followed shortly after by our guest for the night. They are not in long before they go out to dine, followed quickly by my eldest daughter who goes to the gym. So left alone I have chicken soup and try to read some. more, but unsuccessfully and I give in and watch a couple of episodes of the Witcher. Total magical elf and human tosh which is of course violent and full of fantasy stuff like a woman finding her self lead across a desert by a unicorn and having a forty days and forty night experience of her unconscious. Like I say it is tosh but requires no brain power at all, which suits me. My partner and friend return, the Witcher ends and I retreat to bed to draft the blog and then read, having taken my night meds.

This day must sound very bland but underneath this bland day I think I am psychologically paddling very hard. I’ve not trained as it seems that any physical effort induces blood in in my urine so I am scared to train and I am becoming inert. The will there or wont there be blood in my pee is always the question now. I will be giving a blood test on Friday before my next oncology review next Thursday, so I will be interested in what that shows and whether my PSA is still coming down. So I think much of my sense at the moment is one of anxiety and I spend most of my time trying to relax and rest. Perhaps I just need to get out more, or I need to spend more time in the Shed. During this time friends message me and tell me what they are doing which is really nice, there is clearly a world out there where life is going on, I am just finding it difficult to join in at the moment.

Tuesday I wake early for me and go to the sofa to watch another word cup match over a buttered bagel and decaf coffee. That takes up two hours after which I go to my newly mended Shed and finish off a letter I started yesterday. It takes me to noon, when England kick off against China. I fortify myself with a dish of muesli for the tension of the match to come. By half time England are three up and I celebrate with cold sausage on olive bread and grapes courtesy of my partner. Feeling repleat and a tad optimistic I settle down to watch the second half. England score three more, China get a penalty, terrible referee decision after looking at VAR, but England cling on to win 6-1. They now face Nigeria in the first knockout round.

After the excitement of the morning I take the short walk to the post box and deliver up my letters. I potter for a while and find todays paper in the kitchen so take myself off to the patio to do the crosswords and puzzles. One of them gives me more trouble than usual but as I ponder quietly I am joined by the squirrel who dines at the nut box for quite a long time before disappearing backup the fir tree by the patio. It begins to get chilly so I withdraw inside and head for the sofa to read. Time has flown as my partner soon returns from work and has taken the long walk from the downstairs office to the hoover. I move from my comfy nook on the sofa and retreat upstairs to do my vitals while she hoovers the lounge. My vitals are good. I calculated my averages for July yesterday, my blood pressure was a very acceptable 126 over 76, so it would appear that I am avoiding the most concerning side effect of the chemo medication. The fatigue is the worse issue at the moment. Fortunately my brain remains in good working order. Once the vitals are done I put the bins out for tomorrows collection and bring the car back onto the drive after its night and day parked on the verge.

While tea is being prepared I draft the blog and ready myself for the evening. I shall try and read more after tea and perhaps succumb to some TV. There are odds and ends of business I need to do like my last working tax self assessment and whether to get RAC cover or not. There is always the garden to consider. This years crap weather and excessive rainfall has meant that the garden has become tropically verdant and spontaneously re-wilded itself. I need to think about how I get a grip on it again and begin to prepare for next year. However in the here and now I am delighted to say that my new grandson has been out for his first push around in the outside world and would have become acquainted with ducks if he had not slept for the entire adventure. His time to point at things and run after ducklings will come. So my evening will end with meds and bed.

Anther wet Monday morning, so I get up early and watch a women’s world cup match and stare idly into the distance. My eldest daughter is also up and kindly brings me buttered toast. The game is average and I begin to wonder whether to go to the The Consortium of Therapeutic Communities conference in Birmingham in September. This is prompted by an email asking for papers. I’m toying with a paper relating to talking to chairs and consciousness. I share this thought with my partner whose response was “why would you, you always leave it to the last minute, do you need the stress?” She is right and there is the drive to Birmingham to be considered, particularly crap in wet weather. There is a ghost of days past, of person past that romantically thinks it might be fun and provide stimulation but realistically I doubt I have a contribution to make any more to this group or the work they are doing. There would be nothing worse than being the old bloke whose lost it at a conference.

There is another match to watch, which I do, which takes me to the end of the morning and a ham sandwich. I go to the Shed, my refuge and write letters. My partner visits to ask about something and then I notice that the lead art work that I had put on the window sill has gone to ground taking a rotten window sill with it. This is a major issue my sanctuary is inured and I need to repair it as soon as possible. So I set aside the letter I am writing and gather up tools, wood, filler, saw, measuring instruments and the rest of the paraphernalia that experience has taught me you need to make quick running repairs. The window is not in good shape.

So I set to and put in new wood under the sill inside and build a new frame outside to be sealed. Its a pig of a job as I am working in a confined space inside and outside the bloody pampas grass saws away at my arms. There is measuring and sawing and then drilling and screwing to be done to fit a structure.

There is a lot of packing of gaps and sealing done. Fortunately I’m the type of man who learnt how to make and mend which means I have a garage full of tools, materials and “just in case” odds and ends, which includes external filler. I fill and make water tight the new frame and then I rummage through another shed to find shed and fence paint to give the new wood a couple of coats. Its all done in a rush and I heave things like the exercise bike around. I get the paint job done and then I tidy everything away. Its taken two hours of rush and dash but I can do no more than hope for dry weather. Its a feint hope but one can only hope, controlling the weather is beyond me.

I put the tools away and know that both tea and the Tesco delivery is on the horizon. So I am just congratulating myself on my Shed rescue job when I go for a piss and find I am passing blood. That just about put the tin hat on the day. I eat tea, take in the Tesco order and then tax my car. I have not had a reminder, neither has my partner, so I check on the DVLA website and sure enough my tax is due tomorrow, so its time to play hunt the log book and reference number so that I can renew it. It goes okay and I will wake up tomorrow a legal driver. It was just another pain in the arse thing to sort in this day. I draft the blog, take my drugs and go to bed early. England pay tomorrow at the world cup so there is something to look forward to along with posting my letters.

Sunday and I wake up mid hot flush, its a really crap feeling to be starting the day with. I get up, make warm drinks, take one to my partner who is still asleep and return to the sofa to watch a women’s football match. Half time is used for breakfast and then at then end of the match my partner makes me toast.

I do not feel chipper at all so I watch another football match. By the end I am feed up with myself and get into the garden to plant the corms and bulbs my son bought me as a birthday present. I’m running out of spoons and sit and rest on the swing seat. I am surrounded by the green of the garden, which I more and more appreciate. My partner joins me and we sit and chat about where we are and our strategy for the coming months. We continue over coffee and biscuits on the swing seat until we are ready to get on with changing the beds.

My energy is going so once the chores are done I rest on the sofa till tea time. My evening dribbles by with stuff on TV until I draft the blog, and take my night meds. There is lots more to the day but I cannot raise the energy to write or reflect upon it. It is the state I am in, sluggish pixies is how I would describe it. Tomorrow is a day on which I need to train and see what happens.

Saturday and I wake up and stare into space until my partner rings me a decaf coffee. Its taking me a longer mthan usual to get myself going. My brain is befugged and feels as if it is on slow mode. The pixies that run my head are decidedly sleepy and appear to still be in their nightshirts and not sure which filing cabinets they should be opening, there is a lot of yawning going on in the frontal lobes. After a while I get up for breakfast, a delicious bacon sandwich, and the women’s world cup games. A voice nags me in my head to shift my arse but the football wins and my arse gets stuck on the sofa. Eventually I work up the energy to hang my washing out after which I need to sit for a while. I’ve a terrific headache so I down some paracetamol and get ready to go shopping for food with my partner.

We go to our local garden centre which hosts a good butcher and gather meat and pies for the weekend. As the restaurant was empty my partner and I indulged in scones and hot chocolate. having done our shopping we return home, I am knackered, almost spoonless. It is ridiculous that I can be so devoid of energy doing so little but that is how it is. How on earth I am supposed to exercise vigorously to avoid the drug side effects when I cannot raise the energy to sit upright on a sofa. I watch more football and when my partner brought my washing in I managed to get it put away and do my second set of vitals for the day. My vitals are consistently good, no adverse signs of raised blood pressure, heart rate good, SATs always in the high 90s and temperature normal. I make the effort to draft the blog so that I do not fall asleep over it late at night. I draft it to the background of Brief Encounter, it is impossibly English but coupled with Rachmaninov’s 2nd piano concerto it is the most perfect exposition of unrequited love. Akin to Pablo Neruda’s song of despair in which the the repeated line “In you everything sank” poignantly recalls the loss of reciprocal love. Brief Encounter of course draws its poignancy from the fact that the love is unrequited on both parties behalf.

My evening zips by in a sluggish way, with tea followed by Midsummer Murders. I can feel myself grinding to a halt so I down my night meds and go to bed early, or at least early for me.

Thursday, I wake to my eldest daughters birthday so there is covert wrapping to do and dining out in the evening. In between there was stuff. Chores and bits & pieces which shows how much my brain is fatigued and not functioning a the moment. I managed to find some excellent socks as presents which I share with you here because they cheered me and my eldest daughter up no end.

Friday has been a day of shredding more old documents, getting the car M.O.T’d (successfully), doing my washing and wondering why my head is not working properly. I pondered this as I was filling my dugs wallets for the next two weeks. All my vitals are good morning and afternoon, and England’s women beat some foreign country in the football as I organised my drugs. I tried writing a poem, a sort of construction thing as I sat in the café waiting for my MOT to be done. That was a disaster, as nothing in my head connected to anything I feel, in fact there was a distinct lack of flow or inspiration. It’s becoming a real effort to draft the blog. I yawn and my limbs do not know what to do with themselves. All I want to do is eat chocolate to comfort myself. I’m fatigued, I take my meds and slouch off to bed wondering if this is the time to try cocaine, there cannot be many years left in my septum. Plan after getting cancer was to live to 75 and see my second grandson born and then get on with the next five year plan, but the 5 year plan has become a bit vague. Sunshine would help.

Wednesday, I wake alone and get up to do my vitals and then have breakfast and meds. I clear the kitchen and watch the end of a football match. It is my eldest daughters birthday tomorrow so I drive myself to the local Sainsburys and do some food shopping. I am surrounded by temptation and it seems rude not to give into it so I indulge in the purchase of jam doughnuts alongside my essentials. I drive home and pack the goodies away and take my eldest daughter to the village café for lunch where we dine and chat about her studies. I note that new Lilys have appeared in the garden.

Back home I watch the Irish women’s team lose to Canada at the World Cup. There are aspects of women’s football that are refreshing, for example there is far less feigned pain and dramatic rolling around on the ground. There is still a physical side to game as witnessed by the number of penalties award in the early rounds but there is less cynical hacking down and “taking one for the team” crap going on. With the game over I get ready to train. There has been a gap of five days since I trained due to the trip to see my new grandson, who is doing really well along with mum and dad. I get into the garage and set myself up to row for an hour. It goes okay, I have Radio 2 in my ears although I was not impressed by the stand in for Sarah Cox but there you go. The hour goes by as I reach my target of 12 plus kilometres and a burn off of 800 plus calories. I am pleased as it is my first post jab training session, which can be a bit sore but this time seems to have gone well.

I get out of my sweaty kit and then begin to cook the Indian meal I bought on my shopping trip. Mid way through I get my eldest to continue the process while I have a pee. To my dismay there is blood in my urine. Its a heart sink moment. I am so disappointed and distressed at the same time. If I cannot train to avoid the chemo side effects then that’s a crap outcome in terms of quality of life. On the other hand I can continue to train and live with the consequences, which is mainly the distress of pissing blood when I train. Can’t be good can it, devil and deep blue sea comes to mind. I could weep but that doesn’t do anything does it, so its time to re assess options and explore what else will keep me fit, lean and side effect free. I feel a period of research and experimentation coming on.

I eat tea, wave my eldest off to Jiu Jitsu and settle down to write the blog before the final of the Great British Sewing Bee. I sit on my end of the sofa reflecting in the solitude of the house. I am understandably pensive, I’ve been in this place before, I know I have to wait for my body to recover so I expect I shall spend a couple of days reading and writing letters, perhaps now is a good time to throw a few more poems into the meat grinder of competition as there are some open at the moment. Tonight I head for an early night and perhaps a bed time read.