Wednesday and I wake up aching from yesterdays gym work, quite a pleasant and reassuring feeling. I wander downstairs and make a muesli and coffee breakfast, which I eat on the “soffice”. I check my e-mails and messages and gather myself for the day. A friend is having her foot operated on today and sends me a picture of her leg emblazoned with a large arrow pointing downwards with the words “this one” written on her shin. Its a kind of comfort but also a bit scary. The fact that they have to so boldly label it suggests they have got it wrong in the past. I head for the Shed and settle into it like an old friend. It feels like ages since I snuggled at my desk surrounded my writing implements and inks. I light the candles and begin to write. I’ve missed this and I feel inattentive to my friends when I have not made the effort to write to them or reply to their generous letters. Even now time presses as I have a work call late in the morning so I endeavour to make sure that I have at least written one letter before retreating to the house to take the call. I succeed. I take my work call and then do some environment maintenance like bringing in the bins, move the cars and post my letter. Time for lunch before the afternoon meeting but there is enough time to start the blog and include some pictures of the miracles that are happening in the garden. Everywhere I look there are signs of spring and renewal.

The meeting is a mixture of guess work and fencing. It wends its way to an end and we all go our separate ways. I tidy some tasks away and then take a call from a friend who was going to inspect a potential party venue, life goes on despite COVID and and its aftermaths. I start to change to train, take another brief call and then head for the garage to row for half an hour. Its cold and the weather outside is blowing up a gale, so I strap my feet in and get on with it. Half an hour later I am done and relieved I have trained.

The family agree that today is to be a take away day and so I order and then change out of my training gear. We are just catching up with the winter Olympics when the food arrives and we tuck into our selections. Food, Olympics and idle chat and then I watch a football match on the laptop as the others watch something called the Tower. Football over I return to the blog before I slip off to bed. Tomorrow starts with a work meeting and then I have to get in a training session before my nephews wife comes to visit. I hope I still have chocolate biscuits left to entertain a guest with.

Tuesday and it starts with a work meeting, so I am up promptly, make a coffee and settle down in front of the laptop. Its a productive meeting and takes up half the morning. Once the meeting is over I take a call from a colleague and exchange some views and ideas, being Brits we of course talk about the weather especially as both of us have weekends away, the difference being that he will be in the middle of storms Dudley and Eunice. I note that the squirrel feeder has had its lid propped open by the front panel being lifted up by birds eager to get to the contents. I fill the bird feeders and make the squirrel feeder good. They should be okay for the week now. I store the garden camera pictures on the laptop, clear the data card and put it back into the camera, hoping quietly to capture more pictures of foxes, mice and other visitors.

I tuck into lunch and take a call from a friend who is battling the effects of long COVID. It would appear that others seem not to understand just how debilitating long COVID is and how demanding it is have to keep managing energy levels. We chat for a while and then I get myself ready to go to the gym. I find the gym almost empty and do an hour on a cross trainer. I go back to listening to Rammstein as I train and burn off 736 calories and go 8.58 kilometres. I also spend some time on the weights machines before the luxury of a shower. I treat myself to a post training americano and bacon brioche before returning home.

Today its an early tea and and the last episode of Young Wallander. It lives up to being typically dour Swedish with a prosaic super realistic ending e.g good people die, bad people go free and the grinding unfairness of life is played out in spades. I watch football and write the blog. The lesson from today is that when I make the effort to go to the gym I feel much better and if I couple that with eating simply I feel even better. Note to self: remember this and do it more often.

Monday and a fresh start that stalls, my body just does not feel like it. I have a breakfast of muesli and check my day. The fish are pleading to be cleaned out as they cannot see out of the tank and they are missing the winter Olympics. So I sort out some work emails and then gather up the tools to clean the fish. I spend an hour or so removing algae and refreshing the water levels. It will take a couple of hours for the tank to clear and then the fish will reclaim their place in our lounge. With the fish happier I set about reading the draft training resource that is to be part of a work meeting tomorrow. It is a document that has been edited well and I have fun recognising the bits I have written and identifying the authors of other parts. By lunch time I have addressed the parcels to go to Sri Lanka and my partner and I walk over to the post office to send them off.

There is soup for lunch as I wait for my i-pod to charge. I dither as to whether to wait for Tesco to deliver or train, I decide to check the garden camera to see if our hedgehog had woken up yet and wandered around the garden at night. I retrieve the data card and pop it into my laptop. I start the slow plod through the captures, stopping a couple of times to do other chores. There were the usual pidgeons, squirrels, collared doves, birds, cats and even a lone mouse. Suddenly there was this:

FOX! Yes we get visited by a fox, a big and beautiful fox. I get childishly excited and call the rest of the family to come and view the pictures, who in their turn appear to be excited to. What follows is some techno juggling to get the pictures so I can put them in the blog. Ta Da! The time has flown by and it’s tea time in no time at all as I have started the blog. Tonight I shall continue to watch Young Wallander. I find it an interesting series, refreshing and very working class Swedish. The making of a tortured middle aged man with artist father issues, just up my street. Then it will be drugs and bed.

Friday, a busy day. The morning is filled with the gym, where I cross train for an hour burning off 710 calories and going 7.79 kilometres. I indulge in a bacon brioche before returning home to sit in front of my laptop as I do the second half of a training course. It goes on till 4:30 when I log out and got to a call with a colleague from a therapeutic community. Its an early snack and then my partner and I go off to see Fascinating Aida. It is a great show, full of laughs and some very acute satire. We wore masks very many did not. At half time we moved back a couple of rows and had an entire row to ourselves. They are an act I would happily see over and over again. The drive home was prolonged by the rugby crowd filling the roads in the centre of Leicester. Home and its almost midnight and time to sleep.

Saturday is simple to sum up, breakfast, a walk in the local park and then rugby, more rugby followed by football. There was just time to watch the lead show showcasing tomorrow’s Super Bowl before clearing the kitchen and going to bed.

Sunday and its a long lay in before I get up and weigh myself. I am expecting bad news given my tardiness in my exercise routine, plus the fact that my diet has been crap over the last week. I look down at the scales with a sense of foreboding. Its 95.0 kilos! I am vey very pleasantly surprised and vow to return to my fighting ways and sensible diet on Monday. The family brunch together and then make the weekly call to our youngest daughter. Of course it takes us up to kick off time for the England v Italy rugby international. It goes well and we then drift into an evening of TV, package taping and odd and ends of tasks, including the weekly Tesco order. So the week comes to an end and that much closer to my oncology review. Its a constant that rumbles on in the background of life and I know that this one is going to inform whether I’m going to stop working properly and reinvent myself. It feels like its time to rebalance.

Tuesday was all about travel home from York. I treated myself to a hotel breakfast and took my time preparing for the drive back to Leicester. I’ve learned not to rush my traveling, it is a far more healthy way to be. I drove back at a sedate pace and arrived back about two o’clock. My afternoon meandered and I was tired. I spent the evening watching football and finally went to bed.

Wednesday was a day that started with a lazy breakfast and moved on to a meeting with a group of peers, where we found a new way to keep the communications going between meetings and to become available to a wider membership including our international friends. It was a good and positive discussion and I think has moved us forward. A brief lunch and some admin work before I took myself to the shed and put an hour in on the exercise bike. It was a tough session but I lasted the hour and ended up quite pleased that I had made the effort.

I emerge from the Shed to find my partner’s friend has arrived. I go and change and sort out some food for myself as my partner and friend go off to a pie night at a local pub. I spend my evening lazing and watching more football being aware that I was tired and my body had no more to give me.

Thursday and I am up early for my 9 o’clock work meeting. There is time for breakfast and coffee before the regular team meeting. Its all about up dating and checking how we all are. The meeting ends on time and there is little time for post meeting chat. I set about writing a section for a training manual which is due to be discussed next week. I get it finished along with last months invoice in time for lunch. The postman then delivers a speeding summons. I am guilty so fill in the form and pop it in an envelope to be posted later.

My good citizen act done I am straight into a training session for the afternoon. The session lasts all afternoon and I watch people form my services get engaged or detach quickly. Its an interesting exercise. I will be going back tomorrow for the second half of it. Once the meeting is over I do some business with the team and then finally log off. I drive my eldest daughter to her circus skills session and wait the hour outside doing crosswords till she re-emerges. I drive back and cook myself tuna pasta and settle down to watch yet another football match and to catch up with the blog.

Monday and I am off to York. I get up as usual, down a bowl of muesli and put my packed bags in the car. Its still partially frosty so I shall be taking my time. I drive up slowly in what is mostly sunshine but the sky turns grey as I get further north. It is a reasonable journey, I always think it is ironic that around Sheffield the speed limit is reduced to 60 mph for air purity reasons, or so the intelligent road signs would have us believe.

I get to York and have time to dawdle in Tesco, my regular stop off when I need a comfort break before jousting with urban traffic. I make a couple of calls and then get on my way. Check in was smooth and I found myself on the familiar fourth floor. I unpacked the minimum stuff and had a coffee. I visited my friend and mentor and we talked all things work, cancer and home. It is always good to have someone you trust to be able to check out if I am deluding myself about things and to have ask the difficult questions. It is as always a very useful conversation. I return to the hotel and settle down for the evening.

It does not sound exciting but all my working life I have stuck to the principal that where work is concerned it is irresponsible not to seek peers views and questions. My decision to step back from work is a big one for me for all sorts of reasons and having the opportunity to discuss in depth with professional colleagues and friends is crucial to me. So hopefully once my mind is finally made up and the dice caste I will have covered all the options. Now I have to wait and see what the outcome of the oncology review is on the 22nd.

Friday seems a blur now and a long while ago. It was the day I got a P45 from the nhs, which was a bit of a surprise. I was sacked on the 1st of January apparently and will no longer be doing CQC work. It is a routine clear out of the CQC list of people that they have not used for a while and an avoidance of any IR35 obligations. Along with this came the letter from the tax man telling me what my final tax bill was. I had breakfast and went to the Shed to write letters until lunchtime. A brief lunch and then I soaked myself in the bath prior to going to the hospital for a thorax and abdomen scan at the mobile unit at 6:30pm. Hospitals in the early evening are strange places, an eerie atmosphere especially if you have to walk through some of the staff areas. I was early for the appointment but as I was the only person there they did me straight away. I had the privilege of being the nurses first person into which she had put a catheter in. It went well and I was soon flat out on the scanner bed, holding my breath and my veins being pumped with a marker chemical. It was over quickly really and I was released to wander back through the ghost ship hospital to retrieve my car and drive home. My evening was a sofa bound one as I end my week of injections, scans and meetings.

Saturday was of course watching the international rugby matches. I admit I do not feel at my best as I think the week of having chemicals introduced into my body has caught up with me. As a household we get up late to a full breakfast and a run into the rugby games by taking a walk round our local duck pond and buying pies from the garden centre. We return home to watch the rugby. We choose to watch the games on TV rather than go to the Tigers who are playing at home. We have seriously considered giving up our season tickets as would cover the increase in the fuel bills over a year. I get a surprise parcel and find a colleague has sent me an unexpected present of a Mariners ice hockey jersey. Its a very welcome addition to my collection and will include it in the background of ice hockey jerseys that I use when I make poetry coyote videos. As the rugby ends we leave as a family to go and dine with friends, who serve us a Burns night dinner. Haggis with neeps and taties followed by Cranachan. The conversation flowed and before we new it midnight was upon us and I was driving home feeling well fed and bed tired.

Sunday and we have a lay in after our late night. When we did arise it was for a simple toast breakfast. Of course I weighed in first thing to find that I had lost half a kilo and am down to 95.3 kilos. Its not good but it will do after the week I’ve had. I potter for a while and then grit my teeth and get into the office PC and pay my tax bill. Always a moment that I find difficult but I guess I have had the benefit from the income. There is more international rugby to watch followed by watching my local football team being dumped out of the FA cup. The African cup of nations final follows. We eat dinner and settle down to do nothing apart from me catching up with the blog.

Thursday and I wake to a morning meeting in 25 minutes. So its a coffee and straight in front of the laptop. The work meeting is with the team and we are briefed about the current updates. It looks like we might be able to begin to contemplate visiting services again. We agree a date to meet face to face for first time in two years. So in April there will be a trip to London. Strangely we end up talking about waking people up. It is a strange Kafkaesque world we live in sometimes. The meeting ends and I make myself a bacon bagel and open the parcel sent to me by my sister. It contains two beautiful books, one of poetry and one of evolutionary biology. They are hard back tomes in solid dust, they are truly classic books.

I now have a pile of at least seven books to read. It is an indication that my life balance is not right, there should be more reading time. I also get mail this morning and one of those is a letter from an old colleague and fellow member of a TC group that I belong to. It is a lovely thoughtful letter which I read and reread over a cup of coffee. At lunch time I walk with my partner round the village to buy a paper and nibbles. On the way back we meet one my nieces and a nephews wife with her delightful baby daughter. We chat as we walk and then say farewell to return home.

I attend to my washing and put it away before I pack my kit bag to go to the gym. I get to the gym and do an hour on a cross trainer. My hour burns off 706 calories and takes me 7.96 kilometres. I shower and drive home to a coffee and a scone. My partner and I eat dinner and I settle down to watch a football semi final while my partner does her singing practice. I am tired and indulge in chocolate, a sort of non drinkers getting pissed therapy. The football ends and I draft the blog.

Its been a tired day, a day where it feels like a flog. I am not sure whether today has just been one of those flat days that we all have or whether it is a consequences of the medication. Its 44 days since I started the new medication and I am still not sure if it is making me tired or if I am just sicker or older. I’m certainly older but I’m pretty sure that its not to blame for my bouts of tiredness and low motivation. Its been a demanding week and tomorrow I go for another scan. It just adds to the sense of being beleaguered that cancer and the consequential life style brings. I return over and over again to the fact that cancer does not take a day off, the consequences of this is that I cannot, so I keep finding ways to re-motivate myself, but its tiring and that’s how chocolate wins. My sweet tooth will probably be my down fall.

Wednesday, its report writing day, a dyslexics nightmare, but it is the down side of being involved with people organisations. I get up fortify myself with peanut butter toast and coffee, down my meds and log on. That is at 9 o’clock. One dish of chicken soup later and its five o’clock. I send the completed report to the report co-ordinator work. My partner returns from visiting her mother. We are both done so its fish and chips for tea. The television goes on and I watch football in a catatonic state of energy less stupor. I’ve not paid my tax bill or trained and I’ve no motivation or energy. I write the blog and leave it to the pixies to sort out the rest of life. Tomorrow is a team meeting so I’ve no idea how the day will go.

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.