Tuesday and I wake up in the spare bed as I feared I would not sleep last night. It was an okay night. My partner goes off to work and I change beds and take my vitals, all good, before getting up for breakfast. Immediately I can feel my cystitis like symptoms starting and immediately take my meds and another cystopurin and retreat to the recliner. To keep myself busy I send the link to my to new books to friends and family and toy with the idea of sending them to Radio 2, but as yet I have lacked the courage not wanting any contact while I am feeling the way I am. With that done I record to new YouTube videos to get my new poetry collections “out there”. They will only reach a hand full of people but that is life.

My videos go live at noon and so I include them here. I think I have included at least one of these in printed format in the blog before. As I wait for noon I clear the kitchen in anticipation of the Tesco delivery between 2 and 3pm today and then retreat to the recliner and down some co-codamol as my cystitis like symptoms increase during the morning. My intention is to sit tight for as long as possible and just try to relax, read and stay still.

In the afternoon my eldest daughter goes for a walk and of course Tesco deliver, so I hump the crates in and then squirrel all of the goodies away. I have run out of spoons (energy) and take to the recliner again as I attempt to rest. I spend the afternoon trying to keep my head busy and watching some random TV including the new Star Wars series The Acolyte. Just as my partner returns from work a friend rings and we have a chat about how we are. Once again her employer is failing to understand the implications of having long COVID, in particular the difference between travel for work purposes and private domestic trips. It is good to hear from her and to talk to someone outside the household. Tea is eaten not long afterwards and I return to drafting the blog. Apart from the Great British Sewing Bee there is very little I want to watch so I expect that I shall return to S.W.A.T as a means of escape before I get to night meds time and the hope that I can get a good nights sleep.

Monday and I wake after a reasonable nights sleep. I do my vitals, good as usual and then get up feeling quite hopeful that I might tackle filling the Hippo bag. However by the time I have had breakfast it is clear that Uluru (bladder stone) is going to have a say in that, By lunchtime I am in pain again and taking co-codamol. Despite lunch and a surprise slab of rock road I find myself resting and reclining. The sun shines but I am unable to take advantage of it. Being confined I tinker with some life admin, banking and the like while I wait for delivery of my current new collections. I had hoped they would arrive early so I could make a YouTube video but it seems they are delayed. In an effort to keep occupied I draft the blog and check to see if the post office enquiry is in session.

The afternoon brings the Amazon delivery of my two new books. Now I can make the YouTube videos for, but that is a tomorrow task. I cook the evening meal as my partner is resting as she is having issues with her hip. It seems we are chipping in what we can at the moment. Once again Uluru makes my evening a misery as my pain increases during the evening, I resort to yet more co-codamol until I take my evening meds, and retreat to bed having drafted the blog. I am distracted, listless and not feeling that I have to many options left to manage all this. I have to last until next Monday, operation day.

Sunday and I wake up having had a good night with no acid piss, it makes such a difference. I have no explanation why I am good at night and get worse during the day. My partner brings me hot water and I take my vitals, all good, and then say farewell to my partner and eldest daughter as they go out to shop for a new laptop. I fix a simple breakfast and then I decide that as I am feeling a bit better than I have done to try and get the patio furniture up and running. This means unpacking and filling the patio umbrella base and filling the sections with water. I set to and gradually get the job done.

The next big job is to fill the Hippo bag and get rid of all the rubbish out of the garden then the place will start to look good for the summer nights and all that sunshine we are expecting one weekend sometime. However after my patio efforts I am pretty much spoonless. With one last effort I recycle the packaging that is laying around and take a couple of pictures of the front of the house. It feels like this has been an important project to have undertaken.

Having done my major chore for the day I settle down and watch the women’s rugby semi finals. Two excellent games to tame me into the early evening and tea. Between semi finals I start to draft the blog and and begin to plan the next YouTube videos to put the new poetry collections out there in cyber space. Apparently I could use marketing tools but I am disinclined to do that, I’m not that interested in a commercial adventure. One thing I have considered is sending some copies off to see if anyone would review them. On the other hand I probably would not read them.

The evening rolls round and I eat with my partner before we settle down to watch TV together. Unfortunately my rock Uluru decided to chip into my evening so after what had been a symptom free day I end up back in pain and just working my way to my night meds and bed again. It was all going so well!

Saturday, a slow day in which a few things go well but as the day goes on my symptoms of my bladder stone get worse, to the extent that I resort to co-codamol mixed with Cystopurin. What I do manage is to watch a rugby final, drill enlarged holes in the water terrace to ensure it works properly and check the garden camera, which showed me that a fox is still visiting in the dawn.

The only other thing that happens is that my second two poetry collections have been published. Both The Cancer Years: Some Rough Stuff and Herod’s Children Crumulent Collection are now sitting on Amazon waiting to be bought. I have of course ordered some for my shelves. That will be me for a while.

I draft the blog, take my meds and go to bed hoping for sleep. At the moment it is a grind.

Friday, a fucking terrible night, up every hour so I emerge into the morning as rough as a badgers arse. I lay in taking my vital, scribbling a poem, and looking at my blank phone. My partner brings me hot water and toast as I try to rouse myself. Eventually I cannot do this any more, I get up and shower, wash my hair and spruce myself up. Whilst in the grip of deodorant and clean flowing hair I decided to clean out the water terrace. I finally got the thing sorted, squirrelled away the spare rain pipes and then found I had run out of spoons. It is lunchtime so I sit down and eat a sandwich and recover while I start the blog. There is a Hippo bag needs filling with our accumulated crap but that will have to be a weekend job. The post arrives and the only letter is my hospital appointment confirmation. This time next week I will be being pre op assessed and then on Monday the 17th I have to rock up at some God forsaken hour in the morning and report to theatre waiting area 2. Its only a matter of time before they issue e tickets and get met by a robo nurse before being operated on by a AI facilitated surgeon. Any way I shall try to stress inoculate myself before I attend and organise my affairs just in case the general anaesthetic proves too much for me. My final words to the team as I go under will be “I’ll see you on the other side, don’ t fuck it up !”

I eat lunch with my partner and join in the phone call to my youngest daughter and her son. He is bouncing around on a new medication to prevent asthma and seems to be very happy with life apart from the odd cough. It makes a really pleasant break in the middle of the day.

The Americans are due to ring me today to get my next two poetry collections up on Amazon. I am hopeful that they will up and available before I go into hospital. I had the odd thought this morning about giving some copies of my collections to the village library. I thought I might give them a few copies to stick on the shelves, assuming they do poetry, and some to sell to raise money for the library. My thought was it might encourage others to do the same if they are not already doing it. While I wait for the call I spend time buying the tools I need to future proof my water terrace. It clearly needs bigger inlet holes so I’ve invested in a set of hole cutters, that’s me sorted tomorrow. The garden needs restoration but one thing that needs doing is deciding where to put the established large pots, so things like the small olive trees need new homes. For a while I ponder over where to put things and then start drawing up the maps, with that out of the way I draw up a Hippo Bag contents list in readiness for the garden clear up. What I need is a labourer. In the old days I would pop down the labour exchange and offer a hearty muscular type a days work with a lunch and beer thrown in, but alas that does not seem to be the way these days.

The Americans ring and check I am available to receive a verification code, I am, and five minutes later my code comes through, which I pass on. If all goes well my two new collections will appear on Amazon in a few days time. I’m once more excited by the prospect and also apprehensive that I have had the temerity to once again throw my offerings in the face of the world. I am leaking spoons and know that tonight I shall cling to the life boat of a football match, and the joy of an election Have I Got News for You, which is bound to be very sharp and funny. If all else fails there is S.W.A.T. I get a message from a friend who is being told she is moving teams at work, I reply. This is may or may not be good new ultimately like so many things in life it is sometimes difficult to tell until there has been time for reflect, discussion and trial. It is however an unwelcome interruption when trying to recover from long COVID, not the period of consistency one would have wished for.

Wednesday was a shit day, full of my Uluru (bladder stone) symptoms, which meant a miserable day of discomfort and I suspect great grumpiness. I managed to type some letters, which my eldest daughter posted for me. It was not until the evening that I gain some relief and starred at the TV mindlessly watching S.W.A.T. By the time I get to bed I am able to sleep. Around me life carried on, including the builder badgers who are nearing the end of their work with us. We are almost there.

Thursday and I wake up after a reasonable night sleep. I take my vitals and find that they are okay. I read a coupe of stories in Calvino’s Cosmicomics before I get up. Once again I find them enchanting and thought provoking. A good way to start the day. I get up and make breakfast and as the D day commemoration goes on in the background as I load my vitals data into my Excel spreadsheet bring Cycle 13 up to date. With that done I turn to drafting the blog. I am feeling better than I was yesterday, a bit headachey, but I hope to write more letters today.

I spoke to soon, as the day goes on I feel increasingly off my game. My ambition to write letters does not happen and I end up trying to rest. The builder badgers finish all they can do, so we are able to pull the cars onto the new drive. We will see them again next Wednesday when they return to fix the house side gate and the hand rails for the patio steps. After that there is just the new front gates to put in place, but as they need to be ordered and built it will be four weeks before they can be fitted.

I get to the evening having pottered around a bit waiting for the Americans to ring me. They said noon their time, but it comes and goes. On checking my emails I find the Americans are planning to publish both books together but they have to sort the ISBN numbers today so want to call tomorrow. I agree and drift into the evening while my partner does her singing lesson. The highlight of the evening is watching the Great British Sewing Bee before I take my evening meds and go to bed. Its been a really flat day, where I have felt off colour all day. Its very frustrating, it feels like this is related to all the medication I am on.

Tuesday and I am up at 5:50 am after a difficult night. I sit sipping hot water and trying to gain my composure. I eat breakfast and take my meds and continue to try and rest. My partner goes to work and soon after the builder badgers arrive in what looks like changeable weather. I make coffee for the badgers and then return to resting. I get myself together and empty the dishwasher before deciding to type a letter to a friend. It is a slow process and takes me a long time. Midway through this letter some one rings up to book me in for an upgraded energy meter, he got very short shift and told it wasn’t happening. I return to my letter. Its a simple lunch of soup and then more letter writing.

My grim bladder stone symptoms continue during the morning so there are several interruptions requiring me to rest and recover each time. My letter is finished, enveloped and finally sealed ready to go. There will be no going to the post office today, perhaps tomorrow. Out of the blue I get a phone call from the general hospital they tell me I am booked in for my operation on Monday the 17th at 07:15 in the morning and I am booked in on Friday the 14th at 2pm to have my pre operation assessment. No sooner than the call is over than I get a text with a link to a pre operation assessment questionnaire, which they warn will take between 30 and 60 minutes. I get stuck into it. It takes so long to do that I am still doing it when my partner returns from work. As I finish the questions, Tesco delivers to be followed immediately by the flooring guy to look at the office floor. He takes one look and says he cannot do it and leaves. No sooner had there been this flurry of activity when my partners friend and house guest arrives and notes just how changed the front drive is. My daughter goes to the cinema and short after my partner and friend go out for a meal.

Alone I start the blog and make myself tea before watching the women’s football international on TV. I am trying not to think about the reality of the up coming operation now it is a reality. It will be a full anaesthetic and a couple of nights in hospital. It feels like an all or nothing moment and I am not sure how I feel about that. I need some time to process how this is going to be handled. Right now I am just trying to keep my current symptoms under control and trying to figure out the best way to look after myself. At the moment I am tired and therefore not in the best place to make decisions so its time to contain my anxieties and give myself time to reflect.

Monday and I wake up in the spare room after a reasonable night. Once again the irritating symptoms of my bladder stone have not been present at night so I start the day optimistically. I doze for a while but by 8:30 I am ringing my doctor to inform him of how I am and that my repeat meds have disappeared off the web site. He says he will push the Urology team and suggests I ring the Oncology specialist nurse to get them to push for an answer to where I am on the waiting list. Once finished with the doctor I ring the oncology nurse and leave a message. About an hour later I get a call from the General hospital saying someone will ring me today or tomorrow. It is progress of a sort. I stay in bed for a while doing my morning routine vitals check, eating toast and taking my meds.

When I do get up it is to recline on the sofa to await the return of my partner who has gone to the gym. I while away some of the time watching my builder badgers receiving another delivery of paving blocks and sand. I become aware that the electric badger is also on site when he rings the door bell to get access to the electricity supply to finish putting in the patio lights and power. He also returns so that he can gain access to the garage in order to put up a new security wall light at the front of the house. Its not long before he is back at the front door saying good bye and handing me an invoice for the work he has done. It gives me a chore to complete as I set about BACSing the money to him.

So far my strategy of staying horizonal has worked and I endeavour to remain that way for the rest of the day taking a very long nap in the afternoon. I had intended to read but fell asleep. I did though contact the Americans about one of the finalised manuscripts pointing out that a whole page with just a date on it was a bit wasteful and asking to see if there was a formatting solution. I still think I am talking to AI bot most of the time. By tea time I am all napped out and go and look at the patio and its newly functional lights. There was the simple childish pleasure of switching the lights on for he first time. The badgers leave and I go outside to see how much they have done. The are on the home run now and the new gate pillars are growing in height. Tomorrow should be a day of nearing completion before all of the fiddly finishing off jobs. While admiring the patio lights I notice just how magnificent my garden is being in the midst of all this construction chaos and take photos of some of the star performers.

I have neglected my garden these past six badger weeks but the flowers have been very for giving as the pictures show, even the climbing rose that we hacked back mercilessly and stuck in a temporary pot is showing a profusion of new shoots and buds. Nature it appears is once again demonstrating its come back ability. The evening rolls around and there is an England friendly game to watch after which I shall take my evening meds and get an early night. I think I am trying to sleep my way through this latest Uluru (bladder stone) attack like an old style life sentence prisoner in the bad old days. There is of course the Tesco order to update but that is a minor chore easily done. Will I have the time or inclination to sit in the dark garden trying to see the alignment of six planets, I doubt it but I might see if I can sneak a peek if I discover where I should look, there is a lot of light pollution around the house which might make it tricky anyway.

By the end of the day I have tested the new drive floodlight, the patio lights in the dark and got through the day, right up till the last moments when my Uluru symptoms start again. I down my drugs and get to bed as quickly as I can, sleep hopefully will ease things. Tomorrow is another day.

Sunny Sunday and I ‘ve had a mixed night after deciding that I was having another Uluru (bladder stone ) attack. Having gone for intervention “A” of antibiotics, no blood thinners and rest I feel initially as if I have jumped the gun. I take my vitals and they are good. When I do get up I am feeling relatively okay. While half way through my honey toasted bagel there is a ring at the door. It is a neighbour from over the back. One of our remaining fir trees has dropped a branch onto their back fence, I join my partner in the conversation and thank him for letting us know and assure him we would do something about it. No sooner had he left than the next door neighbour arrived to tell us about the garden fence work they are having done and a new shed that they are putting in. We talk about co-operative hedge maintenance as a group of three neighbours, which would be a good move going forwards. I promise to let them know the electricians number when I get a card off him tomorrow.

As soon as my neighbour has gone I grab my log saw from the garage and saw off the offending branch that had fallen over the neighbours fence. As I am doing that the garden guy arrives and gives me a hand. With that done I can feel I have been standing too long and retreat to the house. Sure enough I have my battery acid symptoms back when I go for a piss. I seems that if I spend any time on my feet my symptoms get worse. I finish my cold honied bagel breakfast and retreat to the recliner where I stare into space for a bit trying to regain balance. There are some messages from my son and friends which I reply to, apparently it is Gay Pride this month and one of my friends in York and her family have been to celebrate taking their new niece with them. my discomfort continues so I resort to taking a co-codamol, anything is better than this constant acid pain. I write a brief poem as a means of diversion and of a way of trying to reframe my situation in some way. Here it is:

397
I wrote a poem once
and told the world 
I know why old men stare,
of how we were in the world 
but not of it. 
I was wrong.
We sit and stare,
still and silent
because this is how
we contain the pain. 
This is how we do battle
with the afflictions
our bodies give us.
Motionless we are fighting,
to stand is to bleed,
to move is to fall,
rock like we resist,
determined but scared;
this is fortitude.

                                                                                   397 02-06-2024

The garden guy has made a decent fist of getting the grass down in the back garden, I give my partner the money to give him and retreat. Back at my laptop I have found that the USB stick in my computer is very hot and when I cool it down and try again it is unresponsive. It appears it is possible to fry a USB stick. There is nothing else for me to do now than rest and stare, and so I do.

While trying to rest I check that my “All in one” file of poetry is complete and find that due to frying my USB stick there are a couple missing. What follows is a lot of laptop juggling and copying and pasting. Eventually I get it sorted and now have two back up USBs of my poetry files. With that finally done I turn to TV and watch some athletics. This leads into the evening meal that my partner has cooked and some more television. All of this is punctuated by my not infrequent sprints to the toilet where I experience my symptoms at varying degrees but at times includes me groaning a bit and resting my head on the wall and muttering obscenities. Invariably I return to the recliner in the lounge and have a period of being quiet and regaining my equilibrium. A film comes on and I realise that I’ve slide in to “Rom Com” night. And so it goes till night meds time arrives and that decision to go to bed and see if sleep happens. The nights seem to be okay for some strange reason, all I can think of is that horizontal good, vertical not so good, which I would normally say is the wrong way round. Clearly this situation is a philosophical challenge. On a practical note the builder badgers are back tomorrow and things will move forward on the project. My final decision of the evening is co-codamol or not, or in other words, when do I know when I am addicted?

Saturday and I wake up feeling chipper and quite spoonful, so there is Saturday morning chat and the a cooked breakfast. My night has been good and my start to the day is feeling positive and then suddenly I go down hill. I go for a piss and find myself experiencing burning discomfort once again. I am determined not to buckle and go with my partner to local garden centre to get some food. On the way I check my tyres and then fill my car with petrol. All goes well. We get to the garden centre and suddenly I need the toilet, so I dash off to find one. My symptoms have worsened so I leave my partner to do the shopping and I sit in the car.

I drive home and it begins to feel like an Uluru (bladder stone) attack. My partner and eldest daughter go out to collect some mending and to have a coffee. It is not long before I am passing blood. I switch into plan A, antibiotics, no blood thinners for three days and a co-codamol. I go into rest mode and watch rugby on TV with my feet up. This is going to be crap, as I enter another half man half drugs state. For now its rest and self kindness. This is not a good day, even though the sun shines. For me its rest, eat, sleep and focus on doing what I can do slowly. My partner and eldest daughter go to see a film and I hunker down to a night of films and night meds. When all is said and done this as been a crap day, one of those days that saps strength and poses more challenges than it does rewards. Tomorrow is another day.