Friday arrives, in fact “Foot Friday” arrives, today is the day I visit the chiropodist and indulge in the luxury of having my feet done by a professional. It is the only way I can keep my feet in good condition since my first bout of chemotherapy thickened my nails. So I spend little time on my usual waking rituals, pausing briefly to measure my vitals, which are once again okay, before jumping into the shower and getting myself chiropodist ready. A brief breakfast and I drive to the next village, park in the Co-op car park and wander over to the foot clinic. The chiropodist ushers me and I soon have my feet in a warm bowl of water, which is no doubt sterilising them. I’m on quite good terms with my chiropodist and we chat while she does my feet. Holiday plans, who Christmas went and the usual family gossip form our conversation. As usual by the end of my time my feet are very happy feet and feel just excellent. This is truly a real pleasure.

Before driving home I pick up a paper and some doughnut and herbal tea bags. Once home I settle down to do todays crosswords and indulge in a doughnut washed down with one of the new herbal teas. Not long after my successful completion of the crosswords, once again with out the aid of Google, my partner makes us cheese on toast and sliced apple. this is being a good and I am thinking about how I am going to amuse myself in the afternoon when I am deflated by finding blood in my urine again when I go for a pee, It seems the minimal amounts of walking are, at times, enough to induce this. I drink some water clear the recycling to the bin and them sit on the recliner drinking water and updating my Excel spreadsheet for my vitals. I use this to calculate my average blood pressure over each cycle of the current chemo. I do a quick check on the averages so far and find them to be normal and in line with the previous eight cycles to date. With my feet up and resting I draft the blog and sip water. I expect to be okay again in three to four hours, and then I can start again to plan to do things.

It is this element of my cancer that I find so difficult to cope with at the moment, it means I cannot train as I did before and therefore cannot do the one thing that holds the chemotherapy side effects at bay. It constrains what I can do and of course it is distressing to be passing blood. All I can do is rest, hydrate and ease myself back to activity as much as my body and cancer will allow, This is the invasive nature of cancer that grinds remorselessly on and challenges my resilience and ability to balance action with rest. It is also why, although not good for me I will “treat” myself to doughnuts or a bag of peanut M&Ms. There is a temptation to just quit and self indulge to an egregious degree but I like to think my better part of me holds me in check enough to hold some sort of balance between self denial and unbridled hedonism.

So for the moment I recline and rest sipping water and watching as the sun comes out. I will monitor how things go before contemplating what to do at the weekend. My evening is prosaic, one of TV and resting. I get to the point where I can’t face any more hot water and end my evening sipping 0%rum and ginger ale and taking my chemo meds. All I want is to sleep well tonight.