CYCLE 3 DAY 1

I woke this morning with a lot of thoughts about people who had died in my life. Not surprising given my situation, it does tend to focus the attention on such issues. I note from my Fitbit that I REM (Dream) slept for an 1 hour and twenty one minutes last night which is a lot for me. The prompt for all this was my unexpected reaction to a TV show, Juvenile Delinquents. Two very misfit adolescents, rude, crude and hopelessly inept in there attempts at relationship but having hearts in the right place, if nothing else. They reminded me of many of the borstal boys and young offenders I worked with years ago. The central theme of the show was the reaction of all the characters to death. On the anniversary of his mothers death one of the adolescents and has friend try to spend a day with two girls, trying to impress them in ways doomed to failure. It wasn’t until they all end up at singing “I can’t live with you or without you” at the grave side do they make any meaningful contact. In the background was the drunken widower visiting the grave and retreating to drink with a photo of his dead wife. His son covers him up to sleep at the end of the show. In the midst of this was a dying orca, mother of a pod. The upshot amidst all this was a sense of people finding each other and discovering for themselves what was truly important to them in others. Just the sort of thing that gets to me and opens some of the doors that I keep firmly locked away, unless I am in a safe enough space to take a peek inside. So I guess my dreams carried on the process and lead me to wake with a head full of dead people who I continued to think about as I gratefully ate my bacon sandwich and drank my first coffee of the day brought to me by my partner.

Time to get up and banish the dead for prosaic things like haveing a shower and saying hello to the new toothbrush and the oral hygiene team. Meet the team:

The new toothbrush is of course another baby brush as recommendd by the care team, and is now always followed by the rugged Listerine mouthwash. The ck one is my major partnern in warding off fears that I smell due to too many hot sweats, whereas the Cutan Complete assures me after every hand wash that I am for a moment sanitised. I seem to be getting through the mouthwash very quickly andn suspect others are using it. Fact of paranoia? No idea but hopefully paranioa, as fact would mean my compromosed immune system was being further compromised.

Having cleansed and groomed I of course take the opportunity to hop on the scales naked to see how much I actually weight. Not a pretty site, as due to the loss of hormone and eating too much is resulting in a rapid weight increase. After today, I always eat sweets juring and just after chemo to raise my suger level in response to my body having a bit of a shock with the cannula and the drug input, there will be no more sweets and buns. Its fruit and yogurts for me.

We set off early for the hospital and on the way I check a WhatsApp from my nephews fiance who is now very happy with having an interview with the BBC to be a traffic annoncer and has also been offered and interview for a salaried post doing what she is doing on a zero hours contract. So today the sunshone for her. When I checked my e-mails I found one from the insurance company with whom we have been at loggerheads with since my illness in Jamaica agreeing to pay 86% of hotel medical and ambulance bills. So the sun shone for us too. All good results until we realised that we had been sitting outside the hospital car park staring at a car park FULL sign for ages and at the same time watching cars regularly leaving the car park. Eventually a bloke wanders out and raises the barrier. So once again we have to trudge off to the car parking office to sort out or payment card. Another irritating start to a chemo session.

I hand in my appointment card and we go and sit in the waiting area having loaded up with drinks and sweets and of course partake of a preemptive visit to the facilities. We waited until my Fitbit told me I needed to get my 250 steps in, at which pont I ambled up and down the corridor till I had completed my steps. I sat down and was soon having a hot flush. I’ve got this sussed now, I just “man fan” till I feel comfortable.

I’m called in and guided to chair 14 and set up my table with all my goodies and a book to read. The now usual questions about who I am, when was I born, any allergies, have I had my steroids are all answered satisfactorily and we got on with the cannula. I select my right hand thinking it will end up in my left hand anyway given the last two experiences of multiple tries at getting it in. Bingo, first time! What a relief, I will end up with just one fluffy cloud taped to me today.

We settle down to read and eat M&Ms. Half way through I get my visitor, a friend of one of my nephews wife who is completing her chemo tomorrow and has been reading my blog. We chat about chemo and our mutual friends. She gives me a present that her mother has made. She makes them for alsorts of people as encouragement and support, so I now have my own angel. My new friend gives me a link to an App she uses and I promised to put it on my Blog for others to access. Its called Belong. Life. Just click on the following link; https://belong.life/ Her husband arrive to collect her and we said our goodbyes and promised to stay in touch.

I settled back down to reading my book, Goethe’s Faust, inspired by my oncologist, ” he who made a pact with the devil”. My version is an 1889 edition of the play which I remember reading a long time ago and was surprised by some of the things I had forgotten. I did find one bit in the prelude on the stage between the Manager, the Poet and Merry Andrew when discussing putting on the play that spoke to me. The Manager says:

What’s left undone today, Tomorrow will not do.

Waste not a day in vain digression:

With resolute , courageous trust

Seize every possible impression,

And make it firmly your possession;

You’ll then work on, because you must.

The Manager ,Prelude. Goethe’s Faust

This fits in with my ideas of keeping a direction and continuing to make a contribution while I can with some sort of urgency as I have no time to waste. It prods me to look to my own projects and to complete some of my own writing. The folowing scene, the Prologue in Heaven reminded me that in this play it is God who engages Mestistopheles to corupt Faust for a moral bet, which to my mind makes him a bit of a bastard! But it is only a play after all. Still the audience always boos Pinkerton at the end of Madame Butterfly and that is after all only an opera! I have digressed. But the time of this chemo session has gone quickly and without a hitch, so it has been a good session. I am unhooked from my poison bag and saline and leave clutching my drugs and of course a new set of five self stab sticks. That joy is to come, but not today.

We leave and head for the Cosy Club and a decent lunch. I always like to eat and drink quuickly after chemo. I think I want to indulge before the poison start to get to me. It also starts the process of getting enough liquid down me to flush me through. We head home where my partner continues to work from home via the magic of IT and I head out to Sainsburys. My mission is to buy printer cartridges, Yacolt yogurts, a birthday card for my grandson and collect Swedish Krona. Sainsbury’s have stopped selling printer cartridges and filled the shelves, in fact a lot of shelves with crap plastic, made in china, toys. I assume the looming profit of Christmas is involved but clearly whatever it is there is no green thought around. No thoughts of energy conservation, increasing non bio degradable plastics, and the sheer hideousness of plastic. What is worse if that the Swedish Krona are not there to go in the birthday card I buy. There is going to be a longer delay than anticipated. I shall have to confess in a WhatsApp soon. I leave and go to Pets are Us, or something like that, opposite Sainsbury’s in search of oxygenating pond plants. They have tanks with fish in and there they are swimming around the odd plant but not what I need. What does catch my eye is the rows of shelves of crap plastic plants with no oxygenating properties whatsoever, incapable of supporting insect life and making no contribution to any form of echo system fit for pond life beyond choking it with its indigestibility. I go home and get ready for the gym. Tonight I cross trained away 770 calories and stretch out my back and slightly painful side, whilst downing a litre of fluids.

Home to watch the great british bake off and to eat before starting on the blog. In the middle of doing this my internet went down. All I got was a message that my hub manager could not sort the problem and to ring the help line, I should expect to spend twenty minutes. I got through to a nice guy who reassured me all would be well soon, and it was, within five minutes I had my merry blue light back and I was back to my blog. Nice one BT, I am impressed. I’m tired now, its past 12:30 and I think the day is catching up with me so I am off to bed, hoping that this has not become too dyslexic.

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