CYCLE 4 DAY 2
I wake on the first day of my new chosen image for my battle with cancer. Gone is the desert and in its place a desert island surrounded by ocean full of life. I’m up early, toasting hot cross buns for breakfast so that I can take my block steroids and drugs, before heading off out to meet a colleague for a proper breakfast for a pre meeting chat. We meet in a Premier Inn and chat over breakfast abut what we want to do in the meeting with the YMCA. At 10:00am we walk across the road to the meeting. It goes well as we talk Enabling Environments and plan a way forward for the seven participants. By lunchtime we have the makings of a plan and some potential dates made available. It looks like I shall be working alongside the organisations co-ordinator for the project. We eat lunch and my colleague goes to catch her train and I follow shortly.
I drive home and do the domestics, bring in bin, clear kitchen, find post and check e-mails. Then I wander down to the village barbers and get her to crop my hair on number two so as to remove the decidedly fluffy regrowth from the chemo. A job well done I indulge in a coffee and a bacon sandwich at the village café. Home to load the tumble dryer, tidy the office and watch an early football match, but not before having a conversation with a friend I had not talked to for a while . WhatsApp is all very well but I miss the to and flow of a conversation, it was a real pleasure to be able to converse normally. There was the odd moment when the conversation continues as I check the curry that I had bubbling away on the range.
My partner returns from work and goes through her getting home ritual and then we eat. My evening ends up a football fest as I let myself drift from one match to another being vaguely aware that I feel mildly sick with an upset stomach, but then I have eaten an odd diet today and cannot be sure it is due to chemo. But I do wander and make a decision to eat bland and drink water for twenty four hours. I will also take my temperature.
In the early evening I get a message to tell me that the funereal of my friend who recently died is going to be on the date of my next oncologist appointment. I look at the timings of both and work out with the aid of route planner whether I can make it. If the oncologist, “he who has made a pact with the devil”, is his usual speedy self and I am in good shape, low PSA, then it is doable. I will just have to go to the oncologist dressed ready for the funereal. That will give him and the specialist nurse something to think about if I do not mention what I am doing.
I have promised myself a day of rest tomorrow, when I laze and read. So now I am going to my island beach to look out over the ocean and watch for life and magical things till I slip into wave induced sleep to wake refreshed tomorrow.
