CYCLE 4 DAYS 13 &14

Saturday now is a blur. I remember doing little except feeling tired and listless and mostly craving bacon sandwiches. It rained a lot and gave me no reason to go out, although I remember the garden centre, fruit scones, cold meats and a pie. I also remember, now that I have found four strips of raffle tickets, a fast zip round the local village hall where the Christmas art and crafts fair was on. I recall buying some pre-emptive Christmas presents, which I obviously cannot disclose as the readers of this blog might well be recipients. The rest of the day was televised rugby as I could not be arsed to go to the real thing and be cold and wet and less than impressed by my team. I did wear my leg weights all afternoon and evening in an effort to stretch my calf muscles and stop them from cramping. It worked to a degree bit still had the odd twinge of cramp in the night.

The reason for my tiredness apart from being poisoned is the broken nights. I sleep for maybe two hours and then need to go to the loo. The cycle repeats during the night, a result of medication and my condition. So every night is broken and I wake with no sense of having slept for any length of time. All my life I went to bed and died. My head hit the pillow and I woke in the morning, I was blessed. I rarely, if ever, was disturbed by dreams. For me the night was a void from which I emerged every morning to get on with the next day. Now I have no sense of having ever slept, or of waking up surprised its morning. This sense of not having slept is tiring and makes me disinclined to engage in any activity, as preserving my energy becomes my priority. I get lazy and neglectful of my routines to keep me active and moving forward.

Sunday arrives and finds me alone in bed, my partner having got up early to do chores and catch up on things. I find her in the lounge, quiet, sad and tearful. Basically wishing everything would be alright again. We talk and agree how much this drains us, but our options are limited and we need to keep doing those things that keep moving us forward. We agree what we are doing to day and we get on with it.

Our Sunday continued along our to do list. We drove into town and tried to pay in cheques, but the bank was closed, even for self service. Then we tried to return something to Wallis in Debenhams and found that was not possible We went to the post office to send it as a return parcel but found we did not have a return labels or an address to send it to. Only one thing to do in this situation, drink hot chocolate and eat pan au raisin, which we did immediately. It gave us time to sit and explore how we got a return label and what we needed to do. One download later and we were feeling more competent.

By now it is raining hard and we trudge back to the car and head for the gym. Not many people in on a Sunday afternoon so there was plenty of choice of machine. I of course climbed up onto a cross trainer and pumped away for an hour shedding 725 calories and downing a whole bottle of water. It was hard work but it got me moving again. The post effort shower was most welcome as was the cold drink and half a bar of chocolate in the lounge as I waited for my partner. We discussed if we could collect a prescription from Sainsburys, but alas the conversation took place ten minutes after the chemist in Sainsburys closed. Its been that sort of day really. So home in yet more pouring rain in time to see England beat Kosovo 4 nil, order mailing tubes, children’s books, eat dinner and watch strictly followed by His Dark Materials. Then to blog. I realise how pedestrian this all is, the everyday stuff just to maintain the everyday, but tomorrow is another 28 day injection and I am back to having a pigeons egg in my stomach. So my interweaving of the normal and the cancer club life continues. I tire of it.