Monday, Jab Monday, so I’m awake at 7 o’clock and trying to surface. My partner brings me coffee and toast to get me going, which it does. I get up and sort out my clothes, its got got to be a T shirt as I’m having my B12 jab as well as my regular cancer jab to day so there needs to be easy arm access. I choose my fuck cancer T short that was made for me by a friend. It acts as a bit of armour against how I feel. Today is is going to be different as it will be the first time I have had to wear a mask to the GP in months. The GP has messaged his flock to say masks are now a thing again due to the new strain of COVID virus that is going around. Fortunately I saw the message and immediately bought a new stock of masks. So I get to the GP on time and have no chance to read before the nurse beckons me in to the clinical room. We chat about the chilly weather while she mixes up my injection and then she pops it into me. The B12 goes in my arm straight after. I cannot book my next one as the system is not loaded up to my next date so a reminder has to go in my diary. I leave the surgery feeling less than chipper but buy a paper on the way home.

Once home I settle down to do the crosswords and puzzles in the paper, I’m cold and turn the heating on for the first time this year. I read an article where the nhs had recommended that homes should be kept at 18 degrees, the thermometer that I had taken round the house had shown that the house was around 15 degrees. No wonder I am cold. My injection days always get worse over 48 hours before I feel better so I want to be warm, I’m tired of being snifferly and feeling chilly all day. So stuff the bill and the fact that its sunny outside the house needs warming through and so do I. I try to get onto my website to draft the blog but get thrown out several times so I give that up and arrange to see friends in December for a meal. I move onto the Amazon website to try and explain that the delivery they say has been delivered yesterday has not, the chatbot was polite and suggest I wait a coupe of days to see if stuff turns up. I’ll go with that as I only order the items yesterday and the tracking says they were delivered yesterday, so chatbot could be right this time.

I have soup for lunch to warm me up and to help with the sense of constipation I’m experiencing, which I think and hope is just a side effect of the paracetamol I am taking to stave off the effects of todays jabs, but just in case I have a laxative at hand. I finally get onto my blog site and begin to draft todays edition but as I sit here typing I can feel my injection site becoming sore. Its the usual process, the site increases in soreness, I take paracetamol and a couple of hours later I start to feel like a withdrawing junkie, cold, shaky and as if I am going down with flu. I’d prefer to be more Christopher Robin and go down with Alice but it is what it is. I settle down for the afternoon and will read some more David Sedaris. I should train as my PSI points have dropped below 100 but I can tell I might not feel chipper enough today to do that.

The day got better when the solicitor dealing with my sisters estate emailed to say the buyer is ready to exchange and to complete this week and was asking for the go ahead. Of course I said yes but as always one does not jump for joy until the the curtain rings down and the final bow is taken. When it does, if it does, then I can breathe an immense sigh of relief. For now my evening comes to an end with meds having finished reading my David Sedaris book. As I slide into the night I feel myself slipping into my post injection withdrawing junkie state.