Sunday and there is no lay in, I get up early so I can have breakfast and take my antibiotics and my other meds. I find out very quickly that my bladder stone (Uluru) is still at work giving me pain but at least the hematuria is abating. My day is slow, I try some time on the garden swing seat in the sunshine while my partner goes to the gym. I tidy the kitchen before retuning to the sofa to rest. I am really trying not to take co-codamol but the pain gets to me and I give in, they are pain killers after all. So I meander, I write, read and watch sport, all interrupted on a regular basis by my discomfort. My partner cooks tea and we eat but against the background of my partners mother being taken to hospital, so the evening will be an anxious one. It seems that this is one of those difficult times, so I need to breathe and be as proactive as I can. I share my poem of the day and that will be the blog for today. My usual routines will now kick in and will culminate in my night meds and bed, providing my partner and I do not have to get up in the night. It feels as if this is a time to dig deep and do whatever is necessary.

391
Half man half medication,
not even half man 
since my chemical castration,
still trying to contain the noise, 
the emotional flack 
from family faltering.
Encouraging the living to live
and to go into the world. 
All I crave is peace and quiet, 
to be in the moment 
as my blood pressure monitor
hums and pumps to reveal
if my arithmetic is good.
There is me and there is 
Co-codamol me
alongside all the other
drug me’s. 
A nasty mix of mental 
states and constipation,
listlessness and anxieties, 
that I do not recognise 
but others have to live with.
Save yourselves,
take to the life boats
and row for shore
far off where mermaids sing
and pixies dance.
Where ripples of me 
can come from the moment 
of joy when the stone 
dropped into the mirror pool
and there was the wonder
and excitement
of a me that 
sang and danced full of curiosity.
Bright colours and not a drug
in sight.
This transition is up hill
as slowly I am no longer
Sisyphus but the rock.
Let it roll, no one
need any longer labour,
go and play while you can
and let the boulder 
come to rest. 
The peak was always precarious 
and the view, to be honest, 
was not that great.
It is erosion that will take me,
shelter yourselves from the elements
and take warmth by
others fires, for this is nature
on chemo and pain relief. 

						  391 19-05-2024