Saturday and I am awake and aware that I need to get to the chemist to pick up my drugs from the chemist. So I am up and into my fleecy trousers and my partner and I stroll down to the village where I pop into the chemist while my partner raids the co-op for a paper and crumpets. The chemists is busy but despite my having ordered my drugs four days ago I still have to wait while the team rummage around to find my order, in fact it is clear they are doing it on the fly as they retrieve my injection from a delivery box. Eventually they hand me my paper bag with my drugs. My partner and I walk home to have breakfast.

Having acquired my drugs I set about filling my drugs wallets for the next two weeks, an easy but fiddly job as my Viking finger restricts my hand motility. I try to get my sofa end organised and cleaned before the midday football match on TV. To be frank the day becomes a sports fest as I drift from football to rugby until there are no more matches and it becomes a food and drama series evening. I am acutely aware that tomorrow is 12th night which means that I shall be taking the decorations down and packing them away till next year. With the household gone to bed I take a moment to thank all the tree baubles, drops, angels, and animals for there sterling work this year. Of course there is a special word to Red Sonia who has topped the tree excellently again this year, a legend in the household and has been for years now. With my thank yous done I take my night meds and go to bed.

Sunday and there is snow, thin measly Leicestershire snow, but nevertheless snow. Its clearly not going to last long not like the swathes of the white stuff up north and to the west of us. It is a strange truth that Leicestershire has less severe weather than the rest of the country. Being so central the worst of all the weather fronts seem to peter out before they reach Leicestershire, so if we are having really bad weather someone else is having appalling weather. So as I look at the light dusting that is already melting my mind turns to taking down the Christmas tree decorations.

So after breakfast and getting the shower to work for my partner I catch up with the blog and my social media. It is 28 jab day tomorrow but it looks like there should be no problem getting to the GP surgery to have it. As a precaution I retrieve my winter waterproof boots from the boot of the car. With my precautionary things done I get up into the loft and retrieve the Christmas decoration storage boxes and so the great de-decorate begins. Every bauble, drop, angel, animal and gets wrapped in tissue and popped into their appropriate shoe box, while the Prague dolls and the light up rabbit and reindeer get stored in their boxes. Due to the visit of the youngest grandchild this year we did no put out the nativity, next year it will be safe to do so, so this year “God in a box” remained just that.

The lights get their own set of boxes and finally it all get returned to the loft packed in storage crates, which just leaves the tree to be dismantled and re-boxed. It was a very wise decision to buy a good quality false tree last year. Look good and can be adjusted to fit the space we have. Boxed up the tree awaits return to the garage. All of this has taken the day with one short break to watch the majority of a televised rugby match. So the evening meal arrives and then a quiet evening of staying warm and preparing for tomorrows 28 day jab.

I suppose I should take time to reflect upon the year but as Tuesday is the fifth anniversary of my completion of chemotherapy I suspect I should take a longer view of my situation. My actual time living with my cancer is months longer but surviving the chemo seems to be an important landmark. The actual experience of that initial chemo was a scary one. There was so much bad press around chemo, and it was often reinforced by the nursing staff, I remember the urologist who gave me my cancer diagnosis and my Gleason score who said ” your be okay, your strong”, and so I was. I think I was very lucky in that I never suffered the nausea that many people do. My hair falling out and the physical bloating of my body was difficult to cope with. Once out of chemo and my hair started to recover I swore I would not cut my hair again given that the expectation for a man of my age with a Gleason score of 9.5 was, with successful chemo was 26 months. Here I am five years on with hair down to the middle of my back. A great deal has happened in those five years and I wonder if I have spent them wisely, but the real challenge is whether I can spend the next five years as interestingly.