CHEMO II DAYS 184 & 185

Fight round by round, day by day.

Saturday. I wake up eat toast and meds. I spend my morning erecting the new Christmas tree and get the Christmas boxes out of the loft. I then wrestle with the tree lights for a long time until they festoon the tree. I am on a tight timetable and dive into the bath in readiness to go to the poetry Stanza.

I am sitting on the sofa and I realise I do not have the spoons to drive into town and attend the poetry Stanza. I just cannot face it. I put the poems I had printed out ready for the meeting back in the file and I changed out of my poetry clothes. After a while of sitting staring at the tree I get myself together and start to hanging things on the tree. That’s what I do for the afternoon, resting at odd times. Eventually I get to the end of the process and stop.

Everyone in the household is tired today, my partner has a cold so in the evening we order in and Indian meal and settle down to watch the Strictly final. The great British public predictably do not vote for the best dancer but the one they think has tried hardest. True underdog favouritism. There follows some late evening kitchen clearing and meds taking before I go to bed. I’m edging towards Christmas but I am disappointed in myself for not getting to the poetry Stanza meeting but I have to accept that there will be days like this.

Sunday, my partner and I drink coffee in bed and plan the run into Christmas. With that done we eat toast and take family present to my partners brother. Its a quick Santa drop before we go to the local garden centre to get pies and veg. On returning home I find the garden guy has turned up for the last time before Christmas. He is fed coffee and we chat for a while and then he gets on with the final pruning and clearing for the year. I set about putting arrangements in place to publish my “The Cancer Years” poetry selection. I’m using the Amazon Writers Cliché service. So I’ve bought my publishing package and sent my zip file of content off. I now wait for the call about cover design and other admin bits to be sorted. After this I am wall to wall rugby matches until the evening. My evening passes quietly until I draft the blog for the last couple of days. I appear to be low in energy at the moment so as I down my night meds I hope for a good night sleep and to wake up with a renewed reserve of spoons.

So people do not have to ask.