Saturday and little of it remains as I write this on the Sunday. It was a bad as I woke with very few spoons. I did not feel fit for anything really and had hit a low. I remember spending lot of time deleting over a thousand redundant photos off my camera before getting up. Once up I wrote a poem trying to allay my fears and put into words where I was. It was a grim strophe that I do not think belongs here at the moment, perhaps when a little more time has passed. Having completed it I tried to make an effort to get myself going, or at least make an effort so I washed out the stinky kitchen bin, giving it a good hose out and a bleaching while my partner was out at the garden centre buying vegetables. The rest of the day was a slothful mixture of football, rugby and the rest of Fool Me Once. By the time night meds came around I had nothing left. My new addition to my diet is hot water, in my paranoid state I think anything like coffee or diet coke irritates my bladder and contributes to my discomfort, so at the moment I am hot water total.
Sunday and I wake up, weigh myself and find myself to be 99 kilos a loss of half a kilo over last week. It is just reward for no sweets or biscuits, cake or other sweet goodies alongside my hot water regime. A small step but a forward one. I am very sleepy and do not really wake up until my partner brings me a hot water. Slowly I surface and get down to a breakfast of bacon sandwich ad another cup of hot water with traces of kettle fur. I have a burst of activity and with the help of my eldest daughter I get the Christmas boxes into the loft and the new rat proof bird seed bin, with seed, into the garden Shed. The final act was for us to find I home for the artificial Xmas tree in the garage, all neatly boxed and taped back up for next year.
Continuing in an energy burst the family sat down and pawed over the plans for the proposed new drive and patio. Eventually we reached agreement on what we thought was best. It will not change the bottom line by much but it will make the whole project clearer and simpler. Having reached a consensus I draft and email to the person who has sent the quote and share it with my partner before sending it off into cyber space. I take my vitals, which are once again okay and then draft the blog. Its afternoon already and I feel myself flag and also thinking about my pre-emptive paracetamol given that tomorrow is jab Monday. This month my jab time is 4 ‘clock in the afternoon, which means I will get my side effects through the night and the following 36 hours. Since being on this latest bout of Chemo these side effects seem exacerbated and last longer, perhaps by as much as another 24 hours. Its not fun so I plan my schedule to try and take this into account. Perhaps there is time for afternoon tea and a scone somewhere.
There is indeed time for an afternoon jaunt to the favourite garden centre tea room where I indulge in the full Monty hot chocolate and a toasted tea cake. It is here that there is a serious conversation about moving house or extending the existing one and the potential of developing the garden. My partner and I left having had our conversation and returned home. I settled down to watch a third round FA cup match which conveniently concluded just as the evening meal was ready. The evening is TV and blog as I watch the new series of Vera. Vera is a secret passion. As the evening goes on I begin to calculate when to start taking my prophylactic paracetamol to counter tomorrows twenty eight day jab. I settle for an early take to give my gut a break before I take todays Chemo before bed. And so it goes, the next cycle.
