Wednesday and after an early bed time last night I wake at no different time. Best laid plans… So I get up and have a shower, and then do my vitals as my hair dries. There is time for breakfast before I walk slowly down to the GP surgery to have my COVID booster jab. I am in and out in a trice. On the walk back home I collect a paper, some cash and a bag of sweets, the latter being ill advised comfort. Once home I set to work on the crosswords, and whip thorough them with our google assistance. Go me at least my head works, but as the morning progresses I feel rank and it begins to feel like another Uluru (bladder stone) attack is on the way so I down a co-codamol in the hope of staving off the discomfort. I cannot face doing the dentist and the dental hygienist and cancel tomorrow appointments.
Lunch comes and goes as does my partner as she goes off to see her mother with her brother. I am left to watch the builder badgers take another delivery of huge bags of sand and shale along with the paving bricks. My symptoms worsen so I retreat to the sofa and start to draft the blog having emptied the dishwasher as that appears to one of the remaining functions of my life, that, and loading it last thing at night and setting it going. This is the erosion of my will. I feel chipped away at and reduced in functionality and self worth. It is at these moments that I draw a deep breath, remember that I am loved and cared about and are far more fortunate than many other carbon based species units. This is where the fight is, this is where Rocket and I do battle everyday to be able to do whatever we can to be here, to be making a contribution and to be something that others can engage with. This is where the battle to be kind, reasonable and rational takes place, where the wrestle with self pity is fought and where the belief that tomorrow can be better is clasped too. This is where writing this blog distracts me, allows me to hear my own voice through my eyes and to pick apart some of what is going on inside me. Its clear that Rocket and I are fighting on two fronts now. My prostate cancer is one, and here we have learnt to hold our own, just. The PSA holds low, the vitals are holding up but on the bladder stone front it is a hard battle, perhaps the intricacies of the combination of the two is too difficult. Five short days ago I stood and clapped and sang to Seven Drunken Nights in a concert hall, today I’m feeling fucked, it is this waxing and waning of my energies and my being that is hard to take. It is being able to predict the world and the future, within reason, that makes people feel safe and secure. It is the erosion of this that makes life hard, threatening and unsafe and that is what my body is doing to me at the moment. As a result I withdraw and try to maintain some rituals, some scaffolding that enables me to predict what is going to happen next, that and trying to stay engaged with my friends, family and some sort of vision of the future in which I can play a part. This, my poetry and my correspondence are the tools that I use in my battle, and how ironic is that for a dyslexic. The very thing that I have struggled with all my life is the things that I now depend upon. Always I come back to D .H. Lawrence’s poem:
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt
sorry for itself.
From this stems resilience and resistance. There are other poems of course that I carry parts of in my head that pop up from time to time but it is Lawrence’s little poem that comes up most often these days. So I try not to be self pitying, as I have said before there are many carbon based species units that are by far worse off than me. In the time that it has taken me to write this the builder badgers have filled the drive way with huge bags of sand, shale, bricks and all sorts of shaped bits and pieces. My replacement part for the water terrace have arrived , which means when I can raise the energy I can reinstall the water butt by the new patio, but not today.
By mid afternoon I have settled down a bit and will rest for a while with the half formed thought about whether or not I will get a reaction from my COVID jab or not. So far so good. The builder badgers lay the first row of our drive and then call it day and pack up. Its a bit of a tease but hopefully tomorrow they will steam ahead and it will look like it is all coming together.
The evening arrives and my partner returns from her mothers to find its a bit of a hop and a step to get into the house as the front step is under reconstruction. There is an evening meal and the last episode of Race Across The World to watch. I will then have a second go of getting myself to bed early, early meds and then hopefully sleep. The reality is that my arm with the COVID jab starts to ache and out of the blue the Americans send me the final final drafts of both of the new poetry collections. Tomorrow is to be a day of editing, something to focus on and to distract me.
