Tuesday and I have survived an horrendous night, thankfully there was morphine and some drifting sleep. I was woken at about 7:30 for my vitals to be taken by an apologetic but kindly nurse. All around me were men like me laying in beds and trying to rest and deal with their particular package of woe. The guy opposite to me was desperate to leave but had talked in his sleep all night and every time he fell asleep again began to talk again. Others like me were desperate to sleep and to be able to leave. I get offered breakfast from a trolley and select cornflakes and a yoghurt as it is all I can face. Not long after a crew arrive to make my bed, which I was grumpy about as it was changed at 3am. not long after 8am the consultant does his ward round and is surprised that I did not have a catheter put in during my operation but the bottom line is that I can go home once the paper work is done, which will be by 4 o’clock in the afternoon. I try to sleep but hospitals are noisy places and I drift in and out with a real post morphine downer and I feel absolutely exhausted. I do manage chilli concarni for lunch and another yoghurt. My vitals are checked several times adn to my surprise they are all spot on. Spot on is definitely not how I felt. All day at regular intervals a nurse comes and empties my catheter bag and records my output. One nurse comes and gives me a lesson on catheter maintenance and another delivers me a bag of bags to see me through the coming week before they have me back in to take my catheter out. My partner has not been well but she arrives at about 4 o’clock, all I need is my release papers and as luck would have it they arrive quickly and I am able to leave. My partner drives me home and I try to rest. There is football to watch but I am exhausted and distracted but I have to sort out my medications and get to grips to sleeping a full night with my catheter. I take myself to bed and hope for sleep.

Wednesday and I wake up after a better nights sleep, I seem to have managed myself quite well. I sleep as much as possible before getting up for breakfast on the patio with my partner and then my eldest daughter. My eldest daughter and I chat for a while before I retreat to the recliner in the lounge. I’m so tired I doze for long periods of time while my partner and eldest daughter go out for a while. I am drinking water and my biggest challenge is over coming the constipation that the morphine induces. I doze and doze making myself comfortable from time to time. I watch a football match, eat pizza and then draft the blog before watching Scotland play football. Its going to take me a couple of days to get myself fully organised and begin to feel better but for now I will settle for sleep and not needing to take any pain relief. Today is the fifth anniversary of my prostate cancer diagnosis. I’m still here, still fighting and still Rocket and I battle the cancer, now that my bladder stone is no more there is hope I can keep fighting for longer.