Tuesday and I wake up irked by the fact that I have over slept again, it’s 10:30am. I am immediately on the back foot. The house is empty, partner at gym, daughter at work. I take my vitals. It requires time to relax and get my blood pressure down but it does eventually come down to an acceptable level. My heart rate continues to be elevated, I’ve no idea why apart for it being a side effect of the chemo and maybe an interaction with my lack of fitness/training. I get up and climb into my training gear and then make myself a breakfast salmon omelette with orange juice. I take my morning meds and then settle down to fill my medication dosettes for the next two weeks. Its a slightly tricky task as I have to include the next lot of Chemo steroids into the mix. Mostly it is straight forward, I just have to remember that once I get to Saturday I swap onto the next dosette.

I clear away the drugs rubbish and then head for the garage and the rower. My motivation is low and I really do not feel like rowing this morning. My ear buds get put in and I select a motivational training track from the BBC and set myself up to go. Its a tough twenty minutes. One of those days when every pull is an effort and there is never any rhythm. The end inevitably comes and I find that it has been a reasonable row. Not my best but good enough.

So after what felt like a tough session the figures say I did okay. I have not yet worked out the balance of training days against rest days at the moment. It feels like I should get as many days in as I can, I have bloods on Friday and it is there that any difference will show up. The problem is that it is far too early for any real differences to show up due to training, its going to need at least another cycle before I can expect any observable difference, and even then that maybe too optimistic. Patience is the key here, patience and perseverance. I just hope I have the strength for the perseverance. I sink a Red Bull and relax to recover.

My partner returns from the gym and has lunch while I recover. Once recovered a little I change into real world clothes and drive myself and partner to the local branch of Nationwide. I chat to a bank person and explain that I need an ISA cancelled as it never had anything in it. After a productive chat and a look at the relevant paper work she taps away and then smiles. The ISA is no more but of course it will take five days for the system to catch up, that’s modern tech for you. Its a kind of exercise in learning to live in parallel universes. I realise that this is the first person outside the household that I have spoken since I started cycle 6 of chemo, 10 days ago, that can’t be normal.

With bank stuff done I drive myself and partner to a local garden centre where I head for the grit, gravel and chippings department. I peruse the available bag of chippings to select what will go into the bamboo retaining trench. As it is going to be hidden at the top of the garden there is no need to consider aesthetics. So the cheapest stuff will do and fortunately the cheapest stuff is just right.

In a moment of inspiration I take a photo and head for the tills. “Do you deliver” I ask the till wrangler. “We do” she says and joy was unbounded. So its all arranged, next Monday my chippings will be delivered, so I have no humping to do and Elsie (the car) does not have to bear the load on a journey. I drive away from the garden centre chuffed. I know its an ordinary thing but it gives me pleasure.

Once home I relax and start to draft the days blog, and as I do so I begin to feel fatigued again. I have jotted poems but they are dark and inward, not a pretty sight. I know that they will make it to the next collection, they all will, but for now they remain quietly resting. I ease into the evening with no plan knowing that the next few days are supposed to be sunny. It could be that I spend more time in the garden and the writing Shed. For now I re-read Forrest of Noise by Mosab Abu Toha, a collection of poems that keep drawing me back to them. I shall end my evening as always, taking my medications and heading for bed in the hope of a good nights sleep. With the bins out and the gates shut nothing else is going to happen tonight. That’s a rule.