Thursday and I wakeup after being plagued by not being able to remember where someone lived. I had to get up in the middle of the night and look at my address book to finally get the searching out of my head. I knew which letter of the alphabet it started with but could get no further. Once I had got the name of the town I was able t settle down to sleep. I woke up and of course tested my self to see if I remembered he name of the town, I did. My vitals were good again and so I set about checking my messages and emails. Amongst them was one from my energy supplier telling me they were upping my direct debt in December by thirty pounds. Probably time to get the thick jumpers out and to use electricity rather than gas as its cheaper per unit. This is my last chance to train before going away tomorrow to visit my youngest daughter and her family so I get up, take my morning meds and set the dishwasher going, which now seems to be okay.

Once in the garage I strap in to the rower, set myself for 445 minutes and get under way. I feel a bit sluggish but seem to be ab le to pick up the pace a bit as the session goes on. 9 kilometres seemed beyond me at one point but I made an effort over the last few minutes and pulled my deficit back so I made it 9 kilometres two days running. This earns me a day or twos rest.

I record the session in my journal and then set about up dating my blood pressure and vitals spread sheet. It takes a while to do all the data entry but eventually I get up to date and do the stats on the figures. The average blood pressure for cycle 17 has come down significantly after my hiatus with the cardio people and the interrupted chemo. Cycle 18 so far after the first week is showing the same sustained fall, which means I am managing to combat the major side effects well and also getting fitter. It gives me hope that I can get my weight down when I start phase 2 next Monday when I get into my abstinence diet where I shall cut out sweets, biscuits and other sugar ladened foods. But that is for Monday. With the life admin done I get changed and go for a late lunch with my eldest daughter.

The village pub serves reasonable food and is busy today. We order and ten chat while we wait for food to arrive, it takes a while but when it arrives it is very welcome and tastes good. My treat is a steak baguette with onions and horseradish. The pub fills up and gets quite noisy, which I am not sure I like anymore, I hate the having to strain to hear properly. Its no that I cannot her my daughter more that the surrounding noise is intrusive. We finish our meal, pay and leave then head for the co-op to get a paper so I can do the cross words. The news content does not interest me much and I skim over it, its mostly right wing bleating about the budget and people sharing things about themselves that I have no wish to know about. Once home I dash through the crosswords, pleased that I do not need Google and that I get to use the word Squab (baby Pidgeon). With that done I clear the kitchen so my partner can prepare tea and I start to draft the blog. On checking my fitness App on the phone it would appear I am all good except my weight, here I am really not good, so it is timely that I have timetable my next phase for Monday.

My evening will be some reading and TV and beating off any one who tries to mug me for candy, this being Halloween. There is one thing I will do and that’s raise a small glass in memory of a friend and colleague who passed five years ago. I think it is import to keep his ripples going. Then it will be meds and bed before tomorrows flurry of travel and family.

Wednesday and I wake up later than I wanted and immediately phone the GP surgery to get an appointment. I am in luck, despite my lateness in ringing I get an appointment mid afternoon. With the appointment sorted I take my vitals and find them to be good. My messages checked I get up and get into my training gear. I take my morning meds on the way to the garage and my rower. Once sorted I set the session for 45 minutes and get under way. I start fast expecting to slow towards the end but to my surprise manage to keep going. The outcome is that I row a new personal best since I started training again. I am really pleased, it feels that at last I am gaining ground, if I can keep this going I will be ready to get to grips with my diet, but that wont happen until after the weekend visit to my youngest daughter and grandson.

I record my session in my journal and then sit and watch the Budget while eating a bacon sandwich. Once I have grasped the relevant issues in the budget I take a shower and spend time reading more of Tom Hanks short stories. At the appointed time I walk down to the GP surgery and wait for my turn. After about a half hour wait I get called in. I slap my hand on the table and say “what’s that doc” and with out a moments hesitation he says “that’s a Dupuytren’s contracture”. He follows the required algorithm, notes my finger is more than 30 degrees bent, the finger will not lay flat on a table and a pencil could be passed underneath it. He types all this in to his machine and then prints out my referral letter. So in 10 days someone will contact me and give me an appointment date, doubtless a long way in the future. Ultimately it will probably mean an operation on my hand but I very much doubt that is not going to happen very soon. I return home via the post office where I send a letter off and get a paper.

Once home I do the crosswords and while I am working away I get a call from the cardiac unit in response to my call to the specialist nurse. The nurse has reviewed the correspondence between my oncologist and the cardiologist and agrees it looks like I do not need an appointment so she is organising a conversation in the cardiology team and will let me know the outcome. I see this as a good outcome. Today is turning out a good day. I return to my reading until my partner returns and the family eat tea together.

The evening is filled with a film, a Tom Hanks film Otto, which as I am reading his short stories is interesting. I keep an eye on the football scores and also on a friends reunion of family that has been abroad. At the end of the film I draft the blog, take my evening meds and go to bed. Tomorrow I need to train again so that I can go away for the weekend and have a rest period.

Tuesday and I wake up with my partner gone to work. I take my vitals and find them to be very good so I do some life admin and then get up. I get into my training gear and take my morning meds. The garage is quite cold so I set myself up for a 45 minute session and get underway. I am feeling sluggish and it is hard work. I am 17 minutes into the session and a friend rings, so I suspend my session and have a long chat with my friend. It is a real pleasure to be able to chat and to catch up with news and how we are. By the time our conversation is over my session has timed out and I start a new one only 30 minutes this time. So with the Infinity Monkey Cage in my ears I restart my row. It goes okay.

I record the session in my journal and then have a late breakfast. The Tesco order is supposed to be here between 2 and 3 o’clock so I settle down to read more of Tom Hanks short stories. I get messages telling me the Tesco truck has broken down and my delivery is going to be late so I continue to read. After a while I decide to write a letter until the delivery finally arrives. The weekly goodies get taken in and squirreled away and the kitchen cleared and the bins put out, then its back to the letter writing. By the time my partner gets home I am tired and the collective decision is to go for take away this evening. I do the days crosswords and then there is a evening in which to finish DI Ray. Finally I take my night meds and go through my pre bed routine.

Sunday arrives and I read for a while before getting up to have breakfast with my partner. Once again my vitals are good but I do not get to train today. Instead my partner and I go to a new garden centre based on a farm which also has a huge child’s soft play and adventure area. This is next to a restaurant with an eighteen hole putting course in the next floor up. It seems an ideal place to take my youngest grandson when he next visits. Of course we tried out the garden centre restaurant and managed to come away with some goodies like fig jam and an odd impulse buy like a sack of narcissus. Once home there was of course of rugby to watch and time to read more of Tom Hanks short stories. By the evening I am flagging and end my day with my night meds. Monday must start with training to loosen me up.

Monday and I wake to good vitals and time to have croissants before my partner goes to the gym and I head to the garage to row for an hour. I set myself up ready to get going but the reality is that my session starts off very sluggishly. As I warm up I get better and I get to the end having reached my now regular target of 11k and 700+ calories burnt.

With the session recorded and the blog caught up with I shower and then run off a hard copy of a friends PhD proposal to read and write all over. Before I can get to the proposal I need to fill the bird and squirrel feeders and I also bring in the garden camera. I go through what the camera has captured and to my joy the hedgehog appears adn seems to be quite well and active. So this is a happy thing to find.

Having sorted out my garden camera I return to the PhD proposal and paw over my printed copy. I scribble notes and think about what I want to say that might be useful. After a period of cogitation I draft an email with my thoughts. I hope they are useful. Tea follows and I settle down to my evening of TV and reading as I can feel my remaining spoons ebbing away. There is much to start to think about as November nudges the door with birthdays and Christmas coming into view. It is the time of year to get bulbs into the garden and hard prune some of the shrubs so if the weather can hold up I might get on with this. It is also time to record some more of the latest poetry collection for the YouTube channel, which is a decidedly bad weather activity.

Saturday and I am awake quite early, my partner already up. There is time to take my vitals, once again all good, before a shared breakfast. The post arrives and in it is another letter from the cardiac consultant who is responding to my oncologist. Apparently the cardio consultant agrees with my oncology consultant in that he can see no reason why I was given a diagnosis of angina when I was admitted to hospital. On the end of the letter is a note addressed to me telling mem I have a strong and healthy heart! This is really good news and means I can think about pushing myself some more.

My partner goes to the gym and I head for the garden. I spend a lot of time putting in new support poles for the new willow screen that I’ve put in. I move some things into the Shed to make room in the house and eventually I am through with the days garden chores. With a bit of breathing space I order a patio cleaning attachment for the new power washer and then settle down to read a friends PhD proposal. It is an ambitious proposal and I need time to think about it. A rugby match follows which is followed by tea and another game featuring my local team. As this plays out I draft the blog and look forward to catching up with Strictly.

My last tasks before I take myself to bed is to take my night meds and go round the house putting the manual clocks back an hour .Tonight I get an hours additional rest!

Friday and after a good nights sleep I take my vitals and get myself up and into my training gear. I am at my best when I train in the morning. So I take my morning meds and head for the garage and the rower. I strap in and get my ear buds in and tune into Ian Hislop’s radio series where he explores the origins of humour. I set the the session for an hour, so with Ian exploring Chaucerian humour in my ears I start out on my row. An hour later I am mildly enlightened about the history of humour and achieved 11+k and burnt off 700+ calories. So I am pleased with how this has gone.

I record my session in my journal and then as I am about to think about a late breakfast the garden guy arrives, so I make him coffee and hand him some matches and fire lighters and set him burning a lot of the wood that is laying around. He seems to be very happy about the chance to set things alight. I take my partner off for lunch hoping that the garden guy does not over do the bon fire fun.

We eat lunch at our favourite garden centre and discuss the plans for Christmas and I start my own wish list. on returning home I go and get a paper and then spend a while doing todays crosswords. With the daily challenge out of the way I sneak a quick dip into my two new books gifted to me by my friend yesterday. I am really intrigued by Tom Hanks short stories and the first few pages reinforce my impression.

Before I know it its time to cook the evening meal. I have defrosted the chicken thighs and get to work on a Nadya Hussain curry recipe. It all goes to recipe and by 6 o’clock the family are tucking into the dish. It all gets eaten so I assume it was acceptable. Amazon delivers and my latest poetry collection arrives. Its that moment when the physical reality of a book drops into your hands and there is a sense of both relief and tremulousness. This is me done for the year. There will be no more from me until later next year but I will be putting more being read on my Proat8kancerman YouTube channel, so if you want to hear me read one or two then that’s the place to go over the next few days.

Before the evening rugby game gets started I draft the blog and then settle in for a relaxed Friday evening. It all goes to plan and I end the evening taking my meds, clearing the the wreckage I had created in the kitchen and going to bed. I’m feeling lucky, so many people in the news and around are going down with cancer, I am beginning to think I am leading a charmed life. It makes me want to fight harder, there is something more to come, but I am not sure what it is yet. Life continues to be a mystery.

Thursday and I am up early for me but not before I take my vitals, that are good. I am dressed and ready to go out and down my morning meds on the way. The drive to my friends was uneventful and we moved on from there to a local estate which has a tearoom, craft shops and garden centre, however the first thig we did was walk to the lake to see the swans. The peacocks that I was looking forward to were not there, their pen had been grassed over and trees planted. We looked to see if they had been relocated but only found chickens. The tea room was our next port of call.

Having ordered a late breakfast we exchanged books. I gifted the rest of my poetry collections and in return I received Tom Hanks Uncommon Types, a collection of short stories with a typewriter theme, and Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man. At last I have new brain food. We dined, chatted, caught up, shared some of what is going on for us, ate some more and finally, as the team were cleaning away the area headed for the art shops. Nothing there grabbed me and there was nothing in the garden centre that tempted me. By about 4 o’clock I was tiring so we left.

I drove home from my friends tired but very pleased I had made the effort, it had been a lovely day just doing ordinary things and chatting. Once home I felt very tired from the day and caught up with my partner who had also had a long work day. While waiting for tea to come together I started to draft the blog. I was hoping to have more energy to spend but the tiredness has crept up on me. I suspect I shall have an early night with a mixture of football, book and meds. I am slightly nagged as to why the cardiac boys and girls want to see me again but as they do not want to see me until December it cannot be that urgent.

Wednesday and I wake from a reasonable nights sleep feeling okay but in need of a shower, so after taking my vitals and having breakfast I showered. Having emptied the dishwasher I go into my work clothes and gathered up my “de mossing” tools to go in the car. The intention was to de-moss my partner’s mothers’ patio this afternoon while she and her brother visit their mother.

I listen to an episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage before lunch and turning the cars round in the drive. I idle a few minutes away drafting the blog while I give my partner and brother a head start to their mothers.

Once I get to my partners mothers I set to work assessing the problem and deciding on the best solution. Its dry so I decide not to deluge everything in water but go for scouring the patio with a wire brush and then treating it with an anti moss and weed killer. I beaver away till the patio is scoured and then I treat the margins of the front path before treating the whole of the patio and the garden steps. If it stays dry for a while and reasonably bright the effects should be visible soon. I have a quick sit down with my partners mother before getting my gear together and driving home.

As I arrive home the garden guy arrives so there is a flurry of activity till I can sit down and take stock of the day so far. I check my phone and find a message telling me an automated hospital booking system is going to ring in half an hour. I have no idea why I need an appointment. Dead on time OTTO rings and introduces herself adn asks me questions about who I am . With introductions done OTTO says she is from the cardiac unit ad asks if I am available on the 2nd of December. I say yes and OTTO says thank you and tells me I will get a letter adn then just rings off. I have not got a clue why the cardiac boys and girls want to see me given I have been discharged to my GP by the cardiac team who saw me when I was in hospital and after my stress and relaxed heart scans. Its a mystery so all I can do is turn up on the 2nd and see what they have to say for them selves.

With the new appointment in the diary I make myself tea as my partner is our for the evening. Over tea I check to see where my latest poetry collection is in the process of publication and to my surprise I find it is available on Amazon. Of course I order some but that will be my last foray into self publishing this year. As usual it does not feel real and I will wait till the physical copies are in my hands before I share the new book here. It now gets taken as a run of the mill event in this household now, life just goes on, no celebration or comment. I settle down to watch football and continue to draft the blog. And so the day draws to an end with a new mystery to consider. I reflect quietly on today and wonder if I am alone in this and then take my meds and go to bed. Tomorrow I have booked coffee with a friend, which means I get to drive again, all part of my continued effort to engage in the world once more. Tomorrow is also a training day, how quickly these weeks are passing.

Tuesday and I wake up to a busy day so I take my vitals and get myself up. I make breakfast and take my meds and then start to prepare to go to the hospital to pick up my next chemotherapy cycle. I need to know when Tesco are going to deliver so I have to hang fire until Tesco tell me when they are going to deliver. A get a paper from the post office and spend some time doing the days crosswords. At last I get the delivery time through and it is suitably distant for me to get in to town to collect my drugs.

I drive into town and park up in a central car park and then walk down to the hospital pharmacy. I was expecting a long wait but to my surprise they found my prescription quickly and dispensed it to me almost straight away. I made my way back to the car but was sweating profusely by the time I arrived. I get my car park ticket authorised and get to the car where I can shed my fleece and drink the Red Bull I had stashed in the glove compartment.

I drive home and put my washing in and then do some holiday and car valeting research while I wait for the Americans to ring me in order to publish my new collection. I change into my training gear in anticipation of a later training session and put the bins out. Five o’clock comes around and sure enough the Americans ring on time and I supply them with the number they need to publish on my platform. With the publishing process under way I go to the garage and set myself up to do a half hour rowing session. I strap in and get myself under way determined to do better than I did yesterday. It goes well and I find myself in a faster rhythm and so I push on to the end as hard as I dare push it. It goes well and I end up doing what I used to do as my expected normal distance and I also managed to get to a thousand strokes in the time.

The figures suggests that I am getting fitter and that I can press on doing more things. I record the session and then change out of my training gear and wait for the Tesco delivery. It duly arrives and the family unpack it and squirrel it a way before eating tea. For me there is a football match to watch which means I can use half time to unload the tumble dryer and fold the load up. The second half rolls through and at the end of the match I draft the blog adn check to see if the new book is being processed on the publishing platform. I am pleased to se it is there so in a couple of days it will be available on Amazon.

Its been a busy and productive day at the end of which I take my meds and take myself to bed. Tomorrow I have committed myself to going to my partners mothers in order to clear her patio of moss, so another busy day, it feels right to be getting back into some sort of normality, and the next steps are to get back to seeing people regularly again.

Monday and its been a short night after my staying up late to watch the final of the Young Musician of the Year. Despite my late night I get up early and wait for my partner to be ready to go to the gym. We go to the gym where my partner goes to the gym floor and stay in the lounge to eat bacon rolls and drink fruit tea. I occupy myself by scribbling odd notes and poems and generally wandering around my mind.

418
Dylan Thomas
staggers out
from a days 
labour.
"Three words"
he mutters.
That's one
"a black bat,
Can't help feeling
"the lazy bastard"
could have managed 
more.

                                                                          418 21st October 2024.

 

Not a masterpiece but just something that dropped by. Eventually my partner finishes her session and I drive her to one of our local garden centres for lunch. It is a simple lunch which when done with sees us drive home where I have the fun of putting together my new toy, a brand new spanking power washer. It looks like fun and with luck I might get a go at it on Wednesday when I go to my partner’s mother to clear the moss off her patio.

With the toy playing done I get ready to train. I start tired and just get more tired. Its a forty five minute session and at the end I have rowed the worst I have done since starting to train again. I guess this just goes to show that I cannot spend spoons at both ends of the day and expect to be able to perform up to standard.

I record the session and change out of my training gear before beginning to draft the blog. I tap away while yesterdays one pot bubbles away until I think its safe enough to eat. There is no sport to watch tonight so I shall have time to edit the Tesco order and then have an early night. I managed to miss two calls from a friend today which was very irritating so hopefully I will be luckier tomorrow especially as the Americans are supposed to be ringing me to complete the publication of my third The Cancer Years collection, subtitled Breathless.