DVT 314

Saturday and no vaccine call yet, thats the troube with being young. At only 72 and one half years old and vulnerable it feels like some one is dragging their feet. So its carry on as Saturdy normal, with the ritual filling of the drugs wallet for the week and the bacon and egg breakfast with real coffee. Its a slow and easy morning. Out of the blue a delivery arrives, the new curtains expected Tuesday, are early. So I spend some happy time taking the temporary ones down and getting the new ones up.

So we will let them hang for a while and then see about whether we want to shorten them or not and then of course there is the string tensioning to be done. My partner and eldest daughter go for a walk to the shops so I take the opportunity to make a loaf and sort out the pile of recycyling in the hall. I sort a few mini chores and then settle down to watch a football match.

I am beggining to lose interest in football, it lacks something without the crowds and as an observer there is a limit to how much excitement I am wiling to generate myself over a game, plus I am finding the game more tediuos to watch. I watched the hightlights of the Arizona Coyotes against the Sharks this morning, Coyotes lost but it was a great game of ice hockey, which is fast, skillful, rough and elegant.

Bored with football I change into my training gear and go for a row in the garage.

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Not a bad session, I am just hopping that tomorrow when I leap on the scales that I have lost weight and earned a rest day. Out of my training gear I eat tea and settle down to a couple of films. Its a lazy way to spend an evening and feels wasteful in some way but sometimes I just want to do nothing as a way of looking after myself. Tomorrow I shall try to do a bit more with my brain beyond the papers easy crossword.

DAY 313

Friday, scan day so I am up and having a bacon breakfast before getting ready to drive to the hospital. What to wear, always a problem so I end up lookng like I am going on a bank raid.

The drive was devoid of incident apart from a minor road works. So at 9:30 I am sitting in nuclear medcine waiting to be called.

This is a two stage process. The first stage is to pump radioactive liquid into me and send me away for two and half hours before scanning me.

So having been pumped with goo I drive home and while away a couple of hours. Just time to tidy up and organsie a few chores. Then it was back in the car and off to the hospital. This time I went strsaight to the pre jabbed waiting room.

Its not long before I get called into the camera room and asked to remove everything that is metal. I hop up onto the machine and settle down for 25 minutes of relaxation and let the machine scan me from head to toe. The technian tells me we are done and there is no need to do any more as the doctor is satisfied with the quality of the scan. I reclaim my metal and take a snap of the scanner.

I went home and had coffee and hoovered around feeling somewhat anticlimatic. So I decide to make a pie for the evening meal.

The pie comes together and I head for the shed and an hour on the bike.

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While I pedal my way through Steve Wrights Serious Jockin session a friend rings me and we chat about how tricky it is to keep routines that maintain good mental health. It is frustrating when you do all you can to keep your own mental health good and others feel unable to do it for themselves and as a result start to throw their dissatisifaction around. Of course the aim is to make you feel bad that you are doing what they are struggling with, the tricky bit is that they are trying to get you to feel like them, a sort of dumping their dissatisfaction in you. Personally I’ve got enough of my own crap to deal with without taking on anyone elses so staying clear about whats mine and what belongs to someone else is crucial for my own health. Sometimes life is too short to put up with others peoples stuff and doing what you want to do is the way forward.

Back in the house I change, put my washing on and start the blog while my partner has an end of week bath before we set about the newly cooked pie. Tonight who knows, a film perhaps, or read, pay my tax bill, write letters or just sit in the dark and see if I glow.

DVT DAY 312

Thursday and its a busy day of work meetings and an Open Forum to run before I can do my exercise session. So its a bacon breakfast with coffee and a check of my WhatsApp messages, which contain new pictures, before I settle down in front of my laptops to start a meeting. Its work, what can I say apart from its screen time. Good to talk to colleagues and to hear what others are doing but quite tricky to generate actual things, real life product. I have a short break during which I book another Tesco slot and do some shopping.

Out of the blue I get a telephone call from the hospital I am going to tomorrow. A lovely person asks me how I am and whether I’ve got any COVID symptoms. I assure her that I am COVID free and then she askes me if I have been out of the country in the last two weeks, we are both laughing before she gets to the end of the question. I assure her that I’ve only been as far as my front garden, which she assured me did not count as a different country.

Then its into hosting an open forum for managers in a criminal justice service. The experience is disturbing, they are having to deal with an extremely difficult situation in all their services. The strain and stress on them is obvious. At the end of the session I am left with a sense of not being able to provide enough support to make an impact.

I take a rest and check to see if the curtains that were out of stock have become available. To my great surprise they are now available and so I strike while the iron is hot. The order goes through and so the final piece of our redecorating the house has fallen into place. I change into my training gear and head for the garage to row for half an hour.

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As I leave the garage I fix a new door handle on one of the connecting doors, an excuse to use my new cordless drill. A great success and the job is done in no time. I clear the kitchen, put away the 1000 Christmas jigsaw and put some flowers in a vase. Time to prepare for my hospital visit tomorrow, so I check my appointment letter and run off the hospital map so I know where I am going. I have in my head now where the nuclear medicine building is.

So I am ready now. Its time for tea and then a pre hospital bath while my partner has her singing lesson on line. Refreshed I watch Death in Paradise and start to write the blog. My biggest dilema is what to wear to be nuked in tomorrow.

DVT DAY 311

Wednesday and I feel sluggish but get up and have a muesli and coffee breakfast before setting about reading the draft final decision by the Ombudsman regarding our claim against the insurance company. Its a difficult read and I cannot find another new argument. I find reading through the account restimulates a lot of the feelings that I have about what happened to me. This morning the memory and feelings are related to comeing back to Leicester Royal Infirmary’s A & E with blood catherters stitched into my neck. A strange feeling. I suspect that it was not by accident that it is the hospital admission that has come to mind as I am due to go for a scan on Friday. Its a long time since I have been to the hospital for anything related to my cancer. The last time was to get my scan results from the oncologist at the end of my chemotherapy back in February 2020. Since then its been nearly all shielding with the joys of a DVT in March with a single hospital visit.

I set the Ombudsman aside and write a letter before attending a meeting of colleagues who have an interest in therapeutic communities. There is a presentation by an achivist regarding one of the early women pioneers of the community way of intervening with disadvantaged young children. There were serveral in the group who had connecetions with some of the work mentioned. The members of the group constitute a group that holds a rich and vast history. Our collective conundrum is how to make it useful and relevant. After the meeting I go for a lunch time walk in the rain with my partner as my eldest daughter was tied up with her teaching duties.

A light lunch and I finish my letter and wander over to the post box. On my return I get in to my training gear and head for the shed for an hour on the bike.

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Back in the house I clear the kitchen and head for the bath where I soak in a seaweed infused bath thanks to my youngest daughters christmas present. So out and into football and writing the blog. My evening again will be full of football and dross but at some point I shall write my last words to the ombudsman and try and put that behind me.

DVT 310

Tuesday and its a full day. So a quick couple of eggs and a coffee and I settle into my sofa and log on. My morning is taken working with managers in an organisation trying to maintain their development and the delivery of their services. It was an inspiring couple of hours as the team talked to each other and shared their ideas to suport each other in the future. I bounced from this meeting to a brief lunch of smoothie with a quick trip to the post box putting the bins out on the way.

So back to the sofa and I join a group to be made familar with a new virtual assessement process for theapeutic communities. In a few weeks time I will be undertaking these assesements as part of a team. So with the session over I clear the kitchen and get into my training gear. Today is a rowing day so I head for the garage and put myself through a half hour row.

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I drink a can of soda to recover and I change before makeing a one pot tea that gets popped into the oven to mature for an hour or so. So while my culninary master piece bubbles away I start the blog. This evening there is a TV series coming to a climax and I finally have the recording of the debate I was part of that a colleague and I are writing up as a paper, so I can listen and draft a section on the audience discussion.

DVT DAY 309

Monday, a team meeting day so a hearty bowl of muesli and coffee before settling down to the usual juggling around the internet till we all appear on the same screen. Four and a bit hours later and I am done. I sustain my self with noodles and prepare for the Tesco delivery. I change into my training gear and then move a car off the drive to give the Tesco delivery guy an easier access to us. While I wait I sort out my washing and clear the kitchen to fill the time. I have turned on the shed heater to warm it up for me to train in. Tesco deliver and my eldest daughter helps me unload the baskets and then leaves me to squirrel away the goodies. I am now a quartermaster who keeps track of our reserves and tucks away the odd can of spare beans to sustain us in times of shortage. I am putting away my fresh and warm clothes when a friend rings me to chat about work and the challenges of home schooling their daughters. This lockdown seems more difficult to balance, it has no intriguing newness to prompt the creative spurt that the first one had. This lockdown has no “romance” about it, everyone knows the way its going to go and what its going to be like. The future of it feels bleak with the added threat of the new virulent version of the virus, so this time everyone knows its going to be a grind. I think many of those who got through last time may find this time too much or at least will need to find a new adaptation. Those who have any free floating anxieties are going to attach them to COVID and what ever else they carry as concerns. Households are likely to feel more pressure cooker like, which means its going to be more important than ever to find ways to relieve the pressures.

Taking my own advice I head to the shed to spend an hour on the bike. I am so pleased I pre warmed the shed.

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I got back to the house and move the car back on the drive then flopp knackered on the sofa. My partner brings me tea and I settle to watch some TV conscious that I have a training session to run tomorrow, but I write the blog before I lose the will to.

Tonight it feels like an effort and I think my scan and going to the hopistal on Friday is niggling away at the back of my mind. The actual scan is fun, lots of high tech whizzing and whirring however its going to a hospital full of sick people right now wearing a mask and being careful. I guess it will go okay, the other options are not acceptable.

DVT DAY 308

Sunday, and its weigh day, so I get myself to the scales first things and hop on.

94.4 Kilos

I am no longer obese, merely overweight. So although this week has not seen a dramatic drop, it is going in the right direction and I am feeling fitter, if a bit achey. That will do me for the meantime. If anything I might push the rowing time up a bit.

The rest of my day is split into two. The first half of the day I spend reading and analysing a job description, contract and work agreement. I also set up the resources for the training am doing later in the week. There is some basic admin work to do as well. The second half of the day is absolute slobbing about watching football and rugby and indulging in a tea that included carbohydrates and my weekly treat of a Mars bar ice cream. These are my weekly reward for losing weight this week. Tomorrow it will be back to protein and smoothies coupled with daily exercise.

So its a slob of a day really, a Pepper Pig lounger day. The evening will be very similar except that one of my favourite films of all time, (in my top three), In the Heat of the Night is on TV. Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier are electrifying and the sound track is brilliant. The opening shot of the train crossing the country side with the sound track is excellent.

Tomorrow its back to the working world and the pressure to fit everything in. This hunkering down can be a challenge.

DVT DAY 307

Saturday morning wake up and breakfast. During this time I perform my weekly ritual of filling my drugs wallet for the week. Today is the anniversary of our gardeners death, Brain. He died unexpectedly last year after a brief illness. We were taken by surprise, and I still find myself thinking of him when I walk in the garden. This is particularly poignant in the spring as the many bulbs he planted come through. In fact much of what grows in the garden so verdantly is due to his attention and skills. He was the same age as me and that added to the shock of his death.

We conclude breakfast and ring our youngest daughter to chat and catch up. Due to the work she does she is at the moment planing Christmas 2021. Apparently its a nightmare in this time of COVID. Easter is also proving to be a conundrum as no one knows whether, if lockdown ends, whether the newly released citizenry with flock on mass in four days to buy monumental amounts of Easter eggs. It a kind of confectionary roulette on the high street. Some where there will be clever spin merchants and advertising folk plotting how to turn Easter into the Christmas we never had in 2020. The difference will be getting us to eat the warehouse filled with creme eggs and the like that have been knocking about for months waiting for a market up turn. Our conversation is light and fun and a relief from the social imprisonment of lockdown.

This is the 3rd round of the FA cup so there is a wealth of football to watch. I try to resist but the pull of the cup is strong. However sometimes one has to sacrifice for the greater good especially when there is more later on. I am determined not to have my phone tell me I am obese when I weigh myself in on Sunday morning. So its time to change into training gear and head for the garage. Its bloody cold in the garage and I keep all my layers on.

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So for half an hour I graft on the rower and find myself quite pleased that by the end of the half hour I still find myself in reasonable shape, perhaps I am at last getting fitter.

I return to the house and make myself a breakfast smoothie and recover in front of a football match. During this time I have several fittings of my partners face masks. She is making me triple layer masks for my scan trip to the hospital and is perfecting her design. Eventually the acme of masks is achieved complete with pliable metal nose strip. So I am now fully equipped to face the virus ridden environment of a hospital.

My evening is food, football and a very long bath listening to meditative music and reflecting. Nothing earth shattering, it never is, just the general state of how I am, how the family is and how I am constructing my own personal universe in order to make sense of the world. The most difficult thing for me as I get older is resisting the irrational need for “simple” answers adn solutions. My latest is “lets shoot all the vaccine refuseniks”. Immense amounts of pleasure in this fantasy but clearly not reasonable. Perhaps its my own shortness of time that makes me intolerant and wants to keep things simple. “Life’s to short to be bothering with this” and “Who needs this in their life”, become more urgent and persistent, hence the increasing intolerance and erroded rationality.

DVT DAY 306

Friday, and I wake up to a package of curtains. So this it what a COVID thrill is; new curtains. Actually they are consciously temporary curtains until we can get the right size ones we need. So after a hearty breakfast of unburnt bacon and eggs I set about attaching hooks to the new new curtains and clambering about the lounge windows getting the things up. They are pretty stiff black out curtains so getting them to hang properly was more a man taking on a over excited crocodile. However they are now up and the house is complete, just about. Having been of a cautious disposition when ordering them I find myself with a pair of curtains I do not need. I recycle the packaging to send back the spare pair and manage to include some of the bloody polystyrene blocks that I’ve trying to get rid of for a couple of weeks. It seemed like a genius plan at the time, get someone else to get rid of it was the thought and get a refund at the same time. So tomorrow I might brave the post office to hand my duct taped box over. In the duct taping of my parcel I ran out of duct tape, this is a real crisis as I truly believe that 99% of problems can be solved with duct tape. If they cannot be then you have a real crisis on your hands. I take a call from a friend and chat about how its working out with COVID, it seems that this is all we are all doing at the moment as the daily death toll goes over a thousand for the second day running. Making out, making plans, adapting plans, doing the basics and keeping going, that’s what we are all doing. All except the dumb bastards who haven’t got the synaptic density to understand whats going on or too little back bone to face the reality of their situation. If ever there was an example of people not being able to look their death anxiety in the face and cope with their mortality this is it. So we get deniers, conspiracy theorists and the plain dumb, which, in the days to come, will include vaccine refusers. Now is the time for the reasonable and rational to hold the boundaries. It will be science and its application plus cooperative communities that will get us out of this not the mumbo jumbo mob, magic stones, and astrology.

I spend a little while writing a letter, ordering more duct tape, one of which has unicorns on, buying a cordless drill and then I change into my training gear and tramp down the garden to the shed in the freezing cold to the shed. I get on board the bike, get my training mask on and start to pedal. An hour later I am bathed in sweat and cannot wait to stop. My last bike session before I weigh in on Sunday as Saturday will be a rowing day.

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A smoothie later and I am clearing the kitchen and thinking about the evening meal. Its Friday so stuff it we will have an Indian take away, I will watch football and end up writing the blog before going to bed.

I reach a state of tiredness were I just become irritated with myself and the world, unable to think, to articulate or be creative. I become restless and distracted. Yet I blog on. Probably not healthy. Tomorrow is another day, I’ll give it another shot then.

DVT 305

Thursday, a people day for me with meetings and forums, so a good breakfast is required. I load the grill with bacon adn then set about multitasking. The result is a kitchen full of smoke as my bacon turns to charcoal. Clearly I have over reached myself too early in the morning. Note to self; one thing at a time. I settle for muesli as a safe non preparation meal. So within minutes I am once again under the head phones and talking to colleagues. Of course we catch up on the COVID lockdown and then move on to how it is affecting our work and what our response should be. Its a long meeting but really useful to hear how others are dealing with things and what their ideas are for the future. We will meet again on Monday with the rest of the team. I have time for a quick lunch and then I am up and hosting a Open Forum for service managers for an hour. It is difficult listening, and I am struck very hard by how hard a struggle this group of people are facing and dealing with. I discuss with colleagues the session and then log off. Remember this?

The over looked central star of our nativity babushka is returned to its family of eggs in the loft. Hopefully I shall be unpacking it next Christmas. Feeling pleased with myself go to the spare room to change into my training kit. I glance out of the window and note the whiteness of the scene and wonder just how cold the garage are going to be.

So I get changed and get myself into the garage and strapped into the rower. I look at the read out and note the temperature.

I get my session underway and continue to take it relatively easy to keep the strain off my back. I gradually up the pace and as a consequence I begin to feel warm inside my track suit. I grind away noting the minutes tick by.

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One would expect that after a half our with the fan heater on full blast and my body pumping out heat that the garage would show at least some rise in temperature.

It turns out that the heater and my body just cannot affect the temperature of the garage. I get out of the garage as soon as possible and out of my kit. I settle on the sofa with a drink and the laptop to start the blog but find that I am watching Boris do his daily briefing. This time its all about the vaccine and the logistics. Can’t wait to hear what the soldier boy has to say for himself as the army is doing the logistics based on a warfare scenario.

Today is the anniversary of the end of my chemotherapy. It was supposed to give me an additional 18 months on top of whatever time I had anyway. The time anyway aspect of it was unknowable, incalculable, unestimatable and not even divinable with the aid of medical goat intestines. Some front loading my life span with the chemo therapy 18 months means that after July (roughly my birthday) I am on my own time. So its an interesting time. This month I have bone and CAT scans to have to monitor how the tumors in my back are doing and the cancer in my spine is progressing, or not. This will give me some data at least to gauge how I really am. So onward to new and interesting times.