DVT DAY 277

Thursday and its 8 o’clock and I am handed coffee and a bacon sandwich in bed! The painting elves are taking over the kitchen and the dining area to day so I am being fed pre elves arrival. I get up and dress, take drugs and organise my day in the back bedroom. I do a bit of editing of a paper a colleague and I have in preparation. I get a call from a friend who is waiting for her local post office to open at ten and we chat about our days to come. At ten she gets in to the post office and I go to my first Zoom meeting of the day and spend an hour and a half with colleagues sorting out content for another meeting on Monday. We have modeled it on scrooge with me being the Christmas of enabling environments in the future. It means I can make up any old rope and spin it how I want. I have a sense that people just want to get to Christmas and beyond.

I get a pleasant surprise of a chicken and stuffing roll from our local take away cafe as it is during these COVID days. There is not a lot of time before I am busy again hosting an open forum. I enjoy this time talking to people about how they are coping with being managers during the COVID pandemic. It seems to me that people have acquired a whole new skill set of service management in pandemic that have become grafted onto their ordinary management skills. I wish some how we could find a way to recognise this.

Time to train, I cannot get to the garage to use the rower so its back to the shed for me and the cycle. I have decided that I will train when it is light and when it is winter. I get on board the bike and give it as good as I can for an hour. Over the hour it gets dark, rains and the temperature drops. The painting elves tip toe away under the cover of dark. I return to the house and set about having a shower. It stops and tells me that I have low water pressure just at the point my hair is well lathered along with 70% of my body. I prowl down stairs wrapped in a towel to the boiler to find it is working perfectly and stomp back to the bathroom and swear at the shower. It then works perfectly. I finish my shower and spray myself with Calvin Klein and start to tidy some of the house. In doing so I find our first Christmas card. A creation from one of my nephews son ( I do not know what these are called in the scheme of family relatives.) and we love it.

I potter around while my partner cooks dinner and I sort out the laptop TV combo that will let me watch football. We find to time to rehang some curtains at the window on the stairs. I eat and watch. After 30 minutes I am looking at rugs on my partners i-pad. 2 nil up and with five minutes to go we buy a new lounge rug. My partner retreats to the bath and I write the blog. By tomorrow we hope the decorators will have finished all but one room and the rest of the hall way. At the moment we have glimpses of what the final look will be, we await the wallpaper.

We glimpse the future, tomorrow we will see it revealed fully. Until then there is a kitchen to clear and sleep to be had.

DVT DAY 276

Wednesday and I get up before 8 o’clock and feeling brighter than I have done over the last couple of days and with a mission to send the parcels I taped up yesterday. So I get myself a bacon bagel and set about using a carrier app on my phone to arrange for my parcels to go. In a few minutes of form filling on my phone and making a credit card payment the result is that barcodes appear on my phone. I drive to my closest pick up shop and I enter into a science fiction moment when I wave my phone with strange square patterns at a man who waves a hand held box at my phone, hands me two numbers and says thank you. I drive off slightly unsure what has just gone on but trust that everything will go well. When I used to have money and handed to people in exchange for goods I felt I knew what I was doing. I understood this was a system of trust, the trust that universally money of whatever kind could be exchanged for goods ay understandable rates. In effect this system of trust was, and maybe still is, universal. My trust that my twenty pound notes would be accepted for groceries was/is exactly the same process by which a terrorist buys weapons. Any way now I juggle numbers in cyberspace and the world moves. Somewhere “my money” sits on a server under the sea or underground in a desert. Lets hope no one switches the power off.

Back home the decorators, who are like a band of elves, are busy wallpapering the lounge and painting the utility area. In fact they have sneaked into the kitchen and begun to paint the ceiling. I retreat to the back bedroom and set up my computer and get ready for my morning meeting. My meeting is full of bright and caring people with ideas and questions, none of us are sure why we are there but we are working on it. That and what it all means.

By lunchtime we are picnicking in the lounge as the elves have taken the kitchen over and turning it blue. I read the paper, do the crosswords and then I get a grip on myself and give myself a good talking to. Its been 18 days since I trained. In those 18 days at least five people have told me that they have read my blog and really admire how I keep training and fighting. I feel I have let myself go, let myself down and all those people who back me. I change into my training gear and head for the shed. Its bloody cold as I climb up on the bike and get to pedaling. I always do the first ten minutes with a training mask on to try and up my lung efficiency. A demanding first ten today. I get to the end of the hour and rapidly get back into the house with its now functioning heating on. The kitchen has turned blue, stunningly so and I like it. The elves have left. I go for a shower feeling the relief of having had training. Feeling brave I weigh myself. 96.3 kilos. I am obese again. I am crushed at the effect of not training for 18 days so I set myself the goal of getting below 95 again and not being obese for Christmas.

By now my family are replacing holiday memorabilia back on our “travel shelf”, its a team effort until I get bored and order three biryani for tea. While we wait for them to arrive I work out how the new office blind gets fitted and the rest of the family clear the dining area. The curries arrive and we pile plates high and watch TV until distracted enough to start searching for a new rug for the lounge. I think the search is doomed after the first fifty. I take to the blog and try to make sense of it all, but end up with a could do better list. Tomorrow I have meetings and an open forum to host. Most important of all is to train and try to keep a sense of balance. I no longer have a place in this house to call my own, my office gone to the person who needs it most, so now a shall shed and sofa surf. A modern day Diogenes and to quote him “No man is hurt but by himself”

DVT DAY 275

A torrid night as I try to bake myself well and stop the shivering. For the first time since I was 14 do I wear clothes in bed (what a strange habit that is), as I crank up the electric blanket. I feel as if I am suffering from hypothermia and I think that my body has responded with shock to my 28 day injection. Certainly my bodies response to the injections is getting more acute. At the same time my hands are becoming more cramped and stiff and my legs occassional pain me. But last night the focus was on trying to get warm and to stop shaking. In essence I was baking myself. I was expecting to end up having hot sweats but it did not happen I just gradulaly warmed through and dozed fitfully during the night. In the morning at 8 o’clock I notice my partner was not there and had got up to go to work. The next time I notice anything it is gone 11:30. I guess I had a sleep debt to make up an my body needed to recover some strength.

I get up and eat the last remains of my partners chocolate birthday cake and drink coffee to give me something in my stomach to take my drugs on. I retreat to the back bedroom to stay out of the way of the decorators and read a lovely christmas card and letter from my old mentor. I call a colleague whose call I had missed in the morning and chatted about work, football and home improvements. It would seem that we are not the only ones making home improvements during the COVID. I set about packing the christmas parcels that need to be sent and wrapping the outstanding presents. It takes a while and takes a heavy toll on my duct tape collection but it is worth it. Tomorrow I shall go to the nearest post office that can take this size of parcel as the local village one can only handel parcels up to two kilos, Ah the joys of rural life.

While tea is being cooked by my partner I set about getting rid of the cardboard mountain that has accumulated in the hall way. Its recycling day tomorrow and a chance to clear the decks. Tea is taken in the lounge as the decorators have almost completed the redecoration apart from two wallpaper panels. I watch a football match because by now I am running out of energy. Then its time to blog, although when in this state I do not feel very articulate, it maybe a combination of injection recovery and general COVID confinment. It frustrates me as I become unable to express what I want to with any cogent sense.

DVT DAY 274

Injection Monday. I hate it. Standing at the back door (lepergate) of the GP surgery waiting to be let in by the nurse. Its cold, I am cold. I get in and realise that this is a Right Monday, the side that is the worse of the two. So I expose my midriff and in she plunges, slowly because there is a lot of it and its quite viscous. The initial lancing is okay but there is a burning sharp pain as the drugs gets pushed into me. I’m in no mood for small talk and get out noting that it si the 4th of January for the next one coupled with a B12 jab. I drive home determined to be okay.

The decorators arrive and we discuss brief details like which toilet they are going to use, so posh to have two but provides some social distancing. They agree to touch up the paint in the office as we have put down new carpet adn exposed more skirting board. We have breakfast and I skit about putting some things back and generally pottering. I stick feet to the bases of my youngest daughters swimming trophies so they do not scratch the new paint. My partner and daughter go to feed the ducks, I stay to cyber potter some dates. I also workout how a milk foam maker works and give it its initial first run with water to it. The postman arrives as they return adn there is our first Christmas card adn as sods’s law would have it is from someone who I did not have an address for. The card inequality is quickly remedied. I’m begging to feel the injection after effects, coldness and trembling like a two bit junky. I eat a Florentine and then I find a parcel addressed to the pixies c/o me. Anyone who knows me knows that my brain is run by pixies with whom I regularly chat to and observer. As they have never had a parcel before they are very exited. I open it and find a Christmas tree bauble adorned with a toucan. The pixies immediately want a tree to hang it on but are disappointed when I point out that the decorators are in the room where the tree goes. The pixies march off with brushes in their hands. The parcel is safely stored.

I WhatsApp my friend who sent it to tell her the pixies are delighted. My sister rings to find out how my partners mother is and sends her love. My partners mother is doing okay given she is 92 and in hospital with a broken leg that’s been pined. Lots of anxieties but we have to wait for the medical team to assess her and work out an after care plan. It going to take time and all we can do is keep calm, deal with one thing at a time adn not get ahead of ourselves.

By now I am feeling decidedly crap, cold and shaky so I retreat up stairs to the back bedroom and try to relax. I watch Citizen Kane. I wonder if I will have an enigmatic last word which will sum up the root of my life style and being. Rosebud was Kane’s last word. Revealed to be the name on the sled which was torn from him as his mother sold him to a rich and powerful man with vested interests in the fortune he had inherited. In effect it is probably the most powerful depiction of a transitional object. At the moment I would choose Heartbeat. Who would not want more?

I am really feeling off now and I go to eat without any real desire to eat, which is a shame as my partner has made the effort amidst the partial chaos of the downstairs of the house. I return to the back bedroom to rest and watch a German football match to occupy my self and distract myself. It ends and I write the blog knowing that my side of the bed is being warmed by the electric blanket. Its likely to be a torrid night as a man prone to hot flushes but is shaking like a junky is going to try to get right kind of warmth. Tomorrow is the worst day usually so I may do nothing. Right night time drugs to take and its off to bed for me. See you on the other side.

DVT DAYS 272 & 273

Its a birthday Saturday so its coffee in bed before presents and some pottering which includes a trip to Wickes to pick up a new curtain rail. While there we ponder carpet tiles in blue. Back home we measure up the office and decide to go for it. So while my partner chats to a friend on the door step I dash back to pickup underlay, carpet tiles and double sided tape. Back home and we put up the new curtain rail and curtains, so the second bedroom is getting close to being finished.

Time to cook a birthday tea and of course indulge in a Bettys triple chocolate birthday cake.

So after cake and bubbles we set up the virtual panic room and set about our CSI Christmas challenge. Which elf did steal the good adn naughty list from Santa? For three hours we set about solving the clues. Me and my partner with our eldest daughter working away whist our youngest daughter and boyfriend on the end of a WhatsApp call logged into the same panic room and solving the clues along with us. So a good fun evening. At the end of the evening I take the time to read a letter from someone my partner and I occasionally go for a meal with. A very generous letter and one that prompts me to pay attention to my training adn health again. I shall reply soon.

Sunday I am up early and ripping up carpet out of the office and laying underlay.

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My partner goes to collect clothes and comforts for her mum who is in hospital recovering from an operation to pin her broken leg. I press on and start laying the carpet tiles. With the aid of a variety of improvised tools and a tailors chalk I get to grips with acquiring the required skills. It goes reasonably well until its time to watch England play France in the final of the rugby autumn cup. At half time I cut the last three strips of carpet to go in and then watch England struggle to win in extra time. Back to the office where I hoover the carpet and begin to put some of the equipment back.

Time to put the tools away while my partner and eldest daughter start to clear the lounge for the decorator in the morning. Time for tea and to watch His Dark Materials. I laze in the bath to ease the ache from a day of being on my knees and get myself ready for my 28 day injection tomorrow morning. Its that time of month again and if if goes like the last few I’m going to feel crap for a couple of days. I’m beginning to just want to get to Christmas and be in the newly decorated house in the warm.

DVT DAY 271

Friday, its 8:30, crap the decorators will be here any moment. Three frantic people dress chaotically and get down stairs to the kitchen before the decorators do arrive. Our first chore is to find a small shop in Kirby Mallory which is our closest DPD pick up point so that we can return some wallpapers. The post code took us to Kirby Mallory race track. A friendly dog walker put us right and we eventually found a tiny local sparse shop. Mission accomplished we start out on our main mission. Fresh food. The morning really begins when my partner and I set off to visit the local farms shops to stock up with fresh milk, butter and cheese. Excellent stuff. The next farm shop produces meat and we filled out bag with fresh flesh, which will see us through the weekend. Bizarrely our next port of call was the garden centre which houses a butcher who makes really good pies and a newly acquired mini branch of Sainsburys. Ladened with pies and rubber gloves we return home.

What followed was a mixture of curtain and blind sourcing interspersed with some baking. All this against the background of the decorator wrestling a new bath surround into place. It was clearly not an easy job judging by the banging and muttering that was going on. By two o’clock I am mixing ingredients to make Florentines. I add 50 grams of crystallized ginger to my mix to give them a bit of bite. I pop them in the oven and take a call while I watch then magically spread. I cut the call short to pull the Florentines before they burn and get them where they can cool and solidify. I resume the call and chat ordinary stuff. I clear the kitchen and realise that the noises from the bathroom, have ceased and there are now sounds of clearing up and the preparation to leave. I dip the Florentines in chocolate and realise I have chocolate over and create a giant chocolate button.

The decorator leaves and of course we go to see how the bathroom looks. We are pleased, no more rotting wood but shiny reflective surfaces that are light. The bathroom looks renewed and a pleasure to be in.

In celebration we measure up the window in the office and order a blind to finish the room off. Gradually the feeling that the house is coming together grows, which is reinforced when the new curtains for the second bedroom arrives. With a little effort over the weekend the top floor can be reclaimed.

The evening arrives and we a eat dinner made from the days foraging and watch Captain Fantastic. What a surprise and lovely film it turned out to be. I realise just what an opportunity home schooling could be. I also wonder how I missed the opportunity to give my children hunting knives before puberty struck.

It is followed by Have I Got News for You. I write the blog and wait for my partner to go to bed so that I can prepare fro her birthday tomorrow.

DVT DAY 270

Its Thursday and once again I get up before the decorators arise. A quick dish of cereals and coffee and I start to get ready for my morning meetings. I move myself into the newly decorated back bedroom for some privacy. So I set myself up amidst the boxes of stuff waiting to be out back in place. The meeting is straight forward with planning for future meetings to come and some division of work related to that. There is also the bits of gossip that make the world go round and of course we talk about the effect of the new COVID vaccine. For us as a team it might allow us to get back to actually making visits to the services we work with. A final comment about tonight’s football and we push the button to say farewell.

I do not have much of a break before I am back online to host an open forum for a group of managers. My co-host has a bad back and really just wants to lay down. The forum is full of issues and things to note, so I try to facilitate sensitively while scribbling notes. At the end of the hour my co host goes off to lay down and I go to the kitchen to find freshly baked cheese scones. That’s lunch sorted.

I busy myself sorting out my weekly laundry and once underway get a loaf underway as well. There are chores of tidying to do as the decorators crack on doing the office. My partner ring the hospital to find out how her mother is. The nurse says she is out of bed with the physiotherapist and is okay, and with a think you and goodbye ends the call. Later on my partners mother rings and confirms she is up and okay.

We potter and find ourselves playing chess as everyone in the household is now on leave and finding ways to entertain themselves as our planned long weekend as a family in a cottage has been cancelled. The decorators leave and we reclaim the house. So its time for dinner and an evening of football for me as I finish my laundry and turn out the fresh loaf. Tomorrow beckons and the promise of new bath panels being fitted to complete the upgrade of the bathroom. There will be more moving of “stuff” around to clear the lounge ready for redecoration so we need to normalise as many of our spaces as possible.

DVT DAY 269

Wednesday, up and wondering how my partners mother is. Its breakfast and I get started on the work I need to do. The decorators arrive and crack on as the rest of the household go about their work. All is going well until my partner appears in distress. A vey difficult conversation with her mother. We work through it and try to get on with things. There is a walk to be had, new curtains to buy and work to be tidied up before we all stop for the next 5 days. We were going away fro my partners birthday but due to being in Tier 3 that’s no longer happening so we have five days to fill while the decorators continue their work. We chat with them and agree colours and conform the plan. By he time they leave it is dark and we start to gear down for a long weekend. There is some rare relief as photos appear on social media of my nephews wedding. Two young hopefuls flanked by three black masked people, it looks strange and vaguely like a secret meeting of a cult. We of course sent flowers and bubbly, but due to my dyslexia self I manage to send them labelled Mr & Mr. Thankfully it is taken in good heart and I wish them a good blokes night out. All the more ironic as one of the Mr is several months pregnant.

We sit down to tea and the phone rings, its my partners mother ringing from hospital telling us she is okay and back on the ward after her operation to pin her broken leg. Tough is my partner’s mother, she plays hard ball. Relief all round.

I start to clear the office ready to be decorated tomorrow. Takes a while to clear everything out adn when I am done I clear the kitchen. I return to the lounge and find my family have finished the chocolate orange. I’m irked but remember that everything is communication, so I guess I know where I stand.

My evening continues with football, boxing until the family go to bed and I have space and inclination to write the blog.

DVT DAY 268

Tuesday and its time to get up. As soon as I realise that the decorators are not due till 9.30 I’m in the shower like a rat up a drain pipe. Such pleasure to have a morning shower in the newly decorated bathroom. So smelling fresh and feeling better today than I have been I make breakfast and check my messages. One of them brings me relief as it confirms my order for a Christmas present has been confirmed but will take longer than anticipated to be made. It might be a tight call for Christmas but there is nothing I can do about that. A friend calls and we talk about presents and general day to day stuff, which is a lift for the day. Just after she sends me a link to a genius idea for a family present. Its good to talk.

I begin to prepare for my morning meeting, checking that I have an agenda and know what I want to discuss and have the facts at hand. The decorators arrive and set to work as the rest of the household settle into their work days. My meeting gets delayed by 15 minutes so I get an extra coffee. I am just about to dial into my meeting and my oncologist rings. 45 minutes early. Last time he was 30 minutes late. Clearly has no idea of boundary issues or that other people, especially cancer patients, have other things to do adn timetables to keep. Any way he tells me what is in my blood test results. I do not indicate that I have seen them, dumbness is appreciated by the medical profession, it reinforces their mystical status and guru potential. Any way he tells me my PSA is up by 0.14, but my bloods and bone indicators are all good. Crucially I manage to tell him that I’ve been suffering increased back ache/pain over the last couple of months and I am wondering if my tumours are growing and the cancer in my spine is spreading. He immediately is reasonable and suggests that as it is almost a year since I ended chemotherapy he would order new scans for me so that the results can be available for an appointment in January. This is exactly what I wanted, in fact I thought I would have to wait until the January/February appointment for him to offer scans. So I’ve got a result. Just goes to show playing dumb can profit you sometimes. He checked I knew how to contact the McMillan nurses and said cheerio. I did not even have time to wish him merry Christmas.

I dial into my meeting and have a productive one coming away with an interesting paper to write. This is going to keep me out of trouble for a while and give me something to focus on. I have time for a bacon bagel and then its time to dial into the lecture on personality disorder being given by an old colleague of mine. I get about half way through when my partner comes in and tells me her mother has had another fall. She leaves with our daughter to go over to her mothers where she will meet her brother. I finish the lecture and set about clearing the kitchen, putting out the bins and making a curry to go in the oven to cook slowly so that there is a meal to come back to. The decorators leave saying there is just two more hours work in the back bedroom to finish it. I go and have a look at the wall paper, always a tricky moment, but this time it turns out well.

My partner and daughter return having seen her leave for A&E in the ambulance. We eat and wait. I watch football and my partner monitors her phone and tablet. Football ends and we get a message that my partners mother is still in A&E but maybe on the list to be admitted. So I write the blog and we both wait. I guess we will wait and wait till we get more information. If she is admitted we will have to plan and adapt accordingly as the days go on. Its going to be a time to juggle a lot but we will manage it between us.

We hear, its a broken femur down by the knee. She has decided to have an operation rather than prolonged traction. Today or tomorrow will be the operation. We will wait, whilst tomorrow one of my nephews gets married. Life is full at the moment.

DVT DAY 267

Monday not my favourite day but I get up before the decorators arrive and enjoy a bowl of muesli, honey and yogurt. The decorators arrive like elves and I scuttle off to the shed and spend the morning writing letters. By lunchtime I’m finally warm and ready for a walk. So the family take to the street for a lunchtime walk and to explore the jitties of the village. On the way I buy stamps for my seasonal cards and post my morning letters. Back to the house for a scrambled egg lunch before putting stamps on my card and returning to the shed to write another letter and to spend time working on my latest jewellery project. Its going slowly and when I try it out it becomes clear that I still have work to do on it. It progresses by rough approximations and will either reach a point of bearable abandonment (finish) or it will break and be discarded. It gets dark quickly and I retreat to the house and take my cards and letter to the post office. The post box is crammed full so I hand my pile to the post office staff to put into there collection bags. I get home and find the new curtain runners have arrived so I get myself up to the bedroom and sort out the final curtain. I’m still really pleased with how the room has come together. After that I get to sorting out the bathroom that now has its new mirror cabinet in place. I throw out all the out of date medicines and cough mixtures with the result that the cabinet looks almost well organised. No doubt it will accrue a new layer of dross as the weeks go on.

Pizza for tea, and then I start to hunt down Christmas presents that have not arrived. One company has had the money but have not acknowledged the order. Worth chasing I think . Chasing done I settle down to write the blog. It seems there is a delay between me publishing the blog and it becoming available to others. I will see how this one goes.

Tomorrow I have a one to one with the project manager at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which could be interesting given the way the world is. However I shall be cutting it short as my oncologist, “he who made a deal with the devil” , will be ringing me for my four monthly check. The biggest issue is how long I can keep him on the line and get some sense out of him. His usual approach is to tell me the blood results are fine, that it as good as it gets and then to fuck off as quickly as possible. A consultant with no bedside manner is just appalling over the phone. I am not hopeful and I am more interested in what his intentions are for the next appointment which will occur a year after my final chemo cycle. The challenge is to get a straight answer.