DVT DAY 134

Monday and its up early for a shower before going to the GP for my 28 day injection. Before I am dressed my youngest comes into my room laughing and shows me a picture taken by her partner of the three cases of Lindt chocolate balls in three flavour that have been delivered to her house. She is an assistant buyer for a large chain of retailers and had jokingly said to the Lindt representative that she missed the face to face meetings they had pre COVID because of the goody bags that the chocolate companies always brought with them. The representative said she would send her some goodies. My youngest was not expecting three cases, each containing 8 boxes of chocolate truffles! I think her partner was rather taken aback as well, but I am sure that they will manage the situation.

My partner drives me down to the surgery where I ring reception to tell them I have arrived. Always tricky at that time in the morning as it is “Can I have an appointment “time on the phones. I get through and I am directed to the back door. Donning my mask with a newly acquired head strap to hold the mask on I wait at the back door. I should explain that due to the insubstantial nature of my ears they will not support the elastic strap of the masks. My nifty plastic strap provides “buttons” that the elastic straps can be attached to, therefore no irritating slippage or sore ears.

I am let into the surgery by the practice nurse and shown to the clinic room. The injection is mixed as I loosen my belt and provide access to the relevant flab. This injection is not quick due to the volume of stuff to be pumped into me. It is always sore due to the nature of the bulk and the ingredients themselves. At the time of the injection it’s the usual “sharp scratch”, it is afterwards that the soreness takes hold and then it’s a case of keeping busy and having hot baths.

We return home to make breakfast and to organise the rest of our day. I roam the garden making sure I know what the young guy who is coming to tidy the garden is going to be doing. I also do some pruning and tidying to pass the time. When he arrives, I make him strong builders tea and show him what needs doing, he is young and enthusiastic, which I need to keep in mind when talking the work through with him, otherwise the pruning and clearing might border on the blitzkrieg style of gardening. He sets to and I make bread before lunch. We sit and talk and then my youngest daughter assists her mother with a home hair kit, which goes exceedingly well.

I do some work and start the blog until lunch time when we sit down together and chat and idle for a bit. The young garden guy leaves and a little later we wave farewell to our youngest daughter as she heads for home and her treasure trove of chocolate. I return to the garden and start to plant out what is left in the green house and to tend the plants already dotted around the garden. I harvest my first crop of broad beans and peas. Not a huge haul but enough for tonight’s pie that I shall be making.

I beaver away continually planting and tidying till I am too tired to do more, is pie making time. I set to and prepare the pie while my loaf finishes. So by six o’clock  had pie ready for the oven, fresh bread and an aching back from todays work. The rest of the family are out for a walk so I return to the blog and TV football. I am annoyed to have missed a phone call, the second one of the day. It doesn’t sound much but to chat and hear different voices from the family is important. I Spend time unpacking my new resistance training mask, which I am going to use to exercise my lungs and build my breathing capacity. It is the equivalent of training at altitude so there is a possibility that my blood platelet count will rise, which it could do with at the moment.

Its going to be an early night for me and a possibly a soothing bath to ease the soreness. Tomorrow I have a research meeting but apart from that I am hoping to write. I find that writing helps to keep me focussed and in touch.

DVT DAY 133

Today I rose first and read on the patio sipping coffee until joined by my partner and youngest daughter, breakfast followed and we chatted for a while. I then started on the garden, I am not sure I intended to but I did. I started on one or two simple tasks but somehow it ended up in some major tasks. Several hours passed and the garden became increasingly weed free and trimmed. Lunchtime passed and the work continued till I was tired. So I spent time looking at the flowers and the visitors.

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Dinner is a proper roast Sunday dinner, a real treat, which sets me up for the FA cup semi final on TV. Of course once the fun was over there was of course the Tesco deliver slot to organise and the blog to write. Actually my main preoccupation is with tomorrows 28 day injection at 8:30 in the morning. I have never got used to them and know I shall be sore for a couple of days. So a reasonably early night for me.

Saturday and the house is full. This means bacon sandwiches I do not have to negotiate and the smell of baking in the house. We briefly visited the garden centre and came away with more plants, an oil spray and a rotary cheese grater. Oh yes, I almost forgot yet another Wired Fish jumper. Of course this meant a lot of time in the garden.

It is a strange but true fact that bumble bees hibernate and they do so in my hanging baskets that I leave out over the winter. This means that as I emptied the old ones to replant them several very sleepy bees emerged from the loam. The up shot of this is that we now have six newly planted hanging baskets and one which is a permanent bee dormitory. Of course the bees do not know this and are likely to choose whatever hanging basket they fancy but at least this years late risers are all in the same place, except of course the ones I missed.

There is little else of note except Brentford managed to blow their chance of automatic promotion to the premier league by losing to Stoke of all teams, and I trained again for 45 minutes on the bike. But the highlight was the lemon drizzle cake that was made and eaten for pudding with coffee after the evening meal. The juice of three lemons and the zest of two certainly made it zingy. In fact is was so “zingy” that at times it so contracted our mouths that we appeared to be doing goldfish impersonations. It was smoothed a little by the addition of ice cream. We have half of of this delight to go tomorrow!

DVT DAY 131

I started the day lazy and found my partner and youngest daughter on the patio drinking coffee and obviously doing that mother daughter bonding thing that they do. I made toast and more coffee and joined them. Really nice to sit out and chat about nothing much in particular. We were interrupted by my eldest daughter all of a flap as she had forgotten to get up in time for her PhD supervision, she just about made it. We set about planting the flowers we had bought yesterday and my youngest got the sewing machine out to make face masks. I was fairly quickly summoned to see if I could mend the sewing machine. I noted the lamp was still on, so there was power. A tentative tap of the foot pedal and away it went, hurray. It then stopped, the light went out and it sat there silence. I checked the mains socket, it was good. I checked the plug fuse, it was dead. Hurray I can do this. Put in new fuse and full of confidence plug it all in again and threw the switch, BANG, the machine made a loud noise and proceeded to smell of battel field.

Out came the trusty electrics kit and tool kit and pretty soon I had the guts of the machine in front of me. Running my trusty meter over it I soon found that the light bulb was in good working order to I switch attention to the motor and the rest of the electrics. All the power cables were fine as were the neutral circuits, the coil on the motor was fine. What wasn’t fine was the component that in effect controls the power going to the motor. This component is over 40 years old and the tell tale blacken plastic around its housing plus the smell told me that it had just died.

I hunted for a replacement part but to no avail, so my partner and I had a conversation about a new one and came to the conclusion that a new one that self threaded ( old eyes find this helpful), can do a button hole in one operation and sow silk to denim in countless ways was a good and timely option. Singer are having a Sewing Bee Sale and you pick up really good machines from between £200 and £300. So there will be research done and a lot of umming and aahing and perhaps a new one will arrive.

So with that excitement over it was time for lunch and then more gardening, during which the Tesco deliver arrived. At three I joined a ZOOM farewell work do. Its a very peculiar way to say farewell to a colleague, sipping non alcoholic beer and nibbling a coop cupcake. It was okay but it lacked the hug and walking off in to the sunset. Just pressing a leave key and clearing the screen is pretty cold.

I dithered a bit and then went and changed in order to train. I sweated out for 45 minutes and decided that was enough for the day and dripped may way to the patio for sandwiches. My partner lit the chimenea and we sat amid smoke and ash until it got to the delightful flame and ember stage.

I got post training cold and went in doors to run a bath and use my gold finger bubble bath. A long soak while reading Do No Harm by Henry Marsh. Basically tales of neurosurgery, but an interesting read. By the time I emerged everyone else was heading for bed, so here I am blogging again.

I remain shielding and missing the outside world and the opportunity to go on holiday. A friend has departed today with her family to beaches and cosy cottage, I am envious but glad to see others are able to do it, it gives me hope that I will soon be able to re-emerge.

DVT DAY 130

Today started out with fun, the boiler wasn’t working so I was texting the boiler man very early to see if he could fix it. He is a hero as despite being about to collect his caravan and go on holiday at 10:30 he duly arrived and solved our problem. Apparently our system is developing a vacuum that is stopping our boiler flowing properly. Okay in the short term by may need bypass surgery in the future. So we can now entertain our youngest daughter for the weekend and not all smell.

My blood tests have arrived fully after a bit of a delay due to one result being missing. The PSA result was the one missing and the crucial one but it eventually turned up. The good news is that it has stayed at 0.2, which is a good thing. The rest of the results are about the same as they were, the only ones that are outside the normal range are those related to kidney function. Nothing critical but a timely reminder to look after the kidneys and to keep hydrated.

As can be seen my Urea is dropping towards normal, which is a measure of kidney function, but my Creatine level has risen a bit, also a measure of kidney function. My eGFR at 50 is the more or less percentage measure of my kidney functioning, which at 50% at my age after having had kidney failure in March 2019 is not bad at all. In fact its as good as it gets. Go me!

In the midst of this we got a delivery from Japan, very exciting to get a big envelope with lots of strange writing on it addressed to my eldest daughter.

I was surprised when she handed it to me and said “Happy Birthday”. So this was a belated birthday present for me that she had been waiting to arrive. I opened it and was at first intrigued and then delighted. It was a genuine antique hand painted silk kimono, for a bloke obviously!

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Obviously I am delighted with my present and was wafting about in it when the plumber arrived. So I am writing the blog for once not being tired and have most of the day in front of me. The pleasured of hosting an open forum is to come as is greeting my youngest daughter when she arrives. There is also Jeff to arrive to survey our heating system with a view to re-piping it. So a day of fun to come.

DVT DAYS 125, 126, 127, 128 & 129

So where have I been since Saturday the the 11th of July I hear you ask, or rather I hope you ask. Recently I think I have been experinceing post birthday inertia,weight gain and a sense of meaninglessness due to the continued COVID lock down. I have also been busy with Enabling Environment work trying to write all the content required before the editor of the work moves on to pastures new and will inevitabley forget about it having followed Gibbs Rule 11, When the job is done, walk away. There have been some fiesty TEAM meetings that have left me wondering what I am doing and how much COVID confinement is getting to me, I realise how much I miss the gym, not just for the equipment but also the change of scenery and coffee made by someone else. I can after all clamber up onto my own exercse bike in the shed and sweat an hour away so it is the other elements that make the gym appealing. Being confined cuts into any sense of efficacy over the outside environment. Its all very well growing things in the garden but it does not compensate for a sense of contribution to the world. I miss not having face to face contact with the people who I care about outside of the family who are confined with me. I spent the whole day yesteday writing letters and cards trying to maintain some sort of communication with people and to keep the “juices” flowing in terms of social interaction and connectedness. As yet I have not slipped into solpisism, I know the real world existst beyond me, its not being or feeeling that I am part of it that is the irritation.

This isolation is not good for my health. Physically I feel my fitness drain away and mentally is anybodies guess. I have begun to be ultra sensitive to any change in my body functions and when it does not match what I think is normal for me I get anxious that the change or defiecit is due to advancing cancer. I have no way of knowing. It is not made easier when my latest blood results come back without the crucial PSA result they are suppossed to have in them. I suppose this means calls to the cancer nurse and the unit to chase it up, however strictly speaking I should only have a blood test just prior to my next oncologist appointment in August,I doubt they will be that fussed. On the other hand as yet I still have no new oncolgy appointment. Another call to make.

Life just seems to be full of irritations at the moment, that I know is my stuff, but nevertheless they are still irritating. The lack of an oncology appointment is one of course, followed by my phone contract coming to an end, slugs eating my dhalias, my “My BT” phone app refusing to download onto my phone because it thinks it already has! The list is long and equally petty. I do fight back with radical action like sewing on the missing button from my shorts and rethreading the waist cord on another pair, I even dissected a heating pad and returned it to working order. Where necassary I employed revolutionary methods to fix things, like getting the plumber to fit a new overflow tank ballcock and valve, my that was an exciting day. Even now I wait in anticipation of tomorrows visit by “Jeff” in his mask and gloves to survey the possibility of re-piping our central heating system from micro bore to full bore piping. My whole being can hardly handle the excitement, although this will abate when he quotes us a price to do the work.

The garden continues to provide distraction in a beautiful way. We visited our local garden centre the other day and returned with trays of bedding plants and spent a productive afternoon upgrading some of the flower beds. In the midst if this I found a seed time nest of great beauty.

In fairness I think we are doing our bit to give nature a hand but the weather appears not to want to join in. This dull grey leaden sky nonsense that drizzles on regular occassions is not what I call summer sunshine and puts a real damper on things both literally and psycholgically. I felt so cold the other day I was tempted to put the heating on but resisted the temptation and went for more layers. I applaud myself for this as both green and courageous given that at any moment I may suffer a “hot sweat” which sees me disrobing at a rate of knots. Just one of the delights of my cancer treatment, which seems to happen more often in the night thus breaking my nights up into two or three hour chunks. I used to go to bed and die till the morning, but now it is short bursts of non sweaty to sweaty sleep. Perhaps it is this sleep disruption that is finaly getting to me through the accumulated fatigue.

In all this there are moments of true jolliness, like when my lastest addition to my ice hockey shirt collection arrived. My most recent addition is a russian red army team ice hockey shirt, it came to me all the way from the Ukraine. I am very pleased with it.

I am truly excited at the moment as at this very moment I am resting my feet on my new under desk foot rest whilst the laptop sits neatly on my lap as it should. This probaly sounds purile but believe me the joy of being comfortable as I work is well founded. To add to my daily sense of jolliness is that in a couple hours our new garden help is due to arrive and mow the lawns and do some rudimentary tidying up of the garden. Not only do I get the more onerous jobs done but I get to see another human being in the confines of our house and garden. I am tempted to get a garden camera, one of those motion activated ones to see what and who else wanders into our garden. If I get the right equipment I might even be able to plug it into my TV and create my own “Spring Watch”, Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan eat your hearts out.

I have just come from an “open forum” run on ZOOM, my favourite platform. One of the participants noted that as a collective we appear to have run out of creativity as COVID has progressed. Initially everyone was challenged by the problems and necessity truly became the mother of invention. There was an out pouring of creative ideas to over come the restrictions as we all struggled with coming to terms with our changed life styles. Now it seems we are habituated to the situations rather like new remand prisoners getting used to prison life in the first few days of captivity, we have slipped into our COVID routines and no longer face immediate problems. Now the challenges are more subtle, it is our attutides, tolerances and resilience that are being tested. It is the more psychological aspects of “quarentine” that are increasingly coming to bare down on us that are the real issues to deal with and these require more than a quick fix, new routine or flash of creativity. These require thought, when our abillity to think reasonabley or rationally may be impaired and as a consequence our judgement less good. Perhaps this too contributes to my recent lassitude and lack of blogging behavior, perhaps I too am beggining to experience creativity fatigue as I sink into a sensne of being “comfortabley numb” to the COVID threat and/or the world. All of this will disappear tomorrow when my youngest daughter visits us tomorrow and stays a few days. There comes a time when family comes first.

DVT DAYS 123 & 124

Two intense days of writing and meetings. As a new contract starts there has been a lot of reviewing going on and a lot of writing to create new resources to be used during and after COVID. Only now on Friday afternoon have I had time to clamber back on the bike and pedal an hour away.

That all sounds dull but there have been moments of light relief and pleasure during which I was able to frame my birthday Rob Ryan and hang it in the shed, order my next blood test and B12 injection and schedule my next drugs order. Such fun!

There have also been moments of indulgence, for example the latest addition to my ice hockey short collection arrived from the Ukraine, its an official 2016 world championships shirt which was held in Russia. My other extravagance was a pair of Rupert Bear trousers. I came from an idle conversation that got silly and me wondering if it was possible to get Rupert Bear trousers. What I found was pretty close and spectacular, although I am not sure they go together!

Also someone sent me a book, probably my sister but I am waiting to confirm this. A cheery tome, that is waiting for me to pay attention to it.

I am hoping for sunshine and clear skies over the next few days so that I can test out my mobile observatory app on the phone and read about what I see in the astronomy books I got for my birthday. I have lots of letters to catch up on as well. I feel a bit cheated by the Shielding being extended, its not so much that I cannot go out but I cannot invite people to come and eat and get back into cooking for people. I miss the conversations over food, either at home or out in a restaurant, even a snack bar. I am planning a holiday once the coming weeks meetings are over with and there is some breathing space. I crave a routine of writing letters, painting, training, reading and tending the garden, I can hear you all now muttering “then bloody retire”, but I doubt I will yet, maybe sometime.

Today is a bit of a blur as it was a long writing session. With a deadline to meet on Friday I’ve spent the day trying to read stuff and write something clear and readable. That part is quite enjoyable but the bit I hate is doing the references. Of course during the day there were moments of light relief like an open forum to attend and the excitement of an Amazon parcel to open. As the day wore on and I got tired, the writing became more onerous. At the end of the day our new gardener turned up for his first two hours. I did the grand tour of the garden and then let him get on with it. Seemed strange to see some one new in the garden and not Brian our old gardener who died in January this year.

I find some time to frame one of my birthday presents so that it can join me in the shed. Its about time, which I find myself thinking about more often these days.

So here I am at the end of the day still thinking I need a holiday. Once I get through this current bout of work I intend to have some quality shed time. I increasingly realise I have a limited amount of energy to expend and need to manage it more mindfully in order to ensure I get the important things done. Its one of the reasons why the blog is shorter than it was as it is getting done as my days energy runs down.

DVT DAY 121

A slow day with intermittent aggravation, mostly work and one of those days when I wonder if I need it, but always conclude in the calmer moments that I do. The highlight was my partners brother bringing me a birthday present and the exciting bit was he came in for a cup of socially distanced tea. Its the first time someone has been in the house for months. He described going for a COVID test and the process he had to go through, by his account its quite an interesting process with a lot of non verbals and some obvious ommissions in the instructions. At the crucial part of putting the swab into the tube to retain the sample it was a challenge given that the swab stick is four times longer than the retaining sample tube. What is ommited in the instructions is to snap off the swab stick to fit in the tube. Apparently it took two goes before he got the hang of it.

This is the sort of fun and adventue I am missing out on while I shield. On the up side I do at least have time to read the books that I recieved for my birthday. Pleasingly many of them have spectacular picures or are very entertaining. I am rapidly concluding that I need a holiday from work, I have lots of art to create, poems to finish, books to read, home improvement projects to organise, letters to write and friends to cherish. I might retire for a fortnight.

DVT DAY 120

Its my birthday!

72 today and only another 37 to go till 109. Its good to have a goal, however today is celebration time with cards, gifts, food of my choosing and too much chocolate. Its a time to think of the last 1000 steps and the next 1000 steps. A Chollima (also Qianlima, Senrima, or Cheollima, literally “thousand-li horse”) is a mythical winged horse that originates from the Chinese classics and is commonly portrayed in East Asian mythology. This winged horse is said to be too swift and elegant to be mounted (by any mortal man). Today it is a compliment and refers to an extremely talented person. Now there is an aspiration. Time to get on with my unfinished projects, tomorrow, today is time for celebration.