DVT DAY 73

An early challenge, crystallised honey. Before I can get my usual breakfast I have to immerse the honey jar in hot water to return it to its flowing state. While I wait for the miracle to happen I empty Daisy the dishwasher and clear the kitchen. Once the honey was ready, I eat breakfast and prepare to go to the shed. However, before I do, I have to fill my weekly drugs dispenser and discover I have none of my blood thinning drugs. I’ve ordered some so it will be a day before I get more, but that should not be a problem.

Today I try to run a LAN to the laptop in the shed from the main Wi-Fi hub, it seems to go well until I actually try to surf the net and then the system is so slow the system times out and fails to get to the target site. I revert to gardening and plant put a lot of the runner beans, beetroots and tomato plants. Having got as far as I can I drag out the lawn mower. It takes a while to get the lawns down at the back as I have to keep moving wires and hose pipes. It goes reasonably well until I go to the front garden and then the mower just stops working. I am not amused so I drag the offending dead machine to the back garden and break out the too kits. I get the power switch out and test it and the handle mechanism, as far as I can tell it is working okay. My meter tells me the electrics are sound, so I reassemble it and check the fuse, that too is in working order. I leave the dead machine, eat lunch and log on to the Wednesday Open Forum for and hour. I take notes, chat and resist the temptation to swig non-alcoholic beer from the bottle during the forum.

Back in the garden I pack up the tools I was using by which time out porch is full of fruit and vegetables. I pack these away, clear away the lunch pots and ger ready to go for my garden to garden walk. A walk for an hour getting sweater as I go and taking a drink every quarter of an hour. I discover that the drinks bottles that we have are all useless for drinking on the move and make a mental note to order a proper sports bottle today. At the end of the walk I sit on the swing set and listen to my favourite Bette Midler track. I go inside the house and try to log on on my notebook and find that there is no electricity. I check the fuse box and find that the mains circuit for the front part of the house had tripped. I returned the power and then realised that the lawn mower stopped when I moved to the front of the house and used a power point on the main circuit. If it had blown before I tried to mow the front lawn then it would explain why it stopped. It would also explain why when I tested it in the back garden it did not work as the garden power point is run off the same circuit. So tomorrow one of my jobs will be to recheck the mower. All so annoyingly time consuming.

The blog gets started but dinner interrupts it and then I plump for a bath. Today no yoga as the walk was hard so I use the bath to breath for a while and relax my muscles. I emerge from the bath in time to catch the end the Great British Sewin Bee. It merges into news programmes full of virus news and I return to writing the blog. I’m tired and I think that this blog is becoming boring as I find it difficult to make the effort to think and observe beyond the mundane. Although I will say that the sight of a union jack flag flying in one of my neighbours garden stunned me somewhat, and made me wonder if we are about as a nation to slide into smug nationalism.

DVT DAY 72

It is a day that starts in a strange way. I get up and find plants in the kitchen. My partner has been out for her early walk and has cleared the village cooperative out of plants. One daisy plant and thirty petunias sit waiting. After my usual breakfast I head for the shed and set it up. Then I face the conundrum of where to plant thirty petunias. I have a quick look round and decide to take on the patio area where the flowers that had wintered were now seriously gone over and some of the pots were host to dead twigs. So, I set to and empty pots and planters and replant them with the new ones. This took me most of the morning and still I have new plants to find homes for. I move to the front garden and empty more pots and the odd hanging basket. The rest of the new plants go into the front garden. My garden goes on producing new blooms and providing beauty at every turn.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Time for lunch and my partner makes me a ham sandwich and grapes, which we eat together on the patio, where we are joined by our eldest daughter. Lunch over and I open my post which consists of some LAN connectors and a letter from an old friend and colleague. I long chatty letter that takes me time to read a real pleasure. I check my work e-mails and find that I have work that I need to do for an hour. What is required is a summary of my work from April 2019 to the end of March 2020. An interesting period of my life that includes kidney failure, dialysis in Jamaica, an air ambulance home and then a raft of tests that ends up with me having cancer. Then of course there was the chemo therapy, so all in all a crap tax year, topped of with a DVT. Surely the tax man must owe me money!

Time for a walk, so off I go on my garden to garden walk for over an hour. Its hot today and I fix up a drinks bottle to see me through. I find four bags of compost have been delivered in the porch and need to be humped to the garden. I close up the shed and the greenhouse and retreat in doors. I tidy the kitchen and put out the bins for tomorrow while my partner rings her mother and then goes of to do yoga. Soon it is my turn to go and do yoga. I struggle so I know that I need to find a gentler session to do. Something that eases me into it more demanding routines. My shoulders are stiff and my right side pulls painfully. So gentle is the watch word at the moment.

Dinner is taken in front of the TV while I start the blog but it will soon be time for The A Word, a beautifully written and acted series about a family with young people on the autism spectrum. It is a pleasant interlude before the late evening news with its depressing stream of COVID related stories, speculations and encouragements. It looking to be hot tomorrow so I will spend most of my day on the garden. Growing and writing seem to be my major ways of coping.

DVT DAY 71

I wake up stiff from yesterday’s gardening and look to have a quick breakfast and get on with my day. Before I have a chance to eat two people turn up to collect the surplus weights bench, no receipt but I take photographs of them disappearing with the parcel.

• 

• 

So breakfast done I head for the shed and set up for the morning coming face to face with our local squirrel, who I had not seen for some time. Once in my shed I set to and write letters all morning, stopping only to open my post. Surprise surprise the tax man wants me to submit my tax return as soon as possible. This years return is going to be grim reading given the crap year I’ve had, at least the accounts will not take long. All I haver to do is dig out my portal details and wait for my P60s to turn up.

Lunch is taken on the patio with my partner and eldest daughter and we chat about how we are faring. So far it’s okay but getting boring and there is a pressure to keep finding new things to stimulate us.  

Lunch over I have a rest and sort out my training gear and get ready for my walk. I walk my garden for an hour and twelve minutes. As usual I get my 10,000 step congratulations. I grab a cup of coffee and review a yoga video that a good friend sent me. It looked doable so I stick it in my favourites and go upstairs and set myself up. Of course, being the household we are there is a yoga mat to hand. So, I rollout the mat, set the notebook running and get ready to start. Off we go and it’s a straight forward siting position and it is instantly clear that I am stiff and my joints have seized beyond where I thought I was. So this was going to be demanding but I am not stupid, I know a 71 year old with cancer in the spine is not going to be bendy like Bambi but on the other hand I cannot wrap myself up in cotton wool and become a bent up excuse of an adult. I know my limits and I like myself so what will happen is my best approximation. Actually keeping a straight back is tricky, not when I sit upright but when I lay down. Starting out then was an effort just to sit cross legged and breath. So having established what I could manage I pressed on. Pleasingly things got much better and by the time I had breathed a few times and downward dogged I got into the rhythm. The crunch came when I was supposed to roll my weight on the outside of one foot and turn my hips to the floor. Nope that was not going to happen, but it will in the weeks to come. I catch with Adriene, the tutor, in the next move and continue in my best approximation till the end of the tape, I even manage the happy baby posture after a fashion. I was far far away like Donkey in Shrek a lot of the time but there was nothing that is not attainable given time. I felt better for doing it. What was disconcerting was the tendency of the mat to ruckle up leaving my toes to slip on the carpet whilst I was downward dogging. I will know next time.

Time to close the shed for the day and having finished I went and sat on the garden swing seat with my eldest daughter. We chatted for a while until my partner appeared and we all decided it was time to get inside and get the evening under way. For me that means beginning the blog and checking the afternoon windows. We eat dinner and prepared for this evenings TV which will be Grayson Perry’s Art Club followed by Ordinary People. Fun followed by intensity, I will see how I last as I’ve got the urge to rummage through my art materials and see what I can put together. I think I am inspired by the things that people have sent or given to me.

As I have no obvious artistic talent I am intrigued to see what if anything I end up producing. I have of course got a growing “to do” list, mostly to do with the garden, enabling environments, life admin and running a LAN to the shed, but I think I am beginning to relax into a pastime mode and dump the urge to be productive, maybe its being institutionalised by “Shielding”.

DVT DAY 70

GARDEN ALL DAY

DVT DAY 69

A late start moved sluggishly to a bacon sandwich and coffee. A meandering morning of odd moments like opening the post, opening the greenhouse and clearing things away. Very domestic. By mid-day my partner and eldest daughter are ready to go for their walk and deliver her brother’s birthday card so I have an opportunity to get into the office and install the video editing suite on the main system. I make a test recording and then settle down to record my work commitment. I like the excitement of playing with new technology even though it has its frustrating moments. You know the ones I mean, you push a button and everything disappears, which then provokes a stream of cathartic expletives. I had several of those but ended up with a front card, middle and end card, and that was enough excitement for me.

Time for a walk. Garden to garden for an hour plus during which my Fitbit gave me the 10,000 step celebration. As usual I end my walk siting on the garden swing seat, this time refreshing myself with an orange ice cream lolly. Such decadence. Before closing up the garden for the day I put hard wood tiles under the front end of the green house to stop the front of it sinking into the lawn any further.

Back in the house I change and watch the first half of a German football match played with out a crowd. Very weird and strange to hear every kick of ball. It was like watching kids on the local park playing without their overzealous parents jumping around and abusing the referee. I could not be bothered with the second half. Dinner time and the bizarre prospect of the euro vision non song show that was due to drag on till 10 0’clock.  Thirty second snippets of 42 songs and mini platitudes about corona virus. I think not so I wrote the blog and hope that the multi channels of “stuff” has something worth watching. It is the evenings that are the worse. However today brought out the blooming of my grandfather’s other iris type, the purple one, scented as exquisitely as the blue one. That makes it worthwhile.

• 

• 

DVT DAY 68

This is a good day. Primarily because today my blood tests came back and I have yet again managed to force down my PSA level. It’s now 0.2, just over a year ago it was 147. Go me. Go everyone who wishes me well and encourages me. We are for the moment seem to be holding the cancer at bay. As the oncologist said, It’s as good as it gets.

Apart from the anxiety of the results and then the relief that they fell about right I spent my morning planting dahlias and sowing cornflower and sunflower seeds. I find it therapeutic to grow things, it appears I am quite good at this growing lark to the extent that my greenhouse is full. Having sated my growing need I settled down to write a reply to a letter that I received some days ago. It was not until my eldest daughter popped into the shed to ask about lunch that I realised what the time was. As my partner was dealing with wall to wall meeting calls my daughter put lunch together, which was good of her considering she had just done an on line job interview. Apparently, it went okay, so we are all waiting to see what the outcome will be.

So, lunch done it is time to open the post, and to see what Mr Amazon had brought me. Nothing more exciting than a VGA lead and a couple of very long LAN wires with a view to running Wi Fi direct into the shed.  So having had a bit of a post lunch rest I get ready to go for my garden walk. My legs are not keen but before I get going I have the pleasure of a call from a friend. It was good to hear from her and helped sort out some of the things I had been thinking about. So then I am off to walk my garden for an hour. It went okay but I was pleased to get the hour over and to rest for a while. I sorted out the shed and refilled the pond that had been lowered by the solar fountain in the morning. With things cleared away I took more photos of the flowers in the garden, It really is being magnificent this year. It is a gift that goes on giving.

• 

• 

• 

Get indoors, clear the kitchen and then fit the VGA lead to my partners work laptop so she can use the large monitor.

At this point my partner goes to do yoga, talk to her mother and begin to cook dinner while I slump in front of the TV and start the blog. As I type away my eldest daughter comes in from her walk bearing a bag of iced buns, very naughty, and suggests we could celebrate. She had just heard that she is joining the team at De Montfort University as a lecturer in the criminology department, training police officers. We are all pleased to say the least. She is doing the phone calls to tell people and I will open the bottle of non-alcoholic sparkling wine tonight plus of course nibbling the buns.

So, I look forward to an evening of celebration and joy. This has turned out to be a very good day. Oh! I almost forgot, the company that miss sold me a weights bench is going to come and collect it. An even better day.

DVT DAY 67

Suns up and so am I, breakfast, shower and trousers. Yes trousers. Today I have to give blood to track my PSA level. Cancer is such fun, like the Lone Rangers horse, a four-legged friend, never lets you down. But first a team meeting on TEAMS to discuss my contribution to our ten week programme. Ends up with me agreeing to re-record my blog and to add a couple of bits to some info cards. I duck out of the meeting on time to go to the GP surgery. My partner drives me to the surgery and I am left in the car while my partner books me in. I am beckoned out of the car and directed to the back door, yep the back door. We shielded get all the best care. So I am in the back door, straight into the clinical room and before I can start anything resembling small talk the needle is in my arm and I am two vials light of my precious blood. No time to tell her I am on blood thinners so I press extra hard on the cotton wool ball she sticks to me punctured arm.

I get driven home the long way round and I go to the shed having hung my washing out. There I try to re-record the video but all to no avail. I have a sound problem and will need to use the main system in the office when I can get in. Lunch time, sandwiches, fruit and an unexpected letter to read from an old colleague before I set up for the afternoon open forum. The forum went okay, time for a walk before I write up my notes. A sunny day deserves a longer walk and that’s what I did, an hour and a half today. My i-pod plays me a rich selection as I walk until I finish by flopping on the garden swing seat an listen to my favourite Bette Midler track.

I retreat to the shed and start writing my notes up. My eldest daughter comes to see me and presents me with two face masks. I try them on and find my ears are not elastic friendly and it takes a while to get the hang of securing the mask to my face. I have a sense that this will not be my last mask and look forward to see what the fashion world of the mask has to offer.

Dinner time and I abandon the shed for tuna pasta and a seat in front the of the TV. By the time it was through it was time for my partner to set up for her virtual singing lesson and for me to clear the shed and bring in my washing. So here I am in front of the TV writing the blog to a background of unremitting virus misery, the unfortunate and the dying. I think I will give up TV, I no longer give a toss. Tomorrow I am spending all day on the garden inspired by my grandfather’s irises starting to bloom with an incredible scent.

DVT DAY 66

Up early with the knowledge that today I have a video to make. The plan was to get it done and out there so I could get on with other things. All went well, a first take that I was happy with apart from the last tongue-tied element. I thought that cutting the end off would be easy. How wrong could I be. Nothing on any of the systems that I have appeared to be able to do this simple task. What started then was a hunt for suitable software that would do the job. I trialled a couple of packages but they were either clumsy or in comprehensible. I finally settled on a package and set to trying to get it to do the simple things, I ended up with two versions of the package but eventually managed to lop off the section I needed to. That took me most of the morning and by the time I got it off to colleagues to view it was time to join the TC open forum.

Todays Open Forum had 17 people join it and I thought my colleague who was hosting it did splendidly well in holding it all together on TEAMS which is a pretty poor platform for this kind of work. During the forum I manage to slip in an advert for a virtual conference that is to take place in November. I have foolhardily said I would help curate the third day, which will focus on the Criminal Justice System, so this is a group who could contribute.

The forum over I pick up a couple of e-mails and then I get ready to walk. Today I walk for an hour twenty minutes, and it feels like I am beginning to make some head way toward some sort of fitness again. All I can do is persist, not expect too much of my self and be patient. I finish my walk and retreat to the shed with a drink and cook down for a while, by the time I am ready to return to the house I am quite cold. I change, clear the kitchen and then settle down in front of the TV and begin to write the blog. My evening will see me eat chilli, write the blog and prepare for tomorrow. I have a rare sojourn into the real world to have a blood sample taken. It’s a full day with a meeting at 9, blood sample at 10:15 and a forum at 1 o’clock. It doesn’t sound much when looked at cold but with all the faffing, fannying and farting about that attends all these activities it will be a full day. In the midst of all this there will be a Sainsbury’s deliver to take in. I am looking forward to Friday when I can spend time in my garden and nurture the dahlias and the seeds that have been delivered this week.  

DVT DAY 65

This is an interesting day. I get up, have breakfast and head for the shed. My intention was to make a couple of videos for work but one of my neighbours decided to get his power jack hammer drill our and construct something in his garden. No chance of me recording anything in the shed so I settle down to write a couple of notices to the accompaniment of power tools going full blast.  Eventually I give in and settle down to write a letter. So by the time lunch comes around I am feeling under achieving and vaguely homicidal. Beans on toast sees me right and I return to the shed.

The neighbour has fallen silent, I maliciously hope he is attending A&E with a non-minor laceration. I asset the shed up to video. Not easy but I eventually get my best look and slip into a real shirt, a floral shirt. I reasoned that of I was inviting people to a forum one needs to look partially respectable, even in lockdown. The fact that I was wearing my Mr Pepper Pig lounge pants would be my private satisfaction. I have several attempts at a two-minute advert until I finally get something passable. By the time I get it finished I’ve had enough for one day. Its walk time.

I change into my walking gear and set my i-pod to Rammstein, loud. So, for an hour I walk my gardens from back to front. I range across a number of fantasies and have at least two conversations with myself until the hour comes around. Having had to edge past the hedge during the walk I took the shears to it and filled the garden recycle bin before putting it out for collection. Being on a roll I dissemble the cardboard art instillation that has developed in the hall way and box it up for the recycle collectors tomorrow. My bin duties done I finally get to change out of the walking clothes and check my e-mails. Dinner time comes around, which was very welcome.

My friend rings and we chat about the day and the intricacies of organising a daughters birthday party. I am left alone as the rest of the household disappear to bathe and work so I get to start on the blog sat on the sofa.

I am tired and I am twitchy about not knowing what my cancer is doing. I need to book a blood test and check my PSA level. As the world worries about COVID-19 I wonder what my invisible invader is doing to me and whether the stiff legs and aching back are related to it. It is very easy to fall into the story of being a vulnerable person isolating and living out a structured lifestyle. Too easy in fact. It was the result of one of the conversations I had with myself when walking. In fact it was a conversation with my transitional cancer fighter, Rocket. I ended up having a conversation with him about how the battle was going and he noted I was a bit distracted lately and where was my latest blood results. Bingo, I realised I had stop paying attention to the important issue. I’m back on track now.

DVT DAY 64

My word what a day. The getting up was pretty routine as was getting my breakfast but I ended up eating it in the shed due to the aversion I have for the smell of boiled eggs, which my daughter insisted on eating in the lounge in front of the TV. I returned to the house post egg pong to set up the lounge so that I could attend my zoom meeting. Including 45 minutes for a lunch break this was a solid wall to wall Zoom fest from 10am to 3pm. We discussed, we SWOT analysed, bickered a bit and maturely parcelled out work and planned a not too distant future. That was most of the day over, at least I have tomorrow free now to set about the work and finish my tasks.

At the lunch break I check the post and find a card from a friend and in it there is “gold”. My friend has sent us yeast, yes yeast! Apparently, the good burghers of York have a supply and my friend parcelled some up and sent it in a card. I carefully decanted the yeast to an air tight jar as it had come loose from its containing brown envelope and sounded as if it might be a glitter bomb. So, a double pleasure of a card and the prospect of home baked bread. It was the most welcome diversion from the meeting to which I returned.

From meeting to walk. I don my walking gear and proceed to walk my front garden to back garden walk for over an hour. Although my legs ached from the other days the actual walk went by more quickly and I had a sense that my body was beginning to get the message that it was going to be doing this everyday from now on. Having included the patio in the walk my Fitbit tells me I am doing more floors than usual. I rest at the end on the garden swing seat contemplating the peony that has not taken kindly to the sharp drop in temperature over the last couple of days. Back in the house and I change back into my lounge gear and check my e-mails and my latest Amazon parcel. Canes for the garden and a couple of Sweet Pea rings. I clear the kitchen and settle down to watch the latest episode of Killing Eve. The end is inevitable but I found myself really not wanting to be so. No spoilers here, just watch it.

My evening will be filed with reading and watching Grayson Perry’s Art Club. There is something magical about his relationship with his partner and the way they have a feel for what is important to each other. I watch it for this more than the art content. Just a different form of art I guess. Speaking of art I need to find out how to include information cards in videos. One last thought, anyone else confused by the latest COVID-19 advice?