Well today it should be a stab day at the GP but due to a cranky unconscious, or prankster pixies, I contrived not to make the appointment. So, having missed the gym yesterday, I plunged into an early morning bath and dashed down the road to the GP surgery to admit to my omission and begged an appointment. The receptionist took to me kindly and booked me in for the afternoon. I returned home and spent the morning rereading the evidence for the therapeutic community review I am doing in Oxford tomorrow. I also tinkered with the idea of driving down tonight and booking into a hotel. After casting around the oxford area and finding the most expensive hotels were the ones near the service I am visiting I decided to make the effort in the morning and drive down. I had odd moments of feeding that I recorded in my new food journal.

This is the first day of changing my diet to cut out refined sugar and some carbohydrates and to increase my water and fruit juice intake. I might even restart making fruit smoothies, which explains why there is now cartons of orange juice and coconut water in the fridge.

So my morning went by quickly and before I knew it, it was time to go to the GP for the stabbing. I arrived with 3 minutes to spare and was soon called in. The drug is thick and there is a lot of it so it takes little while to push into my gut fat. This nurse did it very painlessly and relatively quickly. I guess the soreness will get to me over the next couple of days, it usually does. I booked the next jab session and wandered off to the village cafe to have a bacon baguette and coffee. While there I booked Thursdays train tickets and planned other bits and pieces I needed to think about.

Home and I pick up the post, which includes the Leicester Tigers bid to get me to renew my session ticket. They are trying to woo me with a same price as this season, I am not surprised the way they are playing. On Saturday the ground was almost half empty despite the clubs claim that there was 18, 000 there. They just count all session ticket holders and add on the tickets sold, the number that turn up is very different. I suspect my partner and I will think carefully about what we will do.

My partner returns home early from work and we talk about my new diet reductions before she goes off to cook tea. Tonight I shall get ready for my drive to Oxford tomorrow morning, so its early to bed for me tonight.

I realise I’ve only got 7 days before we go to Spain and at least three of those days are spoken for in terms of work. All of a sudden I realise that I am not as organised as I could be but I’m guessing it will all be fine, after all how many clothes can it take to survive a single week? I think all the other bases are covered.

A sunny morning, hurray. Breakfast and yesterdays newspaper in which I find the above article about a fellow prostate cancer person. I note with interest that this mans team were able to tell him what his life expectancy was likely to be. Having seen the television programme about this man and caught a glimpse of his bone scan, it was pretty solid black and yet he gets a guess at ten to eighteen years. I have three spots on my lower spine and a PSA of 0.4, so how long do I get. As the man in the article says he is likely to die with cancer and not from cancer, something I was told early on in my journey into prostate cancer club land.

I have frequently said that my sense of time has become like those waxy Dali clocks but a friend posted an image of a dandelion clock in response to another friends loss. It struck a chord with me as time being subject to random winds that remove parts of the clock, the self.

In my position the best is to hope for windless days and at best a gentle breeeze. Maybe this is why I dislike the recent cold and windy weather so much.

The rest of my day has seen me finally finding a taxi firm to take us to the airport in ten days time and tidying up the office before going to the gym. I get to the gym and full of enthusiasm get into the changeing rooms to find that I have a towel and no kit. I resort to coffee and a snickers as I wait for my partner to finish training. I watch foorball and then we return home. I start to organise my coming week and discover that I have not confirmed my 28 day injection for tomorrow! This coupled with my recent habit of forgeting my daily medication is an interesting development. Perhaps I am unconsciouly pretending to be well and avoiding the reality of my situation, although as I indicated above I am not sure what the reality of my situation is. I do know that when I weighed myself for my once a week weigh in I was pleasantly surprised given the jelly bean intake this week. I came in under 100 kilos which surprised me but has given me impetus to make a pre holiday effort to reduce my weight a bit more. Actually its my waist line I need to attack to get the bulk of my wardrobe to fit again.

Home and I settle to write the blog and think about my week ahead. Its a busy one with a therapeutic community review, a meeting in London and preparation for the holiday the following week. I might get to see a friend but I will see how things go. So dinner in front of TV and a quiet evening is the order of the end of my day.

• 

• 

All the above are true on this Saturday. It started wet and felt crap, what is more is that it looked like it was going to go on all day and then there was:

Of course that meant doing something and as it is Saturday it was always going to be the rugby down at the Leicester Tigers.

So wrapped up in at least four layers of winter warm clothes and double socks we drove into town to watch them. A sparse crowd and a dull match but the Tigers managed to beat Worcester 14 -8. It was bloody cold, so cold that not even half time chocolate bars could hold it at bay. So once the game was over it was a fast walk to the car and warm car drive home. Once there there the priority was to get the fire on, the tea made and to settle into a warm room for the evening. The blog to write and then hopefully a mindless film and football before a warm bed for the night.

It’s raining again! I’m sick of it, let’s face it is not Global Warming its Global Wetting. I’ve already suggested to friends in letters that it is likely that half of humanity will fall foul of athletes foot having spent prolonged periods in gum boots and waterproof walking shoes with double layers of socks. The smell will be pungent to say the least and vets will be in demand to treat hoof rot for the more advanced cases.

So given the rain I decided to go nowhere today and to have a lounge pants and T-shirt day. Minimal cleaning up today and a time to write letters and put the dry washing away. Apart from that I graze and listen to Radio 2 until I cannot bear bloody Jeremy Supercilious Patronising Vine anymore and escape to radio 3s composer of the week and midday concert. How nice to be free of the vacuous verbal and find thoughtful music.  

I write letters and contemplate the front garden being drowned by father nature and wait for a time when the rain eases off. I pick my moment and make a dash for the village co-op and post letters. Once home I settle down to more radio and the tiding up of toenails and underwear draw. I am sure other people do these things too but there is something about paying attention to them on a wet and dark day that brings added value to them. They are often tasks done in haste and not paid attention to whereas on days like this there is time to take time doing them and really appreciate them.

Well before I realise my partner is home and gearing up to go to the chippy to get us an easy Friday evening meal. The eldest daughter has dashed in and dashed out at some point in the afternoon so go to visit a friend in Norwich. So tonight it will be rugby or a film or Vera, who knows, all I am concerned with is being warm. So there it is, I’ve have unrepentantly slugged the day away and it feels okay.

It’s been a day of doing and of looking after. Once up I focussed on doing the final preparations for the holiday including trying to book a taxi to the airport. I thought I had success but when I got the email asking me to confirm they had jacked the price up by £50, so I shall be looking for another taxi firm. I awarded myself a gold star for achievement when I fathomed out how to pay a cheque into our account using my phone. Quite easy really; but a useful skill to have.

I’d already decided to go to the gym quite early to have breakfast and them to train, so off I went to the gym but stopped at Sainsbury’s to pick up Euros for the holiday. Amazing that you can just walk in and get fistfuls of foreign cash. Then onto the gym where I settled down to do the crosswords and eat eggs Benedict. So a relaxing morning before I donned my kit and did an hour’s exercise  wearing my wrist weights. Success, I shifted 849 calories and got my 10,000 steps reward. I flopped in the lounge and downed a post exercise drink and a bowl of Thai chicken soup.

 By the time I felt up for the drive back time was getting on. I had a long chat on the phone with a friend who is recovering from a bout of what sounds like flu. Once home I walked briskly to the village chemist to collect my drugs and a loaf, as I had seen a weather forecast that suggested it was going to hail and sleet on Friday morning. I’m not going out in that and plan to review evidence for the service review I am doing next week.

 So finally in for the night I clear the kitchen, unpack Daisy the dishwasher and put my weekly wash on. Its blog time till my partner gets home and we prepare for her singing teacher to arrive. My eldest daughter has yet to get back from the university but the good news is that at her mid doctorial exam went well and she is being allowed to carry on to the full doctorate. She appears to have gained an academic admirer who is going to join her supervision team on the basis of the quality of her presentation and discussion yesterday. Go the eldest! Proud parent moment. Tonight I will check to see if my latest Jasper Fforde Kindle book has down loaded. This is part of my holiday preparation. Once I’ve done this it will be football and post singing lesson Death in Paradise.

It is another mundane day with a hint of cancer, e.g drug collection for my Monday 28 day injection and my holiday drugs. To add to this is my impression that my right calf and ankle is swelling a bit, it certainly appears to be bigger than my left calf and ankle. It might be that I’ve pulled, strained or twisted my ankle a bit. I shall ice it and see what happens. So tomorrow, if I go to the gym, will be an upper body workout. Friday is a leg rest day.

I’m very tired tonight so this is going to be short. There has been a lot in this day including an unexpected windfall from the tax man. There was that brown thin envelop laying on the door mat with the tell-tale tax inspector logo on it. The instant thought was “how much do I owe them” because let’s face it that’s always been my experience. Imagine my surprise when I read that they are going to put money into my bank account.

Any way I digress. My first task was to organise information about the service I am reviewing next week in time for the pre visit phone conference. At 10:30 sharp I dial in and I spend time discussing some details about the evidence required and the mundane things like parking. Once done I get on with printing my monthly invoices and running off the boarding passes for the upcoming holiday in March. I go to the post office to send my invoices and buy bread and bacon. Home to bacon sandwiches for lunch. The afternoon sees me shopping for smoked paprika and printing paper and returning home to cook a one pot paprika chicken dish, before watching football. So another evening floats past to blog time. Tomorrow I promise myself to go to the gym and try to work off the numerous jelly beans I have eaten today and of course collect my next prescription. Its never far away, cancer.

• 

Up early today as it’s a work day and parking spaces in Derby are as rare as hen’s teeth. I get my traveling office together, that will be the back pack, and my gym kit and head off north up the motorway. I totally forgot that the holiday flight book in was open, but as I’ve already selected our seats I can afford to book in later. I get to Derby and get a parking place. Once in the probation building I set the meeting room out and set the room up with the projector and the flip charts. A last minute phone call gets my progress chart up to date and then people start to arrive. The session goes well and there is a sense of progress amongst the group and the managers are clear about where their services are in the enabling environment process. Having booked future review days I drive back to Leicester and to the gym.

I spend the afternoon writing up contract progress and sharing some observations. I also do my February invoices and relax doing crosswords in the paper until my partner arrives for her personal trainer session. I spend an hour cycling and burning off 501 calories and collecting my 10,000 steps accolade.

Returning home there was just time to eat dinner and settle down to watch the night’s football match. Now it’s time to write the blog and watch the news which is mainly about the ever creeping progress of the corona virus. Now that Tenerife has joined Italy in having virus cases it begins to make one more attentive as we have a holiday on Spain booked. It also appears that life expectancy has stalled and is getting worse. It would appear that once again I am on the cutting edge and ahead of the game. Always was a fashion leader. A message for all the ill people.

Two squirrels was the highlight of my day today. I woke with a head ache which kept me company all day. For light relieve I nibbled jelly beans and ploughed my way through the pre visit evidence supplied by the Therapeutic Community in question. In fairness it was good evidence and has made the future visit easier. A quick swapping of the cars from garage to drive was my outdoor exercise. It was then back to nibbling jelly beans. It’s one of those mundane days where the weather is wet, cold and windy, which kind of matched the way I felt all day. The upside is that the work I did today will make my next two days much easier. As for tonight I shall write the blog, and sneak off to bed early to read and snooze.

These are the days I fear, they are the ones that can feel normal and they are not, they are days that can float by and make me forget that I need to keep fighting and making the effort.

Today started with coffee in bed, made by the youngest daughter in an effort to get her parents up. It was a nice surprise as was the conversation that followed. A relatively lazy start to the day which drifted into a bacon sandwich breakfast intertwined with the pre visitor hovering and dusting.  We had not long finished the late breakfast when friends turned up with their two small girls on their way home from visiting relatives and the local zoo. There was time for drinks and chocolate cake in-between looking at the fish, exploring the garden, doing a jigsaw, playing a game and nibbling snacks. It was good to see them and to present the two girls with bags of “treasure” that had been left by Santa at Christmas. We waved them farewell on their journey home and soon after our youngest daughter headed for home as well.

We cleared the decks and did some routine things before the England Ireland rugby international. At least I and my partner did whilst our eldest continued to beaver away at a midterm paper for her doctorate. We watched England beat the Irish and then settled back to do more clearing, organising and recording until tea time. This evening Dr Who will entertain us followed by Endeavour Morse by which time I will be ready for bed and maybe some reading.

• I have a strange kind of fatigue at times. The last couple of days have been buoyed by my good blood results but I seem to have slowed down a bit, finding things an effort. I think there is some kind of tiredness from the planning and arranging of the coming holiday but also an inherent fatigue of carrying the knowledge of cancer within. There are some, upcoming, end of month chores to be done as well and I think I might be avoiding them, or at least some of them, ordering my 28 day injection for instance. This feels like a kind of winter hinterland that is cold and slightly bleak. The garden is a profusion of early flowers yet too cold to tend. Going to the gym is desired but difficult to motivate myself into, I like the soup there and reading the papers but that walk to the changing rooms is getting longer and harder to do. The little voice that sits on my shoulder and urges me to eat the sweets, have a pudding, miss out the training, have a nap and go on a marathon reading session is becoming louder. It’s a very appealing temptation but Rocket the Racoon who is my mental ally who fights the cancer within nudges me and reminds me that my life is too short to be sitting on my arse getting fat, there is cancer to fight and things to do in the real world that matter. I think it is partly the winter and its cold storms and partly the increased effort it feels to do the things that matter, to stay in control to keep life flowing in the right direction. Perhaps I just need the sunny climes of Spain, which are not far off now, to revive me. I think the wearing thing is that cancer never takes a holiday. No matter what I do I cannot leave it anywhere so that I can take a break, and I think that this is true for all those that care about me. They see me and know that I carry this pernicious intruder within and in their turn they cannot un-know this. It is a cruel and invisible brand that stamps itself on all my relationships. I think this is why I have become Jolly, I need to bear this with good grace for my own sake and for those that are around me as they carry this burden as much as I. No sense in being anything other than Jolly and trying to lessen whatever others carry of my cancer.

Its been all football, rugby, bacon sandwiches, Indian takeaways and lazing today. Apart from a card from my sister there was nothing of note, although I understand someone saw there first zebra today. And so to bed.