Today has been the Roland MOT day. It started with an early visit to the GP to get my 28 day injection. It went smoothly, but always does, until later on when it gets progressively sorer and persists for a few days. Back home for breakfast and to write my invoice for the Royal College of Psychiatrists. By the time I had finished the task it was time to walk down the road to the dentist. This was to be a check-up and an assessment of how my mouth had survived chemotherapy. My dentist is a star and spent time asking me how chemo had gone and how I am now. She checked my teeth and gums and we discussed what she had found. Thankfully there is nothing urgent and things that need attention can wait till I have spoken to my oncologist on March the 24^th. So the outcome from my point of view was a satisfactory one. I made another routine appointment for six months’ time, if there is a need I can return before this. Home again and more organising for tomorrow by buying my train tickets. Once again it was time to get on the way to the hospital for my CT scan.

Mercifully the drive was easy until we got to the car park. As usual we had to queue to get in, thankfully not for long. We arrived in the x-ray department early for my appointment. My partner and I sat and read until a small nurse called us into the inner area of the ward. I was shown into the small cannulisation room where the same small nurse attempted to put a cannula into my now predictable wiggly” vein. True to history it wiggled and the nurse had to patch me up and had to have a go at the vein next door. Success. So I sit in the waiting area drinking water and trying not to dislodge my cannula. A spritely young man appeared and asked for me to accompany him into the scan room. He checked my name and birthday and then explained what would happen. So I sat on the bench, dropped my trousers and laid on my back while the spritely young man hooked me up to the machine that was going to pump a dye into my blood stream. He tested it with saline and then we got on with it. We had a couple of practice breaths and a bit of sliding up and down and then the dye was injected into me and we did the sliding back and forward for real. There is a momentary side effect of feeling you want to pass water and a slight metallic taste in the mouth, in me it manifested as a distinctly warm arse effect with no metal mouth effect. I was done very quickly and had to wait in the waiting room for 15 minutes to make sure I did not keel over. After my quarantine was up the small nurse reappeared and beckoned me into the de cannulation room. The cannula came out a lot easier than it went in and I was sent on my way with a small pad taped to my arm.

We drove home and I headed for the bath to ease the soreness of this morning’s injection. I, shed my clothes, threw in a sparkly bath bomb, selected a book, got a non-alcoholic beer out of the fridge and added my phone to the little fold away table next to the bath, I was about to hop in when the phone rings and my partner answers it, my daughter is ill at work. I swear quite a lot as I drag on clothes and grab my car keys. My partner and I drive to the college where my partner goes and retrieves our poorly daughter.

Home and poorly daughter retreats to bed and I strip again and get into my bath. I text a lot and message several people to say that the civil partnership photos are now viewable on the photographers website. I start to get cold and top up the bath. In doing this I discover I can block the over flow with my feet or a wet flannel so as the bath warms up again the water level rises and I feel the warmth immerse me. I become aware that I have to move to turn the hot tap off. By this time the Archimedes principal is kicking in and as I move my bulk I create a Tsunami. Splash and splosh there is a flood over the rim and the floor is awash. I pull the plug and wait till levels are safe and then gingerly get myself out and onto the duck board, from there a spare towel gets foot shuffled around the flor to soak up the flood. Success, all there is left is a couple of wet towels to deal with. I notice as I prepare to leave that the floor is now very golden sparkly due to the bath bomb. Far more sparkly than I am I notice.

Tea time and I settle down in front of the TV not feeling very clever and slightly chilled. I have watch some quiz shows, mainly Only Connect as it features the very witty and bright woman who is also an ace poker player who on her time has walked away with over two million in prize money. So all that remains now is to organise for tomorrows one to one with my project manage at the RCP, so it’s an early start for me and a ride on the iron horse to London.

My day started with breakfast in bed, which was unexpected but very welcome as I had had another night interrupted by two hourly visits to the bathroom. So having indulged in a lazy breakfast I got up and get ready to go to the gym. The gym is my place of restoration but I need the right conditions. So we drove to the gym, bought bottles of water and headed to the changing rooms. As usual I climbed up onto a cross trainer, set the timer for an hour, the resistance at 15 and my ear phones at maximum. I have found that my favourite musical accompaniment to exercise is Rammstein, a German rock group, who were once the cutting edge of rock but have become mainstream now.

For me the German language has a raw harshness that suits rock. It provides me with a loud rhythmic background to my exercise but blocks out the outside world, deafeningly so. I have found that once Rammstein is up and pounding I can drift off into whatever internal dialogue or fantasy I want to whilst maintaining a good exercise pace. What I have also found is that loud, very loud music during demanding exercises drives my unconscious to the surface. I have been known to speak out loud when immersed in an internal dialogue that consists of me arguing with someone in my fantasy or a deliberate conversation that I undertake to sort something out. One of my retreats is this form of conversation in my head, which helps me work through issues and ideas. As I have said in these conditions my unconscious seems to surface much more easily so the conversations I have can become informed from all sorts of things that pop up from seemingly nowhere but very often are the things that I do not want to acknowledge or find difficult to own consciously. Any way todays Rammstein filled session was a good one and let me think about my recent reaction to the civil partnership photos that had me in them. 900 calories and 750 millilitres of water later I was me again and feeling steady, no less fat but fitter and more relaxed about facing the world, just not mirrors.

I take my time to shower and feel a thousand times better then into the lounge to meet my partner. We return home to prepare lamb for the oven and settle to watch England play France at rugby. Good game, wrong result. We eat the lamb as consolation and settle down to watch some TV and to write the blog.

Whilst siting in the gym lounge I read a column in which someone wrote about his response to a version of a Dickens novel but where the cast of the film came from a diverse range of cultures and orientations. He noted that some people of either an older generation or having specific knowledge about the era depicted would take exception to the way in which the novel had been “tampered” with. The author of the piece came to the conclusion that it did not matter what people felt about it as the book was a piece of fiction so it did not matter, it was not worth getting upset about. First thought about that was that this was a sensible response. I think Rammstein kicked in about now and I began to think about how we construct our world, how each of us as individuals constructs our own internal universe in order to manage our lives on a day to day basis and crucially how we make meaning of our lives. There is therefore a crucial relationship which we forge between our internal universes and ourselves, or our idea of ourselves, thus we survive with a sense of self and the external world in a way that makes sense to us. Of course we all have our own individual internal universe, they are all fictions based on our unique but imperfect and incomplete experiences. Small discrete samples of being alive at any one time, at any one place. So if this is the case then why would I bother to get upset by anyone else, after all their universe and their relationship with it is just a fiction. So what does it matter if I ignore it, impose my own interpretation on it, who cares, it’s not real it’s a work of fiction. So maybe it’s not alright to piss around with someone else’s attempt to make meaning of their universe in their time and place, because is that not what art is. So my comment to the person who thought it was okay to re-people, reconfigure, reimagine, reinterpret, and re-profit from someone else’s art is write your own fucking book.

It’s world cancer day on the 4th of February. I got a package through the door with free address stickers with “I’m a cancer supporter” emblazoned on them. There was a plea for money as well. There is blackmail and then there is misplaced insensitive charity blackmail. Its all in the bin. I’m doing my best to support myself. I did think I might have my own stickers that state. “I’m a cancer suffer send money to me now!”

I’ve no words, only pictures. Its like that at times.

Early start to get the train to London, I down the morning meds and go. I make good time and get and early train and spend the journey finishing Early Riser. A good read and a charming ending. Pull into St Pancras and there is the Trace Emin glowing in its deep pink glory. It makes me smile and starts my day in a good way.

I get to Royal College of Psychiatry and head for the canteen to get breakfast. I check my e-mails and get ready for the meeting by watching the TED talk that was referenced with the agenda for the day. I liked the idea that no one would consider laying of family members if the family were not doing well but in a company its the people that sacrificed first to keep the managers/leaders salary intact and the shareholders dividends up. At meeting time I go to the meeting room with a colleague and we get going on our task of discerning, defining and devising something to do with leadership of an enabling environment. We worked till three and then we scattered to other meetings and journeys home.

I slept on the train home. Off the train and I drive to the gym to meet my partner and we decided to eat out. When I checked my e-mails I found the photographer had put our album on the website ready to view and to check. We of course returned home and I set up my laptop and the TV to view the album. The photos were what would be expected of a civil ceremony, the usual family and friends photos pre and post the actual ceremony. I am sure that people will recognise the day and the people they met and will remember the day. Everyone looked as I remembered them, and they looked like the people I knew, I did not. I was shocked to see myself. I did not recognise myself. Confronted with multiple views of myself I became more and more aware how the distance between my self-image and what the reality of the person walking around in the world had grown. I no longer recognise myself. I am bloated, distorted and ugly. I cannot stand to see myself. I am embarrassed at what I have become. Now I have a new battle alongside the cancer, now I have to find a way to be in the world as I am while I try to get myself back to where I recognise myself again.

I remember a client who was admitted to a service I was director of. She arrived deluded and paranoid with little grip on reality. Months later and full of the medication the team had administered she came into a clinical review meeting and said “look what you have done to me”. She had put on a considerable amount of weight to the extent that she had had to buy new larger size clothes. She no longer recognised herself; I now know what she meant.

TAX RETURN DAY

One of the few days on the year that I hate. I find it exhausting and depressing to be handing over money. Despite some careful reading of the help notes I found no allowance for prostate cancer, so my return was the usual figures drawn from cross referencing my bank statements, invoices and remittance advices. Of course there were also the P60s but the tax man has those already so when I entered the webpage to fill my tax return on line, the P60 information was already filled in. Big Person looms large.

So after hours of pen pushing and flicking backwards and forwards in my account ledger I finally got to the bottom line of “this is what you owe us”. I cannot bare to drag the process out any longer than necessary so I paid up straight away. So I am now free hopefully till I have to repeat it in April 2020. One thing that was uncomfortable was that the tax period ran into the part of 2019 when I was first taken ill in Jamaica with failed kidneys that started all this cancer journey off. An odd feeling being taken back to where this started in such a cold cash and taxes way. I also got a an e-mail from an old work colleague who talked about prostate cancer treatment and her experiences of it via her husband. It was the first time that my hormone depletion treatment had been referred to as “chemical castration”. It shocked me at first and then made me have a lot of questions, which I shall think through and refine before I see my oncologist next time. It was an unfortunate combination, tax man plus castration.

Tomorrow I go to London to take part in a work shop for Enabling Environment leadership skills and competentacies, so tonight I will rest and try to put the tax person behind me. I also get to see my favourite Tracy Emine.

I travelled back from York at about midday today having had a productive and good time. My journey back was interrupted by a hold up close to home as the motorway was closed to allow the helicopter ambulance to land and ferry people to hospital. I finally got to the gym and got an hours session in. I burnt off 750 calories and completed my 10,000 step count for the day. Once home I ate dinner with my partner and watched some television. I am tired, very tired and just want to sleep. Tomorrow is going to be taxman day so I know I need to rest. Hopefully the experience is not going to be problematic, just expensive.

Today was a work day. Up to York and then a hotel before returning tomorrow. I had dinner with a friend in York and talked about how different York and Leicester are. Apparently there is a rash of unsavoury stickers appearing all over York which are racist and inspired by the right. It is not something I have noticed in Leicester but then I may just not been aware of it. I shall certainly look out for such stickers when I next go into the city.

We also talked about my cancer; actually I did most of the talking, which was useful to get the view of someone outside of the family and local friends. I’ve been uncomfortable of late with the image of an island as representing my current state. I’m not sure what image would represent how I feel and experience my cancer at the moment but the conversation has prompted me to think about what would adequately reflect current thoughts and feelings about my situation. There is something in my situation that is typified by ambiguity and it is difficult to think of images that would represent this. My immediate thought is Dali clocks but it is still not right. I will give it time to ferment and see what appears.

Back to the world of work. My family all go out to work and I soon follow them out the door on my way to an enabling environment meeting in Burton on Trent. It’s nice to get on the road again and to drive to an organisation that is starting out its enabling environment journey. The team I met where interested and positive so it’s now a case of waiting and seeing what strategy they adopt for their organisation. From my meeting I went to the gym for lunch and them a session on the cross trainer. My hour brought up the 10,000 steps and saw me burn off 804 calories. So a good session. On the way home I posted the first lot of thank you cards. The civil partnership day on Friday is still very much with me. Once home I changed and then read for a while. I suspect I might have napped before my partner returned home from work and prepared dinner. I watched football this evening before starting to think about the blog.

During the evening my partner Facebooks someone who she finds on our now deceased garners Facebook page. We get a reply very quickly. Apparently our friend and gardener died of a combination of kidney failure and sepsis having been found at home in a bad way. By the sound of it he died in the hospital within 48 hours of admission. There is to be a small and exclusively family funeral but a wake later in the local pub. All of this means that my partner and I will have the opportunity to pay our respects to someone we both held in great affection. We both miss him and find ourselves talking about him quite frequently.

Big news today prostate cancer has overtaken breast cancer as the most common cancer after breast cancer and is the third biggest cancer killer after bowel and stomach cancer. Good to know I am in the majority for once and up for a bronze medal. So there is a down side to being a white middle class older male after all.

I have done nothing today apart from weigh myself,(a disappointing 100.5 kilos), write thank you cards and prepare for a meeting tomorrow. I’ve eaten and watched football. Tomorrow is my first working day as a civil partner. I’m expecting superpowers.

My new civil partner was good to her word and prepared bacon rolls for breakfast. The family sat round and happily chatted and feasted on the rolls and the other breakfast goodies that were in front of them.

Once we had cleared a space and made more coffee my partner and I set about opening the envelopes and parcels that we had gathered over the last few days prior to our civil partnership ceremony yesterday. People had been generous both with their presents and with their best wishes for us. We were taken aback by the affection and the generosity. There is no doubt that we will be organising something based on champagne in the future in-between afternoon teas, dinners and courses in a chocolate factory. We will also prepare food using our new kitchen boards and choosing pictures for the picture frame.

The thank you cards are ordered and will be winging there way as soon as possible. We lazed, chatted and watched a bit of football (FA cup, my childhood team Brentford were playing our local Leicester team), until it was time for me to take my sister to the station. We had been concerned the evening before when we became aware that a lot of midlands trains had been cancelled due to work at Kings Cross. Fortunately it did not affect the Leicester to St Pancras service so she was able to get her planned train. She later phoned to say that she had had a smooth and rapid journey home and was comfortably nestled down at home. I returned home and took my partner to the garden centre to buy pies for tea and vegetables for the week.

I retreated to the office to watch rugby on the system and to start to write the blog for yesterday and to find some photos of the day to include. This took longer than anticipated and was punctuated by the realisation that in all the excitement I had forgotten to take my medication. Dinner and then back to the blog before I return to the family and indulge in games, chat and drinks. Funnily enough I feel no different now I am legally civil partnered than I did before except that I do not have a feeling of something that I needs t be done hang about in the back room of my mind. Apart from the tax man my affairs are in order. Perhaps now I can think about what I am going to do until the 24^th of March when I see the oncologist and the fingers crossed phase comes to an end. I still have my poems to organise and my garden is beginning to nudge me by sending increasing numbers of new green shoots up. It thinks Spring is well and truly here.