Friday and I need to train but I spend my morning watching athletics while my partner is gardening. The athletics comes to an end and my partner goes to see her brother. I finally I get to the garage and strap myself to the rower. I’m sick of feeling tired and decide that I need to push myself so I set up a 90 minute session. I set off slowly, at least I thought I was, and then spend the next 90 minutes grinding out the time. Its bloody hard work but at the end I have gone over 18 kilometres and burned off more than a thousand calories. Its a personal best. Three Boat Races, Go me!

I shower post session and then watch women’s world cup rugby, share an Indian with my partner and watch a lot of Miranda (what ever happened to her?), take my night meds and go to bed knackered. There is of course more to this day than the above but I am tired and have exercised out of me any creativity but also anxiety. The hope is I will sleep well tonight. and can organise myself better tomorrow.

Thursday and I wake up feeling decidedly sluggish but I get up and have breakfast with my morning meds, noting that my doesetttes are now empty. My partner goes off to the gym and although I had intended to row I get into my gardening clothes and head for my garden shed. I spend time raking over the bald patch on the lawn where the old plastic green house stood. With the earth raked I sprinkle grass over it and then rake it in, finally giving it a light covering of compost and a watering. I can do no more. I move onto the front lawn and use the rest of the seed to try and perk up the bald patches. With the sowing done I store the garden furniture cushions and lock them away. I’m now out of energy and need to rest so I settle down with cold drink and read a letter from a friend that has arrived in the morning post. Its always a pleasure to get letter and this one was no different. Time to fill my dosettes, a ritual I go through every two weeks, these ones will see me though my visit to York and into Cycle 30 of my chemo.

My partner returns and we have a sandwich for lunch. I get a message telling me that my next cycle of drugs and my steroids will be ready to collect from the hospital pharmacy next Tuesday. So I will be picking those up on Thursday when I return from visiting York. My partner and I go to the local garden centre to pick up food and when I return there is just time to package up some copies of the anthology and get over to the post office before collection time. I now have truly run out of energy ad slide into the evening eating tea on the way. I start to draft the blog against the background of a TV film. The evening passes and I head for my evening meds and hopefully some sleep. Tomorrow I need to train.

Wednesday and its oncology review day. I still feel crap from Mondays jab and apprehensive about todays review. I get up and do some last minute blood pressure calculations, take my meds and eat the marmalade bagel my partner makes me. We both wait for the call, my partner delaying going to see her mother until the call arrives. The call arrives, the oncologist does not sound so eager to be away so I know this is not straight forward. We both note my PSA is going up and I point out its doubling time and the acceleration rate. The oncologist (he who made a pact with the devil) says he wants to scan me again a couple times and to see me in eight weeks, quicker than usual. He also wants to prescribe me steroids, low dose, to see if it helps. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. If it is does not then the usefulness of the Enzalutamide will have come to an end. We agree that I will be seen face to face as it seems we are at a tipping point. I come off the phone feeling that I am in for a tricky rest of the year. So there are to be more scans, more bloods, more meds and more juggling of my time and cycles to be done.

My partner goes of to see her mother with her brother and I try to clear up my space a bit and do some organising. Despite feeling grim I get my training kit on and after some prevarication I go to the garage and prepare to row for 30 minutes. It’s a tortious row, and I am well below par but I get to the end just pleased that I have done it. It just highlights how important it is to train regularly so tomorrow needs to be another training day.

My partner returns as I finish my row and makes me a sandwich before I get myself into the shower and try to refresh myself. I spend part of the afternoon watching the world athletics and then emailing people who helped with my anthology asking how I get copies to them. while my partner makes pie for tea I start to drat the blog. I decide this is a new phase and change the heading of e blog to reflect what is going to be different over the next two months. The prospect of taking steroids is not one I am looking forwards to, he could have offered some “uppers” just to lift things a bit. So now I wait for the message from the hospital pharmacy telling me my new prescription is ready and my new combination of magic potions can begin.

My evening is going to be quiet and mundane, I need time to process and reflect. There will of course be night meds and then the challenge of sleep, before I get on with life tomorrow. I am wondering if the wind has just blown and I have lost more of my dandelion life clock. Time will tell, in the meantime there are always things to be done.

Tuesday and I am the first one up and making warm drinks. Before getting up properly I take my vitals, they are not as good as I wanted, my blood pressure is slightly high. I decide to abandon my planned morning of training, shower fixing and other stuff to take my partner to the gym so she can do her aqua class. Before we get going I get to use my new car hoover to get rid of the crumbs from yesterdays long drive. Once at the gym I settle down in the members lounge, order a bacon roll and begin to do some life admin and some preparation for tomorrow’s oncology review. I have some paracetamol and then scribble a poem.

462
I sit in the gym lounge
and ponder on life admin
while my partner bobs about
with the water mafia. 
A band of women, fierce 
and not to be messed with.
It’s the headache that nags
and the background noise 
that makes me uncomfortable
as I try to capture where I am. 
I thought being the chauffeur 
would be good, followed by lunch
but now I am not so sure. 
I’m here to avoid training,
cleaning shower heads
but maybe missing the delivery 
of Man to Man. 
Its the lack of the definitive
priority for most days
that niggles away, 
a blunted sense that anything, 
anything at all matters. 
It’s as if life can be left 
and nothing will really matter,
perhaps it doesn’t.
						462  16-09-2025 DL Gym lounge

My partner reappears and I drive us to a rural centre for lunch and a look around the various outlets and come away with a box of grass seed. Its another opportunity to drive Elsie and to get used to her handling. On reaching home I find the padlocks for the new gate bolts have arrived and to my delight there is a box of my new book. I am really excited and soon have them open and in my hands. It is a special moment to hold a new book in my hands and this feels like a book not a pamphlet.

I send my publisher an email saying I have the books and thanking them for their hard work and asking them how we take things forward. With the books tuck away I watch the World Athletics on catch up TV until the evening arrives when there is tea to eat, football to watch and the last episode of Coldwater to watch. Along the way I start to drat the blog. All day I have had a head ache, which is unusual for me, and I wonder if I am withdrawing from the caffeine in the Red Bull I’ve been drinking lately, not a lot, but I have not drunk coffee for a long time now, so my theory feels tenable. I take my night meds and go to bed hoping for sleep and a good oncology review in the morning.

Monday, jab Monday, I wake up groggily and get myself orientated. My partner brings me a hot water to get me going. By the time I am ready to go for my jab I am feeling a bit more human, I think I am still feeling the effects of yesterdays long drive back from the lakes. when i get to the GPs surgery I find it is not my usual nurse, our conversation is brief and she gets to the business end of filling my gut with my jab. With the drugs in me I go to reception and book myself in for my winter flu and COVID jabs. I’m not sure if they do anything but I guess I cannot afford to leave myself exposed over the winter. On the way home I pick up a couple of iced buns and a news paper to keep me amused when the side effects of the morning jab kick in.

Once home I have breakfast and do the days crosswords. The first job of the day is to repair cold frame as one side of the frame has given way under the pressure of the wind. Its a case of tightening the screws in the top of the frame. Just to be sure that future high winds do not create the same problem I fit the lid with an additional fixing. Once I have started on my mending and making I move on to fitting the additional dead bolts to the back and front gates. Its a very close fit for the bolts but I have gathered together the tools I need and the fitting goes well. Now if we chose we can bolt our gates in a way that means that people cannot reach over to unbolt the gates. With my tools put away I order padlocks for the new gate bolts and a car hoover as I noticed that there are already crumbs on one of the seats. I am perhaps being too picky on Elsie’s behalf.

By the time I’ve done all this I am beginning to feel the side effects of my jab, cold and shivery so I change into soft clothes and start to watch yesterdays World Athletics on iPlayer as I draft the blog. As the evening approaches I feel the shivers get worse, I shall eat and hunker down till its time to take my night meds and hope I can get a good nights sleep. Part of me is inpatient for Sunday as that is when I will receive the authors copies of my anthology, I crave that “in my hands” moment but before then there is an oncology review to be navigated on Wednesday.

Sunday and it turns out to be a curates egg of a day. It starts with a night when the bathroom lights fail but breakfast is good as we are given a table that over looks the front lawn that runs down to Braithwaite lake.

After breakfast there is the packing and loading Elsie the SUV. With that done it was time to pay the bill and leave but found that we were being charged twice so there was some toing and froing. Eventually it gets sorted and I am able to drive off with my partner. The first part of the journey was pleasant but as we came south the weather became atrociously bad. Added to the heavy rain came the huge detour when we tried to get through Stoke only to find the road we wanted was totally blocked, so I had to drive back to the motor way to carry on the journey. In the end it takes six hours to get home, I am knackered. I discovered that when the car is in automatic mode for lights it makes no allowance for weather conditions! So I found myself driving in appalling conditions with no lights on, so when we pull in for a pee break I sort out taking my lights off and putting them on manual. Instantly I have lights and feel comfortable. As I drive back on the motorway I wonder how many of the difficult to see cars with no lights are a result of the drivers being unaware that their auto lights are not coming on. That’s modern techno for you.

On getting home I flop down to watch the end of a rugby world cup match and drink cold water. n checking my emails I find that my latest anthology of poetry is published. The Cancer Years Anthology: Man to Man is now available as a paperback from Amazon. It is the culmination of my collaboration with the Ruler’s Wit team and I am really pleased with the outcome. I have no idea how I am going to get it out there as an available and wanted collection but it is out there now. The final step now is to get some copies to hold in my hands

I slide into the evening fuelled by a basic egg, beans and chips. I draft the blog against the background of Coldwater on TV, with the heating on for the first time this autumn. I meander towards my bed time and night meds. My intention is to rise early and shower before I go for my monthly jab. So the grind goes on and so does the sense of the inevitability of the outcome of the oncology review on Wednesday. So win some, lose some.

It’s Saturday morning 2am and my blood results are in, its not good, once again my PSA has risen. All my other bloods are either good or moving in the right direction. I’m gutted, I had hoped to be holding my own, but clearly I am not. My partner wakes up and comforts me and eventually after taking a couple of paracetamol I return to bed and try to sleep till the morning.

I do wake up later on Saturday morning and go to breakfast with my partner as the rain comes down and the lake looks distant. Breakfast is a refuel and then we return to the room. Over breakfast I found a first line and when back in the room I carried it on.

461
I stick my hand
down the throat 
of desperation,
seeking something to fight with.
My PSA rises again
and in my fatigue 
I search for anything 
to hold onto.
Over and over
my anchors strain
to remain strong, 
to fight, 
but:
I'm tired
and undermined
by my anxieties. 
Its an arm wrestle
with myself
over what owns
my body. 
The views are beautiful,
the food good,
the luxury top notch
but it pours with rain 
as I seek the energy 
to fight,
there is no relaxation

461 13-09-2025 Armathwaite Hall, Braithwaite.

Slowly my partner and I get ready to go walking in the grounds in between the heavy showers. We don boots and start our walk through yet another wedding throng using the hotel as their venue. The grounds are large and there are plenty of walk to take so we take a couple of short walks and find our way to the lakes edge.

On the way back from our walk we watch the bride and her brides maids gambolling about on the lawn with a photographer capturing it all as the rain comes down. We retreat ultimately to the lounge for drinks and sandwiches. While I rest and watch women’s world cup rugby my partner goes to the Spa and a splash in the heated infinity pool. The final final draft of my anthology comes through. At last it is finished and will soon be available. It is a relief and marks an important achievement. Now I can move on and consider an audio book.

My partner returns from the Spa to find me drafting the blog. I feel I can do no more today apart from shower, eat, pack and sleep. I’m disappointed with my blood results and now need to pick myself up for the return journey, Mondays jab and Wednesday’s oncology review. I feel another renaming of the blog coming on. I shall write no more today and concentrate on rest.

Friday and I am going to keep this short. I was up and taking my meds early before heading to the GP surgery to have my bloods taken. These are my pre oncology review bloods and how they turn out will decide how my future treatment goes. So an important day. Unusually my vein does not want to give up the blood but my regular vampire nurse soon had me pumping out my blood. Back home, I pack Elsie the SUV and soon I have the Satnav sorted and I am driving my partner north to a hotel at the north of Braithwaite lake in the Lake district. It take us 5 hours with a couple of stops, but Elsie made the drive easy.

The hotel is brilliant and looks over Braithwaite lake, with stunning views. Our room is top notch and the dinner of fine dining is small but tasty. But I am tired and caught between needing to sleep, drafting the blog and awaiting my blood results. In the end I do this quick draft and opt for sleep, the driving has caught up with me. I take my meds and promise myself to write a more detailed blog tomorrow. However the latest draft of the anthology arrives and I have to check it. I find that it still needs a couple of changes and reply to the Ruler’s Wit team with what I think needs to change. I finally run out of energy just 25 minutes short of midnight when my blood results usually come through, so I go to bed. All that matters in my tired brain is what my PSA score is going to be, up, down or stablised.

Thursday and I wake to my partner getting ready to go to the gym for more “bobbing about in the water” and needing me to move my car ,but not “right now”. I get my vitals done, all good, and then get into my training kit. By the time I am downstairs to take my morning meds my partner is on a face to face call with our youngest daughter so I join in before I have breakfast. My partner goes to the gym and I head for the garage and get onto the rower. Today I chose a 30 minute row having rowed yesterday with the intention of reaching my 6 kilometre goal. I set myself up and get going at a reasonable pace. By the end of the session I am knackered and desperately disappointed that my Fitbit has failed to record my session. As always I have taken a photo of the monitor so I know how I have done. It is a reasonable session and is definitely longer than a Boat Race, so go me!

I record the session, shower and then start to draft the blog until my partner returns for lunch as the heavens open and there is downpour. We take a quick drive in Elsie to check her tyres and to top her tank up. Once home there is a brief walk to the village chemists to collect my partners prescription and to pop into the village shop to stock up on traveling wine gums and emergency travel snacks. Back home I set about packing ready to travel tomorrow. Its just a couple of nights but the clothing options are vast so my overnight bags get stuffed knowing that I will probably not wear half of what I have packed. I am always amazed by how many shoes I need, shoes to drive in, shoes to walk in, shoes to dine in and shoes to be comfortable in. They get a separate bag. Then there is my office back pack that carries all my techno stuff including laptop and a shed load of leads, energy packs and other bits and pieces that I think I need. This weekend is a weekend when my Friday blood results will come through and I will know whether my PSA is stabilising or continuing to rise. So I shall return to my 28 day injection on Monday followed by my next oncology review on Wednesday morning when I will get the received wisdom of my oncologist who I think is ready to prescribe me steroids at the drop of a hat. I am hoping that my PSA has stabilised to avoid the need for steroids, I do not have a happy memory of them from the last time I had to use them.

With the packing done I take a call from a friend who has just taken the decision to home school one of her children. We chat for a while about home schooling and what we and our families are doing. It is a real pleasure to have the time to talk. After the call there is tea to eat and the blog to finish off drafting. Tonight is an early night day, The evening meds are taken and I make sure the contents of my traveling office can process the expected blood results and any further versions of my anthology that is due. So starts the very busy and important next six days. I’m probably more anxious than I realise but all I can do is go with the flow, drink a lot of water and keep going.

Wednesday and I wake after a sluggish night and drink the hot water my partner brings me before she goes with her brother to see their mother. I take my vitals that seem to have settled so I am hoping for a good day. I check messages and do some admin before getting up and into my training kit. I message my son and wish him Happy Birthday, poor bloke is working earlies this week so has to wait to open his presents, which miraculously have all arrived in time this year. There is a fried egg sandwich and orange juice to accompany my morning meds. There are some things to be ordered before I can finally get into the garage and prepare myself for a 45 minute row. I am not feeling so bright but I go through my rituals which means once I have pressed the button on my Fitbit I have to start. So off I go listening to a training podcast from the BBC. By the 30 minute mark I am just behind my standard by about a minute so I start to put in a bit more effort. The extra effort pays off and I end the session beyond my required standard with a good calorie burn.

I record the session in my journal and then shower. By the time I’ve sorted myself out I am feeling fatigued and find we have runout of tomatoes, my current favourite at the moment. I keep checking my emails to see if the updated anthology manuscript is available, but it isn’t. I know I grow inpatient and that it is my stuff but I am looking forward to that moment when I can hold the completed anthology in my hands. It will feel like a proper book, less a pamphlet. I take the walk across the road to the post office and send the letter I wrote yesterday on its way before retuning home clutching jelly babies and ready to draft the blog. However before I can get going I ring Green Flag to get the car on my contract changed. All goes well until the “agent” askes me to wait and put me on hold, twenty minutes later my phone screen goes askew and I have to reset my phone. I return to the App and do what I can and then leave it knowing that I will get an email wanting me to go round the same ridiculous circular ritual.

I draft the blog while the it continues to rain and my partner knits with a Maggie Smith film on in the background. As the light fails and the evening begins I start to make a mental list of what I need to do to get ready for the jaunt at the weekend. It is the tricky part of the day, there is food to think about and then an appropriate activity to fill the evening. As the weather changes the challenge of the first winter for both I and my partner being retired becomes apparent. For the moment we have plenty to occupy ourselves and I suspect that as the weeks progress there will be an increasing amount to do.