Wednesday and I am awake early as this is not only Jab and B12 day but also Urology appointment day. My partner brings me hot water and toast to get me going and then foregoing my usual getting up rituals I shower. The shower is enjoyable but takes longer now that I have long hair, having achieved my ambition to have hair as long as Lucius Malfoy. So, clean and bright of teeth I set off to the GP surgery for my 9:30 appointment. I am not waiting long before I get called in and deliver my injection to the nurse. Its relatively quick but today I get the additional joy of a B12 jab in the let arm. So I walk away with to fluffy cotton wool clouds and a date for 28 days time to do it all again. I walk home collecting a paper on the way.

Once home I take some prophylactic paracetamol and get ready to go to the hospital appointment. I’m not feeling that chipper but I drive to keep my mind off things. I know my way to all the hospitals in the area now and have no need of sat nav any more. A small skill to put on my CV. On arrival my partner sorts out the parking fee and ticket and then we walk to Outpatients 4, which is a bit of a trudge through the hospital. I hand over my letter to the receptionist who tells me to take a seat, which we duly do. Its not long before I need the toilet and to my dismay the walking that I’ve done means I have a bout of Haematuria (pissing blood). My partner gets me some water and we continue to wait until moved to another waiting area. My appointment time comes and goes and my bladder doth protest again only this time I get a sample bottle which the nurse takes. There is still blood visible, this is not fun. Eventually my name gets called and my partner and I go into the consulting room. There we are met by a dapper bloke who asks how I am but he seems to know what he is doing. My sample does not show signs of infection, hurray a positive. We do a bit of the history and he pulls my scan up on the screen, even I cannot miss the big white dot in my bladder, in fact no could. I ask how big it is and the doctor bloke measures it. Two point one centimetres by one point two centimetres. “Oh” I say “is that big?” think to myself “That’s fucking huge”. The doctor bloke says its not huge but likely to cause “irritation.” Irritation! If what I’ve been suffering is an “irritation” I really would not want to suffer his idea of pain. We talk options. The bottom line is an operation and guess what it means a night in hospital, an anaesthetic, and the inevitable medical tool up my dick to, and I quote “smash the stone”. He puts me on the waiting list, says its going to be a while and that he does not do private work and to ring the Spires. He fills in an outcome sheet to take back to reception and bids us good bye. I leave, hand in my form and my partner and I go for a sandwich and drink in the hospital café.

I drive us home and get back to the sofa and attend to my life admin. There is an email from my cousin in Scotland who provides me with information for the family tree about his brother, my other cousin. I am taken aback to learn that he died in May 2021. I never knew and I take it as a sign of just how uncommunicative my sister was about what she knew about the Scottish branch of the family. I update the family tree and then settle down to start drafting the blog. My morning jab start to get sore as it usually does. I suspect that by the middle of the evening I will start experiencing the usual shaky response to the injection. All I can do is take pain killers and ride it out for the next 24 or 48 hours. I am tempted to give the co-codamol ago. So this is how I slide into the evening with football, reading and TV on the menu. It seems to me that I am entering a phase of cruise control and pain avoidance. I am not comfortable with that but I just need to hold on in there to see what happens. I will of course ring the local private hospital up to see if they can accommodate me any quicker but beyond that I have to sit tight. It feels like its been a long day but an informative one. Ultimately it will be night meds and bed for me and my two by one. I’m sure I will soon have a name for my stone.

Tuesday and I am making the effort to draft the blog earlier in the day to avoid the tired and truncated blogs of the last few days. It must look like I am quitting or cannot be bothered but the truth is that by the end of the evening I am generally knackered and that is not the best time to write a blog. So today I am trying to pace myself and to be kind to myself for tomorrow could be a spoon heavy day. Tomorrow I go for my Easter 28 day injection early morning and then hot foot it to the hospital for my Urology appointment to have my bladder stone assessed. It will be a preliminary session where the doctor will go over my reports and ask me how I am and all the usual diagnostic hocus pocus. I am hoping he has read the now infamous scan report from 2023 that initially found the stone, reported it and had the “onco boys and girls” ignore it and tell me that my Haematuria (blood in the piss) was related to my cancer rather than the possibility it is related to a football sized stone in my bladder. So I expect them to discus options with me about ways forward. I know where this is going, basically it will be some sort of contraption down my penis and a smashing time, leaving me to piss out the bits. It does not sound a recipe for joy but if it means no more Haematuria and I can get back to being able to go for walks and training then it will be worth it. I only hope they do it under anaesthetic, I’ve had enough knob handling to last me a life time.

Any way this bright and sunny Tuesday I do not get up till late morning having indulged in watching a prolonged YouTube of Mock the Weeks, Unlikely Things to Hear at…. It makes me smile and laugh and relaxes me. I am in awe of how quick and witty the participants area and envy them this. I guess that is why they are stand up comics. My vitals get done and of course they are normal. Once up, I clear the kitchen and make myself a late breakfast and read the letter from a friend that has arrived in the post. It is a never ending source of pleasure to find a letter in the porch. It is ironic that only yesterday did I post a letter to her. So here I am drafting the blog in a more chipper state than the last few days. It feels like it could be a good day and I may try and prod the Americans about my next collection. It is also good because my son starts a new job in Sweden at the Stockholm Opera House. So this is a good day so far and one I need before tomorrows rigours. I must not get ahead of myself. A pleasant afternoon in the Shed will do right now.

Before I can get to the Shed a new book from a friend arrives, which I open eagerly. It is a new author to me so I am excited. It is a book of short stories about one man, so I am looking forward to reading it.

I make it to the Shed and settle in to write a letter. It is a while since I was here and it feels good to be back at my table top writing to a friend. My candles are lit, my wax cauldron melting nicely and the garden sounds surround me. I write and seal my letter and then close up the Shed as I return to the house. There is a gentle walk over to the post office to send my letter on its way and while there I pick up a paper. Once home there are things to do like running off the new waste collection time table for the coming year and paying the fee for the garden waste to be collected. I put the bin out and then read some of the short stories in the newly arrived book. What came next was a real blow, on going to the toilet I find my haematuria is back and there is blood. Instantly I start to drink a lot of water. Tea follows and I return to the blog. It was all going so well and now there is this step back. It doesn’t look like tomorrow is going to be easy. I feel grim and withdraw back into myself, so its back to the fight and the grind. Tonight will be meds, pain killers and bed. What started well is ending not so good, bugger.

Monday, April Fool’s day, so its a go careful day. Now its night and I am desperately tired. I’ve done little apart from write a letter and cook a meal. Apart from that I managed a walk around the village and post the letter. Tesco turned up late and prompted some provision squirreling. Now full of night meds I go to bed in the hope of a nights sleep. I’ve not had a single worthwhile thought all day, no ideas and no poetic inspiration. I hope tomorrow is a lot less pedestrian.

Saturday and I wake late as does my partner. We spend time talking before getting up late, both of us need the time to rest and reflect. I get up and take my meds including the last of my antibiotics so I am hoping that I remain pain free and infection free. My partner and I go for hot chocolate and bacon rolls and other goodies at our local garden centre. We talk about what our options are to create more spaces at home and whether there is an opportunity to continue to develop the garden once our April/May. Once home I settle down to continue to read my Stephen King book The Eyes of the Dragon , while my partner and eldest daughter go off to see Wicked Little Letters. Thus the day passes. In the evening there is more Designated Survivor to watch and finally to take my meds and go to bed. Its been another slow and resting day. It is not a life of excitement but it is one of marking time till I get to see the Urologist next week. Its all about trying to conserve my energy and to give my body as much chance as possible recover. Underlying it all the battle against the prostate cancer goes on, this last week has added the complication of stones in the bladder, I suspect this is not an uncommon complication.

Easter Sunday and of course the clocks have leapt forward an hour so I wake with nine thirty on one wrist and ten thirty on the other. Its a reminder of how parts of my environment alters itself and does not need me. So breakfast is more like brunch and the weekly call to see the new grandson takes place a bit later. As usual he is a delight and has discovered the wonders of Weetabix. A big step forward for a small person. I catch up with my crosswords and then I settle down to read my current novel for a good while. Three o’clock comes around and I watch the women’s league cup final. I go back to my book at the end of the game and then draft the blog. My evening stretches before me and my plan is to continue reading, resting and doing the odd practical things like finalising the Tesco order for tomorrow. In the end I forget the Tesco order but I do finish reading my book, take my meds and go to bed.

Friday, starts with a long chat with my partner before we go out for hot chocolate and bacon sandwiches. An afternoon of reading follows. The evening is rugby and television. This has been a slow day of reflection and small practical things. Night meds and then bed. Sometimes that’s all it can be.

Thursday, I wake the sounds of my partner cleaning and tidying, she has a friend coming to take out for lunch. My partner brings me a hot water and I set about my getting up rituals, messages, med admin and the like before taking my vitals. I manage to get an earlier appointment for my 28 day jab next Wednesday, the day of my emergency urology appointment so that things are manageable. I move my Thursday dental appointment to the end of May so that I get a couple of day respite before our weekend away. My vitals are the usual good. My partner and friend go off into the world and I get up, just as the window cleaners arrive.

Once up I make a simple breakfast, sort the post out, catch up with my blood pressure monitoring chart and read the meters. The quarterly poetry review arrived in the post so I sit for a while scanning it but I am outfaced by the volume of work that confronts me. I read this years winner of the national poetry prize. Its okay but I do not feel it. Once again I am overwhelmed by the poetry industry and the way it runs on competitions and the all encompassing life style commitment it demands. It creates careers for all sorts of folk, poets, short story writers, reviewers, critics, publishers, editors, and commentators. It has idols, champions, inspirational people, role models and “giants”. There is a whole culture of what is good and what is bad and arbiters of what that looks like. Its a club that fascinates me but do not want to join. My soul aim of putting my stuff out there is that my family and friends get to know more about me than they do, or I think they do. Like I say I am overwhelmed. I do however realise that my small book would be classified as a “pamphlet”. All I can say to that is “phuck em.”I manage it all by knowing I am a narcissistic vanity poet and keep bunging the Americans dollars to publish my stuff.

With admin and some chores done I start todays blog. I had not realised it but this is the second of Cycle 11 of my chemo. How easily the time slips by. Yet all the time my vitals seem to be good. Anniversaries slide by, its five years since my kidneys packed up in Jamaica and this coming Easter Monday is five years to the day that I was flown out of Jamaica back to England and then my prostate cancer diagnosis. I am alive, I am vertical and fighting the best I can, but I know what a toll this has taken on my family. I spend some time reading a new book which has been sent to me from a friend in Scotland with the note to say is just a story. Its a Steven King novel called The Eyes of the Dragon and is a fantasy novel that seems to romp along, it appears to be something light that I can read happily over the Easter period.

In the same Amazon delivery was a mystery package, small and intriguing. I open it up and laugh. Over the last couple of days I have been joking with friends about seeing unicorns as a result of taking co-codamol and the fact that Unicorn poo is Skittles. I laugh because my present is a small but perfectly pooing unicorn. Just the right thing at the right moment.

I return to reading and answering the odd WhatsApp message until my partner and her fried return from the day out. My partners friend surprises me with the gift of a spade, as she says there is not a lot of use for a spade in an apartment. I reciprocate with a copy of my poetry collection. After chat and a drink my partners friend leaves and we settle back into an evening of pasta, Designated Survivor and reading. There will be night meds and bed as I slide into Easter. My aim is to rest and be ready for what faces me in the post Easter week.

Wednesday, it raining, I wake to rain that is denuding the cherry blossom trees. I tentatively make my first visit to the bathroom and mange without pain. I go back to bed and prepare to do my vitas and go through my getting up rituals. My partner comes in getting ready to go to the gym. We have a long time talking about how difficult it is for us at the moment, it is upsetting, our situation feels never ending and ever more demanding on my partner. These times are difficult to face knowing there is no magic wand, all we can do is be as kind as possible with each other and to ourselves. My partner goes to the gym and I do my vitals, which are of course good. My mantra of the logic is in the arithmetic is becoming more ironic as time goes on. My vitals continue to be very good but my painful experience over the last few days belie that.

Once up and dressed I make breakfast and check my emails. There I find the next cover for my next poetry collection. I really like it so here is a sneak preview.

I notice that the Magnolia tree in the back garden is coming into full bloom, just as the cherry trees in the front garden lose their blossom. It is one of the things I like about the garden in that it rewards me for all the work that has gone into it over the years. It is almost as if now I am restricted in what I can do it is paying me back by looking after itself a bit and giving me gifts back.

I settle in to my sofa office and open post and send birthday flowers to me daughter in law in Sweden and a birthday message before making an early start on the blog. I know it probably feels as if the blog of late has been filed with mundane stuff but it is a way of reminding myself that I do get somethings done despite my condition and recent challenges. Having drafted for a while I hunker down and read.

Its no good I have to go out, just a short walk to the village shop to buy bread, paper, sweets, buns and more sensible things like pasta and garlic bread. Once home I feel knackered again and settle back down to do the crosswords. I get through them quickly without reference to Google, Go me!. My partner returns from the gym and we sit together in quiet as I read to the end of The Travelling Cat Chronicles. It is not until the end that it is revealed that the main human character is dying of cancer and ultimately dies with his cat in attendance. My feelings are left taut and I am not sure what to make of it apart from it is very Japanese. I still feel my bladder is not playing well, a mild discomfort so I take a co-codamol to get some respite. I return to update the blog beginning to feel the effects of the co-codamol and jelly babies I’ve eaten, I can’t resist a sugar blast at times. So I slide into the evening. I’ve no idea where it is going beyond night meds and bed, but I think that’s the pain relief talking as it kicks in. Tomorrow my partner has a friend coming over so they can go out for a while and a meal.

Tuesday and I wake groggy but to the sound of a lawn mower in the front garden. My partner brings me toast and then takes my eldest daughter to the local physio. My GP rings me to tell me he has talked to the Prostate Cancer nurse who is going to ring. No sooner than he as put the phone down than the nurse rings me. We have a chat and at the end of it she books me into see their urology “stone” specialist. So next week I am off to see the urologists. I get up and make coffee for my garden guy. Its a quick chat before I get on with making the drawings for the garden after the drive and patio work is done in April. I take my meds and by the time my partner returns I have completed the garden drawings to give to garden guy.

My problems with my pains on going to the toilet seem to have eased but me being me I start a chart and start recording frequency and intensity of pain on a ten point scale. I try to settle down and rest. During this the family pursue the brick and slab samples that will be used to upgrade the patio. After some discussion we make our choices. My partner goes to tell the neighbours about the work and returns to say they are okay with it, not that the work will impinge upon them apart from noise and dust for a period of time. There is a period of everyone resting and finding a space.

While sipping warm drinks and nibbling biscuits my eldest daughter goes off with her niece to the cinema and I and my partner sort out a takeaway. My partner and I are still very disappointed that we had to abort our Spa break yesterday and are trying to balance rest and continuing to find things that we can do. The evening starts with the wait for our food and then we settle down for a quiet evening of more Designated Survivor. I take my night chemo and go to bed. Despite my tiredness I am pleased that I have got through the day without pain killers, perhaps the antibiotics have kicked in. It all feels like a rollercoaster at the moment.

Monday and its an early start as my partner and I are going for four nights to a Spar. The day starts with hot water and toast, measuring my vitals and the final packing. When I go to toilet I get a twinge of pain but I am relying on the antibiotics and paracetamol to kick in and see me through. We pack the car, I take a pre-emptive pee and then I drive us to the Spa.

On arrival our bags are taken from us, our car is parked for us and we start our morning and so does my bladder. We laze for the morning having drinks and cake and talking, but I am going for a piss every 30 minutes, then twenty minutes and it’s painful. We have lunch and then get into our room and unpack. I continue to piss painfully every twenty minutes. My partner goes for a swim while I try to rest, answer emails and settle myself. I try to distract myself with emails and end up signing off the final draft of my next poetry collection and the cover design, which my partner likes when she sees it later. My partner returns and I am no better, worse in fact and quite distressed. We decide to leave, we pack, get a porter to collect the bags and load the car. Pain an piss has stopped play. I feel guilty and useless, this was supposed to be my partners much needed rest. My partner drives us home. By luck my eldest daughter is talking to our GP and I am able to talk to him.

He asks me loads of questions and pulls up all my recent scans and reports and out of the blue tells me that I have a large stone in my bladder, something the oncology boys have missed. He is not surprised that I am getting repeat infections, pain and passing blood. He undertakes to talk to oncology for me and prescribes stronger pain control and some stuff to make sure I do not get constipated. I am incandescent that my oncologist either missed the stone in my bladder or chose not to share that with me. My partner and eldest go into the night to get them for me from a late night chemist. They return and hand me my new drugs as I am drafting the blog. My partner makes me pasta before I take my new pain relief. So its been a shit day in more than several ways so I shall stop here because I do not know how I’m going to be on the new pain relief. One thing to celebrate is that my son messaged me to say he has got the job he went for. So something good to cheer the day.

Sunday, a real difficult day. It started fine after a reasonable night. Then I go for a piss and get pain again. I am immediately thrown into anxiety and start drinking a lot of water and taking paracetamol. I battle it for a while trying to get on with things. I hook up the battery charger on my car and test the PC speakers that have been playing, but eventually it gets to me and my symptoms worsen. I ring 111 and talk to them. The upshot is I am referred to the out of hours clinic at our nearby sports centre, but not until 4:30. I try to keep busy or at least do things, like test out my new battery tester and charge up the newly delivered jump starter. All this time I am drinking pints of water and taking paracetamol. With time getting on I have a shower. I think my symptoms are easing but its time to go to the clinic.

My partner drives me to the clinic where after a shot wait I am ushered into the clinic room. The medic takes details and checks my records and takes my vitals. She tests my urine sample which looks clear to me but she is certain that there is blood in it. I am prescribed antibiotics and sent on my way. My partner drives me to the chemist where the prescription has been sent and then drives me home. I am just about out of energy, I am anxious and edgy so waste no time in getting my first dose of antibiotics down me. I try to relax while I do the Tesco order for my eldest daughter for next week and then eat tea. I have yet to pack for the four nights away at the Spa and I need to check my car tyre pressures. My efforts to get my car battery up to speed has worked. The blog gets drafted early before I pack and watch the last in the series of Death in Paradise. There are night meds to take and then bed in the hope that all the pills inside me are working. Today has been a real challenge, the worst of it is the levels of anxiety that the return of my symptoms induces in me. Its a real gut response, my head knows what its about and I access my coping strategies but frankly they do not work very well. The bottom line is that I just need to tough it out and get on with things and where better than in a spa.