Monday and I sleep heavily in the morning but my partner brings me hot water and toast as I struggle to the surface. I do my vitals, which are all good and then decide to shower. The shower is refreshing but is expensive in terms of energy, but I finally emerge with clean hair and clothes, only to heat up again with the effort. A pot of herbal very berry tea cools me down as I sit on the sofa, take my morning meds and start todays blog. It feels like today is going to be an effort already but I am determined to do something even if I am not sure what it is to be yet.

During the day I up date the family tree with the information that a relative has sent to me about the Scottish branch of the family. With this done I draft a letter to the relative thanking him for the information and sharing with him some of the current family information that is going on. We are preparing to do tea when my eldest rings to say that her ankle has pained her so badly that the doctor has told her to go to the hospital to have it looked at. So the evening is a long conversation on WhatsApp as she taxi’s to the hospital and goes through the process of going from A&E and onto the injuries clinic to be given pain killers and an x-ray. So as the Tesco order gets brought in and Squirreled away and we continue to watch the series about the Mormon murder. At last my eldest has an X-ray and sits and waits for the results. I wait anxiously to know the outcome.

Eventually my partner and I boot up and drive to the hospital to collect our eldest daughter as she has chipped a bone in her ankle and is now on crutches. The journey goes smoothly and our injured one is sitting in a wheel at A&E reception. We load her into the back of the car and drive home. Food and drink follows and I catch up with the blog, take my chemo meds and go to bed. That’s quite enough excitement for one day and enough perturbation in my universe.

Sunday, mothering Sunday and I wake and make my partner a warm drink to find she has already adn is now reading. We chat for a while and then our day going with breakfast and we ring our youngest daughter for a chat and a view of our grandson. There is card and present giving before we continue the day.

The day goes by till the international rugby on TV in the afternoon. From the match onwards I drift, there is an attempt to write a poem but it does not work out. I am trying too hard. I give up and start to do research on place to go away for a break with the family. I look at YouTube videos and drone footage. I spend a lot of time doing this but eventually decide that I am looking in the wrong place. Tea is eaten and the evening continues to Death in Paradise. Its time to draft the blog, sort out tomorrows Tesco order and then I take my chemo meds and prepare for the coming night. Its been a slow day, however I need to start doing more with my days. Its time to start to move forward again, little by little I need to start to do more by changing some of my current patterns of behaviour.

Saturday and after a late night listening to Anthony Joshua win his bout in the middle east I wake up relatively early and surprisingly fresh. My partner has brought warm drinks back to bed so we sit and chat. We talk about what she can do with the week she has taken off. After some discussion we decide that something we can do together is a SPA break. It means I do not have to walk anywhere and can spend my days on a lounger reading or writing while she has has a lot of “pampering” things. Once we decide that this is doable I go on line and find a deal at our local Spa and surprisingly there is a space when we want to go. It is an extravagance but we both need to get out somehow and this seems the best and manageable way at the moment. With the break booked I of course need to have new “dazzers” that will fit my enlarged frame comfortably. I quickly find some that means I get 20% off for mothering Sunday. They are now winging their way to me. With so much achieved I get up and have breakfast with my partner and then perform my fortnightly ritual of filling the drugs wallets after which I putter around clearing the kitchen and putting the recycling out. That little burst of activity has tired me so I head for the sofa and start the blog.

My partner goes to meet a friend for lunch and I settle down for an afternoon of football and rugby. It provides me with a way of resting and something to focus on while I rest. The games come and go until my partner returns and we watch the final rugby match together. I make my tea and return to watching TV and under Under the Banner of Heaven, a strange choice for me, but it is supposed to be based on a true crime. It is however difficult to maintain concentration on it for two reasons. Firstly the continuous interruption of adverts. I am convinced there is more advertising than actual programme. Secondly the disturbing fact that as its based on a real case and its circumstances that the world contains such stupid and destructive religionists. Of course my attention wanders and I return to the blog while the tediously slow TV unwinds. Its unmitigated bigotry and offensive misogyny grinds on, but there is a thread of psychology that runs through it. It makes me realise just how similar large sections of the American population are with the other religionists of the current middle east chaos.

I give up as I tire and need sleep. I take my night meds and go to bed to read until sleep overtakes me.

Friday and wake slowly and sort out my cyber stuff until my partner bought me my morning hot water. I take my vitals, all good and then get up. Before I get up I write a to do list, first one for a while. A brief breakfast follows and I get stuck into my tasks. I do the Tesco order and move onto filing in the publishing questionnaires that the Americans have sent me. It takes me ages and before I know it I have reached lunch time but the forms are done. I have a light lunch and then get back to my chores list.

For a short time I up date my heart pressure excel spreadsheet and then get my washing in. There have been messages during this time and some organising to do but I focus on getting a copy of my book to my son in Sweden. So I fish out a suitable envelope and dash to the post office and send it on its way. By the time I get home I am about out of spoons and return to my poetry editing. I end up completing my cataloguing all my poems and then list the ones I have used in the first two collections and start to list the ones I want to use in two future collections.

Its evening and I am totally out of energy, so I eat tea and slip into a night of TV and finally drafting the blog. My last acts are to take my night meds and set the dishwasher going. I am concerned that it takes me so little effort to feel so tired. I do not know if I have fallen into sloth through fear or lost confidence that I can drag myself out of my present state. The result is that I feel guilty that am not trying hard enough to pull this round, that I am not really fighting as hard as I can. I think I am trying to look after myself and trying to recover but am I? The old argument for therapy is that when you are inside a jam jar you need some one to read the label, it feels like I need someone to read my label right now, but I have to get to them.

Thursday! Already, time seems to be going so quickly and I feel I am not getting any better, but then I won’t, not quickly. I am wakened by my partner this morning bringing me my usual hot water to start the day. Its good for my digestion and seems not to aggravate my body in any way. I check my emails and see I am to expect a phone call from a publisher this afternoon, so I check the links they have sent me. It is world book day and a friend sends me pictures of her two daughters dressed as Alice in Wonderland and Amelia Fang, a feisty ten year old vampire from the books of Laura Ellen Anderson. Amelia Fang was not around in my day so she is new to me but looks fun. Her daughters look splendid and has obviously put loads of effort into the costumes. I would like to share but that would be an intrusion. There was no world book day when I was at school and I suspect it would have passed me by if there had been one. I was well on my way along my dyslexia journey by their age and never got to read a book until I was fourteen when, after encouragement from a scout master called Doug Crook, I read Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck. I was hooked and read everything he wrote. After that I moved from author to author reading everything that they had written, a trait that is still with me and a expensive one. I meet my match in Balzac, I never got through all 52 novels and I was devastated to find they are written as a sequence, which I had cut across. I moved on to another author. Any way today is world book day so it is apt that I should be talking to a publisher.

I finally get up for a late breakfast and then luxuriate in a bath listening to the Infinite Monkey Cage. This episode was from CERN and a light hearted discussion about the the Higgs Boson. Once wallowed I prepare for my phone call by rereading the information on the links sent to me. I also check my Amazon book account and discover that at least three more people have bought The Cancer Years: So Far. With my preparation done I draft the blog and then wait to see if my phone call actually happens.

To my pleasant surprise the woman from the book company rings me on time. She is very clear and had clearly read my emails to her and had a good idea what I was looking for. She explained that the company was a printers and did not have a publishing function. They would of course hold stock and send it out if I forwarded orders. In essence I need a distribution platform. I have my Amazon platform and my YouTube channel, but this is not enough. Alternatively I would need an agent. I am not sure that this vanity poet wants to become a business and have an agent. I thanked her for her help and clarity. So it seems that I either find an English publishing house or stick with the Americans. I decide to try the Americans again and send a short and to the point email and then settle down to read for the rest of the afternoon. To my surprise the Americans ring apologising for the mix up in the communications. We make a deal which means I get my next collection published and that both collections get published globally. I make my payment, get the receipt sent through and then send them the zip file with the collection and other pages in it. It gets acknowledged quickly so it seems I am now well into my second project. I’m going to be a global poet, mostly unread but available. This is true vanity poetry.

Having done the business with the Americans I start to watch a football match and each tea before my partner goes to her weekly singing lesson. I get a surprise call from a friend who has begun to complete a full return to work after battling long COVID. There are still of course bad days but she has managed to get to a situation she could not have contemplated some months ago. We talk about how we are and how our families are. Its a real pleasure to talk to someone outside the family and to share a conversation. We end our call as she collects one of her daughters from an after school activity. I return to the football and there I stay for most of the evening until I return to the blog for the day. I take my night meds and go to bed to read. I have publishing chores to do tomorrow, so the adventure continues, I just need to sort out the every day stuff.

Wednesday and I wake up groggy and go back to sleep. I do eventually surface and do my vitals and check my cyber messages. I wait until I am ready to get up and then have a brunch. While my partner goes to see her mother I go to the Shed. Its the first time I’ve made it to the Shed for a long time. I light the candles and then sit down to write letters and that is where I stay until its time to get to the post office in time to get the letters on their way. With the Shed packed up I get ready to take the walk to the post office. It doesn’t sound much but it makes me anxious in case it restarts my symptoms again. I walk slowly and make it to the pillar box. My letters are popped in and I check to see if a paper is available. It isn’t. As I walk home I get a call from an English publisher but I miss it.

Once home I check my emails and find one from the publisher, I of course reply and arrange to be called tomorrow afternoon. I also get another surprise, a letter from one of my Scottish relations who shares information about that side of the family. It means I have to update the family tree and it also means that I now understand some of the family history that my sister and mother knew but had not shared. The way the family has changed is a surprise but it does mean that I can make an accurate picture of the family tree.

The evening starts with a meal followed by a film and silent football on the laptop. With that out of the way I caught up with the drafting the blog. Of course my final act is to take my night meds and get myself to bed in the hope that sleep engulfs me. Its been a slow day but at least I got to spend time in the Shed.

Tuesday after an appalling night. The post 28 day jab reaction has been ugly. I’m very sore and shaky when I wake up, I’ve no energy and I feel chilled. I just lay in bed trying to get warm and stay calm. Little by little I start to do stuff like check my phone and send messages. I check my accounts to find one of my pensions has gone in and then check my vitals. Blood pressure lower than normal for me but in the normal range. My son is going for an interview today so I message him and wish him luck. I watch an episode of Would I Lie to You on my phone after my partner brings me hot water, toast and my meds. I top these up with yet more paracetamol. I try to read for a while but eventually I begin to get hot and have to get up. So I am out of bed at noon, which feels ridiculous, and get to my end of the sofa and start the blog. It feels as if I have zero energy, not a spoon in sight. It seems to me that my reaction to my 28 injection is getting more pronounced and that generally my body will tolerate less activity. Its difficult to fight, thankfully my head is still good. I can do small head steps easier than physical steps at the moment.

The afternoon is spent doing crosswords and continued reading of The Book of Form and Emptiness. I give my feet a blast on the reinvigorater and continue to rest. I try to feel chipper but I don’t feel it even though I spend a bit of time ordering some feel good items. I eat tea and catch up with the blog before I settle down to watch football while my partner goes to have a coffee with a friend. I shall continue to rest and wait for my body to recover. There will be night meds and then bed. I’ve no idea how the night will go.

Monday, its a jab Monday, so I get up slowly, having done my cyber checks and taken my vitals. In my cyber messages was this:

I think I get caught up in thinking that I am the person in my head, the young energetic person with youth on my side, ambitious and with limitless energy rather than the actual seventy five year old with stage four metastatic prostate cancer person that I am. Its important that I do not define myself by my disease however to remain moving I have to balance the management of it and what ever else I wish to do. Every day I get now is a real gift and an opportunity. The opportunities now are more cerebral than before but since my journey started I’ve managed holidays and trips, joined my local poetry stanza and published my first book of poetry. Along the way there has been some dips like managing my sisters death and the other challenges that family life brings so all in all the past four years has been an interesting learning curve. It has been a time of much reading in order to keep my brain fed with the result that I have read much more than I would have done and almost without exception the books have been new and outstanding, to which I owe much to friends who either point me in the right direction or gift me “must read” books. At the moment the balance is a bit more of a juggle but with smaller steps I should e able to keep moving forward.

So as I sit this morning looking at the sunshine I start to draft todays blog early. Before I go to the GP surgery later today I will hopefully type up a couple of new poems and maybe write a letter. After that I will see what small steps I can find to take.

I lunch on bacon sandwiches before walking down to the GP surgery. It is a real effort and i arrive feeling crap. Once called in I hand over the jab and soon the nurse is sticking the needle into me. I am ushered out and I start the semi shuffle back home but I become so enraged with my self that I force myself to go to the Co-op to get a paper, they have none, and a bag of chocolate buttons. As I walk home I become more angry with myself and mutter the odd motivational “for fuck sake Roland get a grip”. Judging by the look a fellow pedestrian gave me I obviously said this a bit louder than I intended.

Arriving home I cannot believe that I am so out of condition and salts. I settle on the sofa to cool down when I get a message from my eldest daughter to check my accounts. I do, and find that the solicitor is winding up my sisters estate which means the rest of my inheritance has landed in my bank account. I do not really care if its a fiver or five hundred but it signals the end of more than a year of death admin and that is a relief.

I start to type up a couple of poems that I wrote recently and add them to my “all I have file”, whilst thinking about putting another collection together to try out a British based publisher. I update the blog before returning to the poetry project and my Ruth Ozeki book.

I am feeling rough when I go to the toilet and find I have blood in my urine again. I am so pissed off that the little walk I’ve taken has induced this. All I can do is rest, drink water, put my feet up and rest. It means I cannot help lift in the Tesco order when it arrives later in the evening, and feel like a chocolate fireguard. I’m seething inside at feeling so fucking useless, all I can do is grit my teeth, and try to be rational and take it tiny steps at a time. By the time Only Connect (the impossible quiz show) is on my mid day injection is getting sore and I down some more paracetamol. Tonight is a night I go to bed early and curl up and hope I sleep as long as possible or as uninterrupted as little as possible. So I down my night meds and retreat from it all. What a day.

Sunday and before you know it, it is mid morning. It seems that the new mattress is doing its job and allowing a longer nights sleep. I weigh myself. It is not good, I come in at 99.9 kilos. It is the result of my inactivity over the last two weeks and my sweet tooth that is doing the damage. My partner and I breakfast and I take my morning meds still including the antibiotics. There are some things to do that I have let slip over the past week including ensuring the squirrels and the birds get fed. I venture into the garden and fill the feeders. While out in the fresh air of my garden I take the opportunity to drain the water butt. Such simple tasks but ones that I find drain me of energy spoons. I get everything back into the the shed and then take in the garden camera.

There is very little on the garden camera except for one appearance of our local fox. With this done its time for a late lunch and a bit of rest. I have rediscovered my foot stimulator, which is not something I get to say often, but I really enjoy that tingling feeling in my feet. It is strange watching my toes twitch as the current flows through my feet and in to my calves. It is oddly refreshing. The challenge of course is to move the intensity up. So far I am up to 65 on the dial so there is a way to go to 99. With singing feet I do a bit hoovering and then watch a rugby match. Everything is being done in small bursts.

The evening rolls round to the evening meal and the world athletic championships. This is the evening I start to take prophylactic paracetamol before tomorrows monthly injection. I am mentally stealing myself for the walk down to the GP surgery at midday tomorrow. Its not so much the actual injection, although not pleasant, it is the following 48 hours where it becomes sore and I feel like a withdrawing junkie. So I am preparing myself. All I can ask is for is a good nights sleep and no worsening of my symptoms.

Saturday and I wake first and make my partner tea in bed. We chat before I take my vitals and check my cyber messages and litter. Once up I make a light breakfast and take a walk to the village chemist to collect my monthly order of drugs including Mondays injection. Yep its that time of the month, which means come Sunday I will be taking prophylactic paracetamol. Anyway I walk home picking up a paper and some doughnuts on the way. By the time I get home I feel absolutely knackered. I had planned to go to the gym while my partner had a pedicure at the club spa. but I could not face it.

I tried to distract myself by watching snooker, athletics and writing a couple of poems but I continue to feel pretty rank. Of course I am scared that I am going to slip back to how I was last weekend and try to relax. My partner makes lunch and I continue to try and rest doing crosswords and keeping an eye on the athletics. I read for a while but I am becoming more and more frustrated with myself. Its the pervasive feeling that something is not right that constantly niggles at me. I think it is partly to do with coming to the end of my 28 day injection cycle. In a moment of frustration with myself I drag out the Circulation Max Reviver and give my feet thirty minutes electric stimulation. I take a rest and read for a while in the quiet of the bedroom before my partner askes me to run my eye over a draft document. It takes a little while to get my head in gear but I manage it and help send it off to her brother to read and comment on.

All during this time I revert back to drinking a lot of water and trying to remain as hydrated as possible, my anxiety is high and I am twitchy about any exercise in case I trigger a worsening of my condition. Its the swings from feeling relatively well and positive to the sense of apprehension that is difficult to manage. Staying calm without apprehension is the difficult. I would like to just get on with things but find myself regularly assessing whether I am doing the right things to keep me as well as possible, which leads to a sense of vulnerability. I know I want to be active, to not fear the Real World and to get out and about but fear exercise adn effort will trigger the bleeding into my bladder. I feel between the devil and the deep blue sea. My solution is to take one day at a time and set really small goals, like fill the squirrel feeder, type up poems and prepare for the next attempt to publish. I try to stay organised and to make contributions around the house. Every so often I check my social media. I did post something on LinkedIn and was surprised how many people responded in a supportive way. Everything else has been muted.

The evening passes and I end up drafting the blog, taking my meds and going to bed. Before I do though I challenge myself to think about the day and whether its been as bad as I feel it has been. Its true my gut has been off and I have lacked energy but I did get a lovely card from a friend in Scotland, I’ve drafted two poems and read for a while. I have also toyed with a thought I had when I woke up. I have been watching a lot of Mock the Week clips of scenes we would like to see. I thought about the one that goes “Things you wouldn’t see on an exam paper”. My thought for that one was: Religious Education, Question 1 “if there are no right or wrong answers how will God score you?” It amused me at the time. Electrocuting my feet was fun, I shall do it more often. Of course the major positive of the day has been no blood in my urine or pain. Its amazing what we take for granted, and what cancer forces us to reconsider. I also noted the first cherry blossoms of the year on a neighbours cherry tree. In fact Spring is everywhere. Note to self, “join in”.