Friday arrives, in fact “Foot Friday” arrives, today is the day I visit the chiropodist and indulge in the luxury of having my feet done by a professional. It is the only way I can keep my feet in good condition since my first bout of chemotherapy thickened my nails. So I spend little time on my usual waking rituals, pausing briefly to measure my vitals, which are once again okay, before jumping into the shower and getting myself chiropodist ready. A brief breakfast and I drive to the next village, park in the Co-op car park and wander over to the foot clinic. The chiropodist ushers me and I soon have my feet in a warm bowl of water, which is no doubt sterilising them. I’m on quite good terms with my chiropodist and we chat while she does my feet. Holiday plans, who Christmas went and the usual family gossip form our conversation. As usual by the end of my time my feet are very happy feet and feel just excellent. This is truly a real pleasure.

Before driving home I pick up a paper and some doughnut and herbal tea bags. Once home I settle down to do todays crosswords and indulge in a doughnut washed down with one of the new herbal teas. Not long after my successful completion of the crosswords, once again with out the aid of Google, my partner makes us cheese on toast and sliced apple. this is being a good and I am thinking about how I am going to amuse myself in the afternoon when I am deflated by finding blood in my urine again when I go for a pee, It seems the minimal amounts of walking are, at times, enough to induce this. I drink some water clear the recycling to the bin and them sit on the recliner drinking water and updating my Excel spreadsheet for my vitals. I use this to calculate my average blood pressure over each cycle of the current chemo. I do a quick check on the averages so far and find them to be normal and in line with the previous eight cycles to date. With my feet up and resting I draft the blog and sip water. I expect to be okay again in three to four hours, and then I can start again to plan to do things.

It is this element of my cancer that I find so difficult to cope with at the moment, it means I cannot train as I did before and therefore cannot do the one thing that holds the chemotherapy side effects at bay. It constrains what I can do and of course it is distressing to be passing blood. All I can do is rest, hydrate and ease myself back to activity as much as my body and cancer will allow, This is the invasive nature of cancer that grinds remorselessly on and challenges my resilience and ability to balance action with rest. It is also why, although not good for me I will “treat” myself to doughnuts or a bag of peanut M&Ms. There is a temptation to just quit and self indulge to an egregious degree but I like to think my better part of me holds me in check enough to hold some sort of balance between self denial and unbridled hedonism.

So for the moment I recline and rest sipping water and watching as the sun comes out. I will monitor how things go before contemplating what to do at the weekend. My evening is prosaic, one of TV and resting. I get to the point where I can’t face any more hot water and end my evening sipping 0%rum and ginger ale and taking my chemo meds. All I want is to sleep well tonight.

Thursday. I wake quite late and take my vitals, all good there, and then indulge in watching some more Tim Minchin before getting up. I watch him perform “I can have a dark side” live and “I’m a rock star” performed on tour. It lifts my spirits no end and get out of bed feeling more chipper than I have felt for a while. So a quick breakfast sat watching the pouring rain, sipping a herbal tea and I am ready for the day. I have a family tree to amend as one of my Scottish relatives has provided some dates of birth, after that the day is mine to play with. That’s the good thing about retirement, there is time to play with, one is only limited by your own creativity, energy and curiosity, plus of course the demands of the household and the real world around you.

I did a quick analysis of what the algorithm on my Google feed is providing at the moment. As it is allegedly based on what I view on the internet so it reflects my interests. It would appear I am basically a sports moron, as the majority of my feed is related to football, snooker, rugby, cricket and the occasional ice hockey game. Some Big Bang Theory ( the comedy series) appears from time to time alongside some actual astronomy and physics stuff. The rest of the feed is the usual pulp news paper crap that pads everything else out, a bit like life. It may be my age but I have no recognition of hardly any one dubbed a celebrity any more and as a consequence I don’t care a rats arse about the vast amount of pulp my media feeds push my way. I am resolved to start searching the internet for a much more arcane and bizarre content just to see what my media feeds start to push my way. So as a start I’m going to search for availability of places on archaeological digs and see how quickly this affects my news feeds. It seems I might have found a new hobby.

I spend my day writing a letter to a friend and filling in the family tree with the new dates of birth I now have. There is still some family document arching that needs doing but I will get to that in due course. I put my ear buds in to listen to some music and to block out my partners work conversations that are going on in the office. For a change I try Radio four and end up listening to the Thursday afternoon concert, it turns out to be really good, so good that I keep my ear buds in as I walk over to the post box to send my letters. I’m listening to Schumann’s Spring Symphony, which is new to me and quite a find.

Once home I settle into doing todays two crosswords and drift through them unassisted by google but interrupted by my bank wanting to know if I want to meet with their money advisor. I politely decline and return to the crosswords and reading the paper while still listening to the concert. I go to the loo and find that I have blood in my urine again. I was having a good day, not so good now. I down a pint of water and eat tea then down more water. This sets the tone of my evening, I watch the Avengers Endgame and drink back to back glasses water, with my feet up till bed time when I down my chemo meds and paracetamol. With luck and enough water I will be fine in a few hours, well enough to go to the chiropodist tomorrow and give my feet their two monthly treat. It is never easy, a day can turn on its head in just a few moment, this has been one of those days.

Wednesday and I am awake quite early and running through my usual checks on emails and cyber litter before taking my vitals. My blood pressure is all good as is my temperature and heart rate. I spend a bit of time watching some old Mock the Week compilations before getting up. I decide to take myself to the village café for breakfast picking up a paper on the way. I settle down to my hot chocolate and baguette as I get to grips with today crosswords. I take my time before heading home.

Once home I get into more comfortable clothes and sort out some of my clothes as my partner goes off to see her mother with her brother. The post arrives and there are two letters for. This is a real luxury so I make a coffee and settle down to read them. One of he letters is from one of my relatives in Scotland who has tried to contact me by email but unfortunately had a wrong address. I decide to send an email back and share with him the letters and information that I have shared with other members of the family in Scotland. It takes a while to do and then I move on to my second letter from a friend. She shares my disgruntlement at the difficulties at getting my book produced and on the Amazon platform. The letter is a real joy to read. I then have quite a long chat with my son over the intricacies of buy a replacement car where he is in Sweden. There is little left of the afternoon so I check my emails, which leads me onto some internet viewing before my partner returns.

One of the internet finds that made me smile

The evening arrives and I watch a semi final of the African Cup of Nations. I’ve taken it easy today as I am still sore from Mondays injection. This month has not been too bad as some of he side effects that I get have not been too bad his month and I have been able to stay of the paracetamol. Tomorrow I need to give the rower another go and to try and keep some fitness, I also have letters to write. It may depend on how the weather is as the forecast is suggesting early snow and sleet tomorrow and I need to keep warm.

Tuesday and I am lazy in getting up as my partner has gone to work. I do my now usual cyber checks, emails, bank accounts, WhatsApp messages and the rest of the cyber litter. Before I can get up or do my vitals my eldest daughter pops her head around the door to see how am am and to have a bit of a chat. Its a chance to catch up and hear what things in her world are up to. Post chat I do my vitals and get myself breakfast, clearing Daisy dishwasher as I go. I’m settling down to think about things and to write a bit when the garden guy rocks up. Not seen him since last year so we chat over coffee and herbal tea for a while before I retreat inside again and start to think again. My eldest daughter needs proof that she is the active executor of my deceased sisters estate so I have to dig around in the files to find a suitable document. After much rummaging and copying I find a court certificate that does the job. Its almost a year now since my sister died and still the paper work and admin goes on. I really must decide what to do with her ashes. I think I know what I am going to do now, I just need to get myself organised to make the arrangements. If all goes well my family will be spared that particular decision I just need time to make the arrangements.

Lunch comes around and I do soup and start to draft the blog inspired by a picture a friend sent me that seemed apposite to my situation. In fact to all our situations. So the bins are out, now I can crack on with letters and a bit more book preparation. I go one of my bored, screw it phases yesterday and decided to send a photo of how I actually am to shove on the back of the book cover, that may or may not exist. So below is how I actually look when I let my hair down. I friend said I looked like a rock and roll throw back except they are now all clean, sober and play golf. My god golf, perish the thought.

Well there you go, so close yet so far away on the book front. It turns into a wet afternoon so there I am hunkered down on the sofa writing letters and sticking a meal in the crockpot. I decide to abandon the crockpot idea and prepare a cottage pie ready for the family evening meal. My partner returns from work and we eat as a family before my eldest daughter goes off to a gig and I watch half a football match and two episodes of Trigger Point. During the evening I discover that 0%spiced rum tastes good with ginger ale. So as I run out of spoons I wash my night meds down with rum and ginger and finish off the blog before taking myself off to bed. I’m sore from yesterdays injection but I’m holding off taking paracetamol. Its a small gain in the fight but its a gain.

Monday, jab Monday so I take my time getting up. I check my messaging and cyber litter and then I take a long shower. A brief breakfast and I am as ready as I am going to be to take the walk to the GP surgery. I take my time walking down and check in with my jab tucked under my arm. I get called in quite quickly and I soon have a months worth of meds pumped into me. I walk home slowly picking up a paper on the way.

Once home I sit and do the days crosswords and then write letters. I pop across to the post office and post my letters and then return home to take a rest. My injection is becoming sore and so I take a time out, down some more paracetamol and try to rest. My partner finishes work and she joins me resting, which means we can have a chat and catch up, there is a lot going on. We decide to treat ourselves to take away and do the ordering while we wait for Tesco to deliver. Its a double bill of Silent Witness tonight which we watch while tucking into Indian and then squirreling the Tesco delivery away. Its an early night tonight, I down my meds and extra paracetamol, hopping for a restful night. Tomorrow is usually a sore day so lets wait and see.

Sunday and a slow start as after breakfast my partner goes to the gym and I putter about. I do very little other than write a letter to a friend, but I cannot get the printer to work, so I have a challenge ahead of me tomorrow. I check my vitals and then carry on with my day doing nothing in particular till the evening rolls around and I share a meal with the family and watch TV in the evening. Of course this is all about reaching the evening, doing the Tesco order and then preparing for tomorrow, for tomorrow is jab Monday. That means not only taking my chemo but taking the prophylactic paracetamol to stave off the jabs side effects. I know that the jab gives me a couple of tricky days so I think my Sunday has been deliberately quiet to prepare. So one of those apparently mundane days that has the under current of cancer running through it. Tomorrow will see how well I manage the walk to the GP as it was the walk round the village that induced the last bout of blood in my urine so I am understandably cautious.

Saturday and I wake up feeling a bit better. My partner and I have breakfast before she goes off to have her feet pampered. For my part I do chores and take my vitals, good again. By the time I’ve got my washing in my partner has returned and we go for hot chocolate at our local garden centre. My partner and I chat about how I am and the possibilities of seeking a second opinion about my cancer. In our conversation I noted that the message from the medics is that they have no cure and that it is all about palliative care, it feels like hope is torn away all the time. We return home and I settle down to watch the rugby matches and sort my washing.

Its a quiet evening of more rugby, food and a really violet film before I take my night meds and I take myself to bed. Its been a slow day as I try to build my confidence up again. At some point I need to decide to get back on the rower, but in the meantime I need to look after myself.

Friday, normally a day of celebration having reached the end of the week but today I am drained before I start. I got up in the night plagued my thoughts that I am being scammed by the people/ company supposedly producing my book. At 3 o’clock in the morning I got up and checked all the correspondence, emails and messages. I also checked out the web to see if I could find them. I did find them and as usual there were mixed reviews although overall Trust Pilot gave them a reasonable rating but as we all know ratings can be manipulated. I checked my Amazon KDP account and reconfirmed that authorisation codes should not be shared. I also checked all my bank accounts to ensure hey were all in tact and there was nothing unusual on them. In the end I sent an email to the “American team”, stating where we are and requesting details of what they are doing and exactly what what is supposed to happen next. There is either a book or there isn’t, if there isn’t I will cut and run and put it down to experience. I suppose the lesson in this is that vanity makes me vulnerable to being conned, shame really because I was genuinely excited about the prospects of a book being on the Amazon platform. So this Friday is a bit more “Glum” than usual, not to mention the fatigue. I did return to bed and slept a little better feeling I had done something. What with yesterdays scan my spoon reserve for today is low.

When I woke this morning I went through my cyber litter, check messages and my news feed. My partner brought my now normal hot water before I checked my vitals. As ever these were good enough. I get up and have a light breakfast and putter for a bit but basically I am just marking time and trying to collect myself. There should be drugs to collect as Monday is Jab Monday, I could do with training and a shower before going to to see Sister Act tonight but I suspect I will need an afternoon nap to get me going properly.

How the world changes. I realise that the chemist in the village closes for an hour at lunchtime, yep its that kind of village. So I settle down to write a letter to a friend on the laptop. It takes me about an hour after which I make my way to the post box and then onto the village centre to the chemists. I am surprised to be the only person in the shop as usually there is a queue of folk collecting end of week prescriptions. Clutching my drugs I go to the village shop in search of a paper and bread. I add flowers for my partner and walk home against the wind. Once home I put the flowers in a vase and put them in the office for my partner to have, then I feed myself soup and do the crosswords, all is good. I’m thinking about tonight and going out when I go to the toilet and find I am pissing blood. That short walk has induced this. I am gutted. I tell my partner and we agree that she should still go to the show and take my eldest daughter with her. There are calls made and ultimately my partner and eldest daughter will go with my brother in law and niece. I shall be staying home with my feet up. I take paracetamol and down a pint of water.

I am initially distressed but grit my teeth and accept that I need to rest and hydrate. The paracetamol is just to dull the pain of passing blood, after all I’m living proof that blood is thicker than water. While I sit with my feet up I check my emails and arrange for the builder to visit to talk more about the work on the drive and the patio. I also read carefully the response to my email to the book people I sent at 3am last night. The response is detailed and mildly reassuring, I suggest they send the digital proofs and that we talk again on Monday as I am currently ill. With that out of the way I return to the blog and update it. So I wont be going out tonight, I shall feed myself and watch rugby while drinking copious amounts of water. The ultimate aim is an early night and a nights sleep. As I said how the world changes, this is how cancer intrudes on the mundane. It is remorseless and persistent, as I and Rocket are.

It February! Its a Thursday and it a bone scan day. These are the days of high arithmetic and spoon use. I wake and do my cyber litter checks, still nothing from the American book people, I think I’ve been taken for a ride. I book a Tesco slot and fill a basket and then do my vitals, (once again good). So I get up and cook breakfast and then search out a conference paper I read to send onto a friend who I saw on Linkedin selling her company.

Suddenly its almost noon and I need to be at the hospital for 1 o’clock. A speedy shower and a quick dress into clothes with no metal in them and I am almost ready to go. I remove all my jewellery, grab a book for my backpack and I am off.

The hospital has a good car park which is a blessing and runs a number plate recognition payment method. Thinking ahead I take a photo of the number plate and then march off to the Nuclear Medicine department where a receptionist handed me a COVID sifting form to fill in. I settled down in the waiting area to be called along side two blokes who where together, The guy for the scan was very anxious and on the spectrum, his friend was also somewhere on the spectrum. The friend tried to be helpful but only wound his friend up and forgot things, so there was quite a lot of chaos going on behaviourally and emotionally. I looked at them and wondered how they were ever going to mange to get the guy to be still enough to scan him, the levels of agitation were very high. I get called in to have my cannula put in and then the radioactive marker. It goes very smoothly and I am sent away to return at 3:30pm. Before I go I make the nurse aware that the guys who are waiting are likely to be tricky because of their anxiety and state, she thanked me for the heads up and noted wasn’t the first to mention it.

I drive home for lunch and time to do todays cross words. At 3 o’clock I am back on the road back to the hospital. As I enter the Nuclear Medicine department I see the nurse who acknowledges my return and tells me to empty my bladder, which I duly do. I am whisked into the scan room adn asked to lay on the scan bench. I was expecting a pillow under my head and one under my knees as usual, but it was not to be. Once flat I get a surprise, I am told to put my arms by my sides and then I get swaddled. Retaining flaps are velcro’d over me so that I am like the meat in a sausage! I opt for my only realistic option in this state, I breathe deeply and let myself drift off to sleep, a sort of guided nap. Some 40 minutes later I am released and told I can go, which I do. On the way out I see my original cannula nurse and I ask how they got on with the guy. She just said !It never happened” and left it at that. How on earth the referring doctor thought that the guy would ever be able to tolerate a scan I cannot fathom.

I get home and sloth into the evening rapidly running out of spoons and eat tea and start to draft the blog. I feel myself getting restless, a sure sign that I am sinking into fatigue. I sink over the evening failing to maintain interest in either of the two football matches on TV and sink to the Madame Blanc mysteries. Nothing for it but to get my night meds into me and go to bed to gather up some energy. Tomorrow is a treat out to see Sister Act.

Wednesday and I wake early, watch a Mock the Week compilation of “Scenes we would like to see”. It amuses me to be amused first thing in the morning. I do my cyber checks and then measure my vitals before finally dragging myself out of bed for a toast breakfast.

This is not just another Wednesday, this is the start of cycle 9 Wednesday. Its the cycle that will include an oncology review and the decision as to whether or not I go on getting the chemo. As my arithmetic is good, my bloods good, my vitals good, in particular my blood pressure, I am expecting that “he who made a pact with the devil” will sign me up for another 3 cycles. This would take me to May/June time. The only fly in the ointment is how my bone scan goes tomorrow. No way of knowing how that will turn out, its just a case of keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best. So today I will check the car before going to the hospital tomorrow, trying to train and having a healthy day.

I find my way to the Shed and settle in and organise my new wax cauldron for sealing my letters. I light my candles and set the heater to on. My dipping pens and ink wells are clogged so I return to using an old style fountain pen. As the morning goes on I write letters of increasing unpredictability. I keep writing till mid afternoon when I stop for soup, but not before I see a short video of my new grandson eating solids for the first time. Carrots, the dish of choice, which he appears to have enjoyed. I have a bout of not feeling well and checked my vitals. Everything is good except my heart rate which is elevated so I have a burst of meditation music and give myself twenty minutes to recover. What this tells me is that it is most likely to be anxiety that has caused the rise. After a bit of a rest I go to the post office and post my letters, buy a paper and a bag of M&M peanuts to boost my blood sugar. Once home I get to work on the crosswords and get through them in good time. I am watching the COVID enquiry when my partner returns from seeing her mother.

The evening arrives, there is nothing from the Americans about my book, so I start to draft the blog and check the arrangements for tomorrows scan. Its one of those where they pump me full of radioactive stuff then send me away for a couple of hours before I return to be scanned. I guess it will be okay, I’ve done them before so I’m hoping my experience will take me through. I am also waiting to hear from our builder who is going to do work on the back and front gardens. But builders tend to get distracted, so I guess I will need to nudge him. I shall take this evening slowly and aim for an early night to build up my store of energy spoons. My day has not turned out how I thought but adaption and creativity has got me through.