Monday, Jab Monday. I wake to see snow and sleet outside and prepare to do my Nanook of the North impression, getting up taking my partner tea and then putting on several layers, finished off with my prison anorak, grippy boots and Shark gloves. Having taken my morning meds I walk down to the GP surgery. In a very short time I am called in by my usual nurse who is very chatty and business like. She hunts around my right lower gut area trying to find a non lumpy bit to inject into to me. She pinches a bit of my fat and goes in. The injection takes a while but then it is done and I am sporting a fluffy cloud of cotton wool and tape. I put all my layers back in order and wish her a merry cheerio.

As I am out and about I walk to the village shop and buy a paper and more crumpets, which I have taken a liking to recently. Once home I am out of my boots and anorak and toasting crumpets for breakfast. As I have a paper I set about doing the three daily crosswords, two are relatively straight forward but the third one proves to be sticky. Eventually I crack it and feel chuffed that I got there on my own, no google. With my social media and messages checked I move on to domestic tasks, which includes putting tonight’s meal in the crock pot. I am doing a version of chicken and chorizo with mixed herbs, a chicken stock based source with white wine and brandy. Its all a matter of luck how these meals turn out, depending on what is in the fridge on any given day. I found some of the worlds smallest parsnips in the fridge so they have gone in almost whole, something I’ve not done before, so it remains to be seen if the whole thing works or not.

With the kitchen cleared I am beginning to feel my post jab shivers starting so I take myself off to the lounge and settle down to read Tomas Transtromer’s collected poems entitled The Half Finished Heaven. This was a gift from my son in Sweden in response to my request for Swedish poetry for Christmas. I spend all afternoon reading the collection and about him. His poetry is direct and clear, which I like but unfortunately I nod off a couple of times, a result of getting up early and the jab, not the quality of the poetry. Tomas Transtromer is a Noblel Prize winner who died in 2015 and well know in Sweden, I’d never heard of him. The translation is by Robert Bly an American and what caught my eye is that there is a book of Transtromer’s and Bly’s correspondence over some twenty six years before Transtromer had a stroke. I suspect I shall seek it out as I am always interested in letter writers and people who stay in correspondence with each other.

I should perhaps mention that Transtromer was a psychologist who spent many years of his life working with young offenders, it is perhaps this similarity in us that draws me to his work. This a collection that I shall read again. My partner returns from the gym and joins me to read in the lounge as I start to draft the blogs. Tonight she will have her singing lesson and I will fight off the shakes from my injection. As I draft this I can feel myself getting shivery and nibble Croccantini to keep my blood sugar up and of course for comfort. Croccantini are thin hazelnut biscuits dipped in chocolate, very moreish.

So the plan is to keep warm, eat the crock pot meal, watch something mindless on TV, take my meds and have an early night in the hope that I will sleep okay. The first night after my 28 day jab tends to be a bit of a battle as the injection site gets sore and my shivers get more pronounced. My best line of defence is to be kind to myself and to take paracetamol.

Saturday and I am awake and aware that I need to get to the chemist to pick up my drugs from the chemist. So I am up and into my fleecy trousers and my partner and I stroll down to the village where I pop into the chemist while my partner raids the co-op for a paper and crumpets. The chemists is busy but despite my having ordered my drugs four days ago I still have to wait while the team rummage around to find my order, in fact it is clear they are doing it on the fly as they retrieve my injection from a delivery box. Eventually they hand me my paper bag with my drugs. My partner and I walk home to have breakfast.

Having acquired my drugs I set about filling my drugs wallets for the next two weeks, an easy but fiddly job as my Viking finger restricts my hand motility. I try to get my sofa end organised and cleaned before the midday football match on TV. To be frank the day becomes a sports fest as I drift from football to rugby until there are no more matches and it becomes a food and drama series evening. I am acutely aware that tomorrow is 12th night which means that I shall be taking the decorations down and packing them away till next year. With the household gone to bed I take a moment to thank all the tree baubles, drops, angels, and animals for there sterling work this year. Of course there is a special word to Red Sonia who has topped the tree excellently again this year, a legend in the household and has been for years now. With my thank yous done I take my night meds and go to bed.

Sunday and there is snow, thin measly Leicestershire snow, but nevertheless snow. Its clearly not going to last long not like the swathes of the white stuff up north and to the west of us. It is a strange truth that Leicestershire has less severe weather than the rest of the country. Being so central the worst of all the weather fronts seem to peter out before they reach Leicestershire, so if we are having really bad weather someone else is having appalling weather. So as I look at the light dusting that is already melting my mind turns to taking down the Christmas tree decorations.

So after breakfast and getting the shower to work for my partner I catch up with the blog and my social media. It is 28 jab day tomorrow but it looks like there should be no problem getting to the GP surgery to have it. As a precaution I retrieve my winter waterproof boots from the boot of the car. With my precautionary things done I get up into the loft and retrieve the Christmas decoration storage boxes and so the great de-decorate begins. Every bauble, drop, angel, animal and gets wrapped in tissue and popped into their appropriate shoe box, while the Prague dolls and the light up rabbit and reindeer get stored in their boxes. Due to the visit of the youngest grandchild this year we did no put out the nativity, next year it will be safe to do so, so this year “God in a box” remained just that.

The lights get their own set of boxes and finally it all get returned to the loft packed in storage crates, which just leaves the tree to be dismantled and re-boxed. It was a very wise decision to buy a good quality false tree last year. Look good and can be adjusted to fit the space we have. Boxed up the tree awaits return to the garage. All of this has taken the day with one short break to watch the majority of a televised rugby match. So the evening meal arrives and then a quiet evening of staying warm and preparing for tomorrows 28 day jab.

I suppose I should take time to reflect upon the year but as Tuesday is the fifth anniversary of my completion of chemotherapy I suspect I should take a longer view of my situation. My actual time living with my cancer is months longer but surviving the chemo seems to be an important landmark. The actual experience of that initial chemo was a scary one. There was so much bad press around chemo, and it was often reinforced by the nursing staff, I remember the urologist who gave me my cancer diagnosis and my Gleason score who said ” your be okay, your strong”, and so I was. I think I was very lucky in that I never suffered the nausea that many people do. My hair falling out and the physical bloating of my body was difficult to cope with. Once out of chemo and my hair started to recover I swore I would not cut my hair again given that the expectation for a man of my age with a Gleason score of 9.5 was, with successful chemo was 26 months. Here I am five years on with hair down to the middle of my back. A great deal has happened in those five years and I wonder if I have spent them wisely, but the real challenge is whether I can spend the next five years as interestingly.

Hurray the first Friday of 2025 and the weather is holding. I wake to find my partner has gone to work, downstairs to the office, so I get on with my getting up ritual like taking my vitals, all good, checking my social media, checking the news, and seeing if there is anything I need to organise today. It takes a while but I get the basic LifeMin out of the way early. When I finally get out of bed I have a to do list and a plan. Today its straight into my training kit, take my morning meds and head for the garage and the faithful rower. The rower must be one of the best investments I ever made. Its cold, 3 degrees cold so I strap in and get going thinking that I am likely to be jaded having trained yesterday, but to my surprise at the end of the session I had done more than 6 kilometres in my 30 minutes.

I stay in my gear as record the session and then set about some pre weekend jobs that need doing. First is to compact the waste bins, dur to missing a recycling run the bins have got full so I grab my tamping bar and set to work on the wheelie bins. In no time at all they are sorted, general waste now has space enough for a couple of bags and the garden waste can have its lid closed. A very satisfying outcome. Then its onto the light over the range that is set into the extractor hood. I rummage through my bits and pieces bags and find a spare glass for it, the old one being broken. There is then a period of cathartic curding and swearing until I get the damn thing fitted back in with a new bulb. Ta Da! Once again there is light, damn me I am good at times. I take a break adn find a supplier of the small round glass down light fronts and order some spares as I am going to need them for the lights over the kitchen window. I make sure the light in question all have new bulbs but alas they still won’t work. Nothing for it but to ring the electrician and ask if he come and do it. So he is coming next week now.

My partner makes bacon sandwiches for lunch and I crack on to my next task. I try to ignite the gas fire in the lounge, the one we have just had serviced, however it will not play ball. I test the batteries, all good, and the battery circuit, also all good, so I ring the gas fitter and ask him to get back to me so that we can either fix it or up grade the guts of the appliance. With all this out of the way its time for a shower before I can settle down to do todays crosswords. I am clearly on form as I flash through them today and I am soon filling in the family planner for 2025 with all my jab dates and family birthdays. I cruise into the evening to draft the blog, eat tea and then hopefully there is a rugby match to watch on TV before I do the last minute adjustments to tomorrows Tesco order. I had a late night last night so I am hopping to get my meds down me early and have an early night, as I need to be up early to get my monthly drugs from the chemist in the morning. It has come round to 28 day jab time again on Monday so I need for my jab to be available. Of course Sunday is 12th night so the decorations will need to come down, so that will see me busy for the pre jab day.

Thursday and its the second day into the new year, icy but bright. My partner has gone to work so I drop into my old routine of doing my vitals and checking my socials before getting up. My vitals are good and all my messages are friendly, long time since I was trolled. So I take my time getting into the world but when I do I get into my training gear. I do not feel fully recovered from the sore throat and stuff I had over Christmas but a new year has started and I cannot hang around. I get into my training and take my morning meds and head for the garage. Its the coldest its been so far that season, a measly 5 degrees.

As I have not been able to train for 19 days so this is going to be a relatively gently session to get me back in the saddle and used to working my body. I set a session for 30 minutes and hope I can reach about 6 Kilometres. As soon as I take the first pull I know that this is going to be hard work. It amazes me how quickly I loose fitness these days, it only takes a few days off exercise and my body just goes backwards, so getting going again is a real effort. This is one of those really difficult sessions where I cannot get my body into a rhythm and mentally the Dark and Tricky puts in an appearance and tries to inflict a really negative self talk in my brain. I’m having none of it and grind on to the end of the session. I achieve my goal of 6+kilometree, that will do me as a starter for 2025.

Once out of the garage I record the session and then find my new slippers have arrived, the pair ordered that will hopefully stop me tripping up on the stairs. I like them and I like their credentials in terms of greenness.

At last its time to eat but I get distracted when I go to change out of my training gear. I espy my partners new electric eye mask. Having read the manual I choose my heat setting and a 20 minute session, pop them on and I am away. Well I have to say I am very pleasantly surprised. Despite my fears of coddling my eyeballs my eyes and sinus array feel quite chipper.

Having been distracted beyond the irritating Jeremey Vine on the radio I finally get to prepare my lunch. The morning row is catching up with me so as I finish lunch I start to draft todays blog aware that there are bird and squirrel feeders to be filed before the sleety and cold days arrive, there are also the new year letters that I want to write. Last year was a grim year that effected my letter writing so I am hoping to be back in my Shed soon once again writing regularly to my correspondents.

The afternoon is spent listening to a football match before I cook a chicken curry for the evening meal. With the basics out of the way I settle into the evening. Its an evening of the last ever Vera, followed by the SAS and then the Full Monty before I take my night meds and get to bed. I’m mentally itchy and scratchy at the moment, dissatisfied with myself but I guess as I recover fully I can get get back to some sort of normality.

Wednesday the 1st of January 2025 sees me waking late after my Hootenanny indulgences of champagne and annual dose of Ruby Turner. I finally get up to make warm drinks for my partner and myself having made no new year resolutions at all. A very late breakfast ensues after which I decide to play with my new drone. After watching the manufactures video during which they used phases like “push forward make it go upwardly” and ” pull back make it go downwardly” I finally get the thing on indoor mode and ready to go, although it was not immediately quite clear how one started and stopped it but I guessed that unlocking it was a good bet, here is what happened.

Yes it is hilarious, my view is that it was the Chinese trying to kill me and that I had had a lucky escape. I’ve decided to wait until I can complete the outdoor configuration before taking the joy sticks of fate in to my hands again in calm weather. So having safely turned it off I went back to less dangerous things like reading and drafting the blog.

The day went down hill with a roaring headache, so it was paracetamol and sleep for me until the evening when football, Vera and night meds came around and I fled to bed desperate to sleep. This is not an auspicious start to 2025, I think I may have rushed at it a bit to quickly so tomorrow I hope to be more measured.

Tuesday, Hogmanay and I am ready to get up and face a day, this is it, I’m not going into the new year feeling crap nor not having had a shower with the addition of my new double sided shower sponge. Hedgehog on one side and creamy emolument the other. So while my partner goes off to see her mother with her brother I set out on my day. I clear the kitchen and indulge in toasted buttery crumpets with a splash of Marmite alongside a hot water and my morning meds. It never ceases to amaze me how the unexpected small things in life are the most time consuming and irritating. In my breakfast preparation I noted that the bottom draw of the under counter units would not close properly. That’s the irritation part. Of course I had to get the head torch out alongside the knitting needle used to test if meat has any blood left in it, to explore the chasm behind the bottom draw. What I discovered was a bit of a bummer, along with the packets of things that had fallen from the upstairs draws was an out of date packet of scones so old that they were completely black and providing the springiness of the non closing draw. What followed was a kind of bizarre jousting match of me with the knitting needle and the restrictions of the gap I had to work with. I am pleased to say I triumphed. The debris is safely in the bin and draw now closes properly, but I am knackered from crawling around on my hands and knees. Its this sort of unexpected activity that eats up my limited energy spoons.

Having conquered my quest I rested and read for a while. In my Christmas gift books was The Half Finished Heaven by Tomas Transtromer, a collection of his poems translated from the Swedish. He is my kind of poet, direct and simple in his vision and voice. I spend a while reading his work. He is published by Penguin if you want to read his work.

Finally I get to have my shower and use my combined “hedgehog and oily rag” ring of indulgence. Sometimes there is a good surprise waiting and this was one of them. As I tentatively started to rub myself down with the hedgehog side of this massive yellow Polo mint it actually did feel like the expensive experience of the Spa we had some weeks ago, and then to my continued surprise the smooth side was indeed buttery and moisturising. The result, apart from a happy me, was an extended stay in the shower, so a true indulgence has doubled my showering energy footprint. I guess there is a price to pay for everything.

Having returned my partner makes bacon sandwiches and shows me a new bargain coat that she has found. It is a true bargain and looks good. I ask for her assistance to find new slippers as my current ones are at times death traps. I need ones that grip my feet. I of course go to Amazon, she goes to M & S, that says so much about us, however she finds some really grippy ones that look cosy and in the blink of a few taps there is a reassuring message that the order has gone through and I no longer need to fear for my life in my current ones. Its ordinary moments such as these that continue to maintain the bond we have.

The evening drifts up on me as I do todays crosswords and draft the blog. There is little of note on television but it sounds as if there are revellers (drunks) in the main road of the village that motorists are honking at, so this New Years Eve might be less Hootenanny then previous years. My plan is simple, evening meal, a quiet evening that moves into Christmas cake and champagne, medication and then bed.

I just want to say to everyone who comes to this blog, for whatever reason that I thank you for it. I hope there is enough here to give you a sense of what my journey with cancer is like, both mundane and at times scary. Tomorrow starts a new year and I hope each and every one of you has a New Year that brings you joy, pleasure and a continuing sense of curiosity and fun.

Monday, I wake and actually feel better so on this basis I choose that today is the day I need to get my arse in gear and make the effort to get active again. My first step is to check my vitals. To my relief they have returned to normal. In particular I am relieved that my heart rate has returned to normal. The first easy steps is to try and clear up the chaos I have created around me while languishing in bed with my sore throat.

So for a lot of the morning I beaver away putting various piles of clothes away and clearing away the debris of illness. This tidying also means integrating my Christmas presents into my wardrobe and library. I have been really fortunate in the books that I received, from the Swedish poets to biography and historical football.

Eventually I have every thing squirrelled away or tactically located, I hoping to get to sink into a bath but I have run up against the need to eat and to get the recycling bin out. Then there is preparing the fridge to receive the Tesco delivery which entails throwing out all the out of date food. I notice that I have a missed call and call back to find it is the secretary of the surgeon who is going to do my Dupuytrens contracture operation. There is an issue over where I elect to have my operation and price. I confirm the price quoted to me and my understanding that there will be a post operation Occupational Therapy cost. The secretary says that she will ask whether the hospital where the consultant is based will match the quoted price by the first hospital. So I now wait for the secretary to come back to me. So I find myself in a haggle, that’s a bit of a surprise. The Tesco delivery arrival interrupts me as I am cleaning the shower head, so there is a flurry of activity before I complete my shower head engineering.

I stop and settle down to listen to the Infinite Monkey Cage and I began to draft the blog. In no time I realise that the world has gone dark and I am slipping into the evening. So far the day has gone well in that I have not resorted to any other medication than my regular medications. It is true that by 5 0’clock I feel that I am close to running out of spoons. So my evening is likely to be a very sloth like one. It feels like I have pushed myself today, memo to self, “Pace yourself”.

Sunday another crap night. I wake to an aspect of illness.

I take my vitals and find my temperature is good as is my sats, but my heart rate is way up and so is my blood pressure. I self sooth by reminding myself that I have it in black and white that my heart is healthy, so I assume that it is just working hard to fight off the lerg that is attacking my throat. So starts the day. I find that my normal drugs wallet is empty so I set about filling one up for the coming week and once done I take my morning meds. I cannot be deflected from my major fight and all the things I do to fight off my cancer has to stay in place. The perception is that I have hideous sore throat but that this will pass, the rest will not. I’ve not been able to train for a lot of days now and I am feeling it but there is no chance of training at the moment.

The TV schedule is not looking good, there is only one rugby match to watch in the afternoon. So I nap eat yoghurt and honey and sip Lucozade, however I can only do that for so long. I cannot concentrate for long to read so I start to draft poems to keep me going, I manage two.

422
Christmas: ailment upon ill
as my throat closes
my voice deserts me.
Everything lounges
like Magritte objects,
heavy, unwieldy,
every sound an irritant
as my ears
come out in sympathy 
with streaming eyes
and the barbed wire
lodged in my gullet.
Isolated for love
in the back room,
a temporary leper
in a private Spinalonga,
all my props 
a galaxy away
and no sign of a relief mission.
Lozenge after lozenge
is sucked to death
as I will wellness
to return.
Just when I thought 
I was doing well
the hand of fate
has me throttled.

                                                      422 29-12-2024

423

I could die in this room
and no one would notice
at least not until I stopped
visiting the bathroom.

For love and concern
I do this solo, to preserve
my family, and to contain
the contamination. 

My vitals are all over the place,
blood pressure up, heart pounding
but no temperature. 
I cling to my consultants letter.

I have a healthy heart 
but right now its working hard
and I try to help
by eating yoghurt and honey.

I would love to read 
but I cannot focus,
there is a poetry mountain 
waiting to be scaled.

New collections from far off
by people who are extraordinary.
It appears the normal 
are far more complex.

My world is staccato
and jumps from one
salve to another
hopping for relief.

It is the not eating 
that worries me,
the longer I leave it 
the worse it will be.

I only write this in bursts
to jog my brain  to move
and once again I return 
to memories that make me smile.

A line of poetry that hits me
dead centre, of seeing a
kitten fart for the first time 
and jumping round to find the sound.

Inane lines from TV shows,
When a dog handler is asked
"can you drive  a furniture van"
The response: "I've never had a dog that big".

And so it goes 
as I wait 
for nature 
to get on with it.

                                                             423  29-12-2024

At last the rugby is on and I settle down to watch it on my laptop while the rest of the household get on with life, which includes a Christmas jigsaw. As evening comes around I decide to brave the offered Shepherds pie and then I will find something to stream before downing my night meds and trying to sleep. I think I detect signs of recovery but tonight shall down some paracetamol in the hope of sleep.

Friday, an appalling day, my throat so sore and closed, I spent the day in bed sucking throat lozenges and taking paracetamol. By the time night came around I was exhausted but the same pattern lasted all night.

Saturday arrives and at six o’clock I’m eating Greek yogurt and honey, desperate for something to eat that I can swallow. More paracetamol and then back to sleep. It’s going to be a long weekend. But as the Infinite Monkey Cage keeps pointing out, Things Can Only Get Better.

Wednesday, Christmas day, and the world is full of ripping paper and cardboard boxes. Nothing like watching a seventeen month old doing Christmas. There are lots of messages and “Happy Christmas” to do and respond to. The day drifts between feasts, games and of course the King. There is a rare alcoholic drink mixed with the normal routine of medication. One of my presents is a book of Harry Martinson’s poetry, which I find a few minutes to read in the afternoon. A present from my son. At the end of the day I go to bed exhausted but so pleased I was with my newest grandson and family for the day.

Boxing day, Thursday, starts with an untimely waking as my youngest daughter is worried about her young son and so has decided to leave early. They pack quickly and drive off into the early morning mist, eventually to arrive home and to take the grandson to A&E and ultimately home again with antibiotics. I return to bed and get up properly mid morning. When I get up I am feeling grim but get on with reading my meters and tidying away the rest of the Christmas recycling. From then on I get worse, my throat is getting sore and my nose running. By the time I get to take my night meds I am feeling decidedly ill. My last acts of the day are to draft the blog and prepare for the coming day, throat pastilles ready.