Tuesday and the second day of moving on. I go through my getting up rituals and then have a hearty but healthy breakfast. Top of my to do list is to sort out the office so I gather up bins bags, the check the shredder is working and put on a CD and then start the clear out. That’s me for the day apart from a pizza and melon snack. I shredded huge amounts of old documents and anything with any of my details on it. I keep going at this task until gone four in the afternoon and then I am knackered. I’ve jettisoned large amounts of paper and lots of me but it feels as if I have made any real headway. This is clearly going to take time so I shall continue tomorrow.

The evening sees me eat tuna pasta watch a football match and the draft the blog. Not what I had in mind in terms of moving on but I guess all the past stored in the office has to be shifted first, but tomorrow I will have to train before I continue my clear out. Funny how things come together. I hope my shredder holds up and I can be brave enough to keep throwing the past away. Of course there will be somethings that are too precious to loose.

Monday, hopefully the start of a new phase, “Moving On”, its all I can do right now. I’ve successfully rebooted my chemo and so its time to move on and make the most of whatever I can. What better way to start a new phase than to be woken up by my youngest grandson looking bright and curious.

Having been woken up so wonderfully I get up feeling miles better than yesterday and head down for the the bacon sandwich breakfast. The family chat and play with the youngest grandson. Eventually its time to go home so I pack the car and I my partner and I are soon waving good bye to the family and driving home. For a change I drive home the slow non-motorway way, stopping just once for a comfort break. We get home, have a drink and a bun before I unpack and get into my training gear. Its the last thing I want to do but if this is to be a new phase of moving onwards then I have to make an effort. I go to the garage and get onto the rower and set myself an half hour session. Its tough but I am determined to reach the 6 kilometre standard, and I do.

I am pleased I made the effort. Tea follows and then I settle down to draft the blog catch up. It takes a while but I finally get there. From tomorrow the sweets, buns, cakes and my sweet tooth have to go and I need to up my physical activity. Easy to write but this is a new phase, so onwards. Tonight it’s night meds and finger splint time. The dandelion life clock remains the same, as does the desire to spend my time with you.

Saturday and I wake up in the hotel bed and prepare for breakfast by downing my morning meds and climbing into jeans as the weather is cloudy and a bit nippy. My partner and I go to breakfast and dig into the full range while sitting almost alone in one of the dining areas. The staff seem a bit disorientated as one of them did not realise they had two breakfasting rooms. It feels like a continuation of yesterdays comic dining experiences at the hotel. Breakfast was adequate and uneventful apart from my partner nicking someone else’s toast that they had left in the toast, no doubt to locate where the marmalade was. Apart from that all went well.

With the car packed we paid our bill, messaged our daughter that we were arriving imminently and set off on the ten minute drive. We arrived to find the youngest grandson happily playing and appearing to be happy to see us. Having settled in, unpacked and had a snack the family went off to a garden centre that has a huge pond with enormous carp in it. We had a snack and a drink and then bought two bags of fish food so that the youngest grandson could feed the fish. Like all garden centres these days this one had a vast array of other goods, some related to gardens and gardening others to anything that the management think they can get people to buy, so there is a mixture of useful stuff and extraneous crap. We duly explore the centre until we had had enough and the youngest Grandson was showing signs of sleepiness.

We return home and before long there is pie to eat before the small one’s bath and bedtime. We whiled away the evening until it was time for bed, when I went into my usual meds and finger splint routine before trying to settle down. I did not succeed very well and I found myself unsettled and having difficulty sleeping. This sometimes happens on the meds I am on, but eventually I got to drift off in a rather on off sort of way.

Sunday, the 200th day of CHEMO II THE REBOOT, the day I had decided would be the last of this phase of the blog. Two hundred days of a reboot is long enough and it is time for a rethink about where I am at with my continuing fight against my cancer. Its serious stuff and quite complex given the goodness of my arithmetic, vitals and so on and the ups adn downs of of my energy levels according to where I am in both of my medication 28 day cycles. Today the family are going out to a mini railway in the forest that has attractions and activities to do, I have been looking forward to it but I wake feeling absolutely fatigued. I have no energy whatsoever and just want to sleep. I am so frustrated but it would be stupid of me to go out, I would only spoil the family day out so the family go with out me and I end up laying in bed trying to sleep. The problem with this kind of fatigue is that at times it won’t let you sleep, so the brain keeps going but the body stops. Its tricky. I try and capture it in a poem, more a scribble than a poem.

441
Every once in a while my cancer
gives me a kicking.
This Sunday I lay in bed as family
go for a day out.
I slept poorly and when I came 
to look in my cutlery draw of energy 
it was empty.
Not a single spoon to sustain me.
There I was thinking things were
getting as good as they can get,
when this happens.
I could weep with frustration .
I've no creative juice
to come up with a dazzling line
or memorable phrase to bury 
this in another's brain,
to touch their soul
or tug at their being. 
It's all flat and prosaic
and once again I slump
with the thought, 
"not again".
                                                      441 13-04-2025

The family return and eat the crock pot meal that was put in during the morning to have in the evening. Once again the youngest grandson is bathed and bedded before the rest of us watch a film together and then go off to bed. I do not bother with my finger splint as I want to give myself the best opportunity to sleep.

Its Friday and all that there is to do today is travel and indulge in a night in an hotel. So today is easy to do, take my vitals, have a smidgen of breakfast, shower and pack the car. Of course there are some practical bits to add on like checking the tyres, putting petrol in the car and double checking that I have my meds and night finger splint packed. With all this done its time to set off. The resulting journey, being guides by Google Maps turns out to be the longest route ever to the hotel we are staying in. What should have been about a two hour journey turns into a three hour plus one.

We arrive at the hotel and have afternoon tea and scones before even getting to the room that turns out to be an almost mini bungalow. While my partner continues to knit a new hooded jersey for the youngest grandson I work my way through the days crosswords. So the evening arrives and we go to the bar to eat, eschewing the “fine dining” restaurant, we have played that one before, nice surroundings and over priced food, we order our meals and settle down to conversation and, in my case, a small glass of Merlot.

On Sunday the this section of the blog, “CHEMO II THE REBOOT” will reach day two hundred and it feels like that is long enough for a “reboot”. I’ve been on this chemo now for almost two years and I seem to be tolerating it well, I’ve recovered from whatever it was that forced me to abort cycle 16, the toes that I dropped a paving slab on have recovered , my hand has almost recovered completely from the operation to correct the Dupuytren’s Contracture and I am also training again, so it seems to me an opportune time to enter another phase on my prostate cancer journey. It seems to me that it is almost as good as it could get again, not quite perfect by any means but much better. So I think I am going to use Monday to launch a new phase to lose weight and increase my fitness with a view to once again traveling and going abroad. Its a big fight and I will still need my internal visualisation of Rocket fighting because cancer is relentless and I must match it but I need to get on the front foot and get into “Its as good as it gets” mode. Its also time to publish another poetry collection, which I may call “As good as it gets”. All of this I discuss with my partner over dinner. So on Monday look out for the new phase and a new picture of Rocket.

Post dinner I am back in the hotel room and ready to draft the blog while my partner continues to knit. The usual rituals kick in, night medication, donning the finger splint and preparing for sleep, only in a strange room and in a smaller bed. To sleep, perchance to dream.

Thursday and I wake to find my partner up and about. I dawdle and take my vitals (all good) and check my messages and emails. By the time I get up the sun is out and there is button research to do. I take my morning meds augmented by the Vitamin D and join the hunt for button shops that are open. Normally it would be a quick trip into to the city but its a bit of a flog so the search moves to closer to home. There is a button shop in the next village so my partner and I drive over to it. After some tricky navigating we arrive at the shop to find it is closed on a Thursday! Why? Why close on a Thursday and be open the rest of the working week? Its a mystery. A quick re Google shows that there is another button shop close, in fact very close by, so we walk to it and end up buying two sets of buttons. Its a strange little shop with the proprietor stitching a quilt together on a big work surface as counter. I cannot believe that it makes money, but clearly it must do business enough.

We return home via a garden centre where I get something to eat before returning home. To my surprise and joy there is a letter for me from a friend. So I sit and read it over and over. It is full of observations and news and sharing of how the current world is being seen. Its a real pleasure and I savour it. Having spent the morning button hunting I have to train, I do not feel like it but as I am away over the weekend I will not have a chance to train. I also need to work off the stiffness in my arm where I had my booster COVID jab yesterday. Once in my training kit I get into the garage and get onto the rowing machine. I cannot face an hour session so select to go for forty five minutes. Its a tough session to get going in even with a running music session in my ears that is meant to motivate me. My body feels sluggish and the distance tells me that I am struggling to get any rhythm going. BY the end of the session I am just glad to have it over with, but at least I managed to sneak over the 8 kilometre mark.

After the session I sit and record it in my journal before getting into my gardening gear. I spend a while putting some pea netting up for the sweet peas that have been put in on a couple of pots. As I am putting up more netting the garden guy arrives so I stop my netting activity and make him a coffee. We chat for while and plan a bit more of the garden revival. I leave him chatting to my partner and finish my netting and then return to the sofa where I start to draft the blog with an early football match on the TV in the back ground.

The evening is sunny and during it there is food and football and the initial packing for tomorrows journey to the hotel as the first step of our weekend away. Tonight will be the last night in my own bed for three nights, a prospect that I always find a bit of a challenge, I think it is the travel I am wary of as I am never quite sure how I am going to travel. Sometimes it is not a problem at all other times it feels a bit tricky in terms of how confident I am in my body. It just seems to be one of the things that comes along with the cancer no matter what the arithmetic tells me. So it will be off to bed with my night meds and my finger splint on for a nights sleep in a familiar bed. All the while waiting for inspiration to strike me.

Another Wednesday and today marks the last day of Cycle 23 of the chemo therapy tablets. My impression is, according to the oncologist letter that arrived a couple of days ago, that I am tolerating the drugs pretty well. Apart from the abandoned cycle 16, where I am convinced I was ill with some form of virus that gave me angina like symptoms, I have managed to keep a constant average blood pressure, good SATS, a stable temperature and a good heart rate. So the arithmetic, apart from the cycle 16 hiccup, is good. So tomorrow I will embark on cycle 24 and hopefully cycle 25 before my next oncology review at the end of May. So the only thing to do is to keep going and trying to holds a balance between a monk like regime and over indulgence.

Before getting up I check my vitals and then my messages and social media. Nothing of note there so I get up and make breakfast. As its the end of a cycle day there is the blood pressure spread sheet to update and the cycle averages to be calculated and recorded. I take my morning meds and then prepare to go out. My partner and I go to two garden centres to get more slate and plants before I get into a T short to go to the GP surgery for my COVID booster.

When I arrive at the GP surgery I am greeted by a chirpy person and the practice nursey who jabs me regularly. The nurse laughs at the sight of me and said something to the effect of “another injection.” I am handed a piece a paper which I hand to the nurse who ushers me to a chair. I just about get my arse down on it and she is at me needle in hand and then I am done. So as I leave I mutter that I will see her in another fifteen days for my regular jab and head for the co-op. I get a paper and head for home, where I settle down to do the days crosswords while my partner continues to plant plants in the garden pots.

So the afternoon passes and my partner discovers that I have come home at which point I put garden things away and see what she has done. The garden is looking better than I was expecting it to as this time of year given the distress it suffered last year when so much disturbance was caused by the building work. A lot of things have come up and other things have survived. Nature has a way of confounding the odds.

Eventually its time to retreat to the sofa and check my emails and messages before starting to draft the blog. As I am doing that Amazon deliver some pea netting and crucially a new pair of sunglasses. My relatively new ones had disappeared and I could not find them for love nor money and in the end just bought a new pair given that the weather has been so sunny over the last few days. I wasted no time get them un packaged and on my face, I’m pleased with them and I am pleased to say they are Chinese without any tariffs applied to them, so up yours Trump, it will be a left hand drive Jaguar at a knock down price next.

The early evening meal is taken and I continue to draft the blog until its time to hut round for tonight’s football match, which I shall watch on my laptop leaving the TV free for my partner to find something entertaining. My plan is to have an easy day tomorrow and putter around in the garden and around the house till I pack to go away on Friday. I will of course need to train as when away I am unable to. I am trusting that tonight I shall not be bothered by my COVID jab and that all will be well. My usual night meds and finger splint rituals will kick in and sleep will follow. That’s the hope every night.

Tuesday and on the face of it I’ve an easy day ahead of me as I wake up. I take my vitals as my partner goes of for physio and I get up and get into my training kit. Breakfast is a scant toast affair that goes down with my morning meds and hot water. I clear the kitchen and put in a load of washing before checking my messages and WhatsApp. The world appears to be in order, or at least my world seems to be chuntering along as normal. My GP is offering a COVID booster tomorrow so I book myself in, why not, it might be beneficial, who knows, its just another round of medical Russian roulette.

I finally get into the garage and strap myself onto the rower. Its a three day gap since I rowed last so I decide to go for an hours session. These are always sedate and slowly paced affairs but build to a final burn and deep regrets that I should have gone for a shorter more intense session . Today was no different but I used and BBC motivational tape to keep me going despite not quite getting the timings right. I lagged behind the tape by about fifteen minutes so while I was being congratulated on a first half hour I was feeling crap after fifteen minutes of actual rowing. However I plugged away and got to the end of the session having managed eleven plus kilometres, which is not bad given I’ve not done an hour for a while.

With the session recorded and a Red Bull drunk I wander into the garden and start to do odd and ends, which turns out to be some extensive weeding out of the pots and one of the smaller flower beds. My partner has returned adn gone out to lunch with a friend so I continue to beaver away in the sunshine until I can do no more. I have extended my days “to do” list so that when my partner returns from her lunch I suggest we go to one of the nearby garden centres and get some plumb slate and a new rake. So off we go and spend time picking up bags of slate and assessing the merits of the range of rakes available. By the time we have completed our assessment the garden centre café has closed! My toast breakfast is now no longer sustaining me.

Once home we set to and rake out a narrow bed behind the front hedge and sow wild flower seeds, after which I spread the slate under the new raised cold frame. By the time I’ve cleared away the tools and debris I am about spoonless so retreat to me end of the sofa, drink cold Lucozade and book a night in a hotel for myself and my partner for an upcoming trip we are going to make this weekend. All that is left for me to do now is draft the blog, order in an Indian and watch football this evening. The elephant in the room is my lack of progress in clearing and organising the office space now that my partner has retired. Hopefully I can get some focus and get this done soon. I am feeling guilty that it is ages since I wrote to my friends, this is important to me so I will begin another round of letter writing from the Shed now that I am able to write once again post hand operation. For now its time to read the Velveteen Rabbit, order food and slide into the evening. I’m at the stage where I have run out of spoons (energy) and running on automatic until I hit the point where I go through my pre bed rituals and then maximum oblivion until tomorrow.

Sunday, a day to do bugger all, and that’s exactly what I did, apart from the usual medications and a trip to a far away garden centre to buy a diffuser, one of those modern air wicks with sticks and a jar of smelly stuff. Naturally there were other attractions like plants, of which we bought a few and a café at which we dined on cheese scones and ginger beer, before retuning home to have an evening meal and watch Grace, another police drama series that could be half as long if the writers understood I could not give a bugger about the personal baggage of every god damn character in the show. By all means find a body and set about finding the killer but I do not need to know that the detective is a having marital adjustment problems or that they suffer from existential anxt brought on by the job they chose to do. Any way Brentford got a point against Chelsea and donkeys still ate carrots and I took my evening meds and went to bed in anticipation of the next days visit to the surgeon who operated on my hand.

Monday and I am beaten to the shower by my partner ( I guess this will happen a lot now that she has retired). I wait my turn and then take my meds before getting ready to drive across town to see the surgeon who operated on my hand. Its lovely and sunny as my partner goes off to the dentist and drive off. My appointment is at 11:20 and I am on time, like the prompt person I am. I then wait for twenty five minutes before I get called in for the short consultation ever. The surgeon looks at my scared hand and asks if I can form a fist, I show him can and we chat about my ongoing physio with the hand and scar specialist. That was it and I was out again and driving home. The bottom line is I am left to the boring maintenance and ongoing nurturing of my hand on my own four the next four months. The other reality is that I am developing “hand Tourettes” as I find my self doing sets of hand exercises at odd moments, this includes repetitions of “the duck”, “the hook” , “the fist” and “the spread” plus a few contractions. Of course there are also the Nivea crème massages of my palm and the rest of the fingers about four or five times a day. At night all this ends as I strap on my finger splint over the latex gel dressing that clings to my scars like an over affectionate octopus.

I get home to find my partner in the garden as I go to bring in my towels. She is waiting to be picked up to go and visit her mother, a weekly trip. I putter about putting new lamps in the kitchen lights while I wait for Tesco to deliver. With that excitement out of the way I can settle down to a couple of fried egg rolls and a concerted period of doing absolutely nothing. I do some research on purple slate for the garden and a surprise arrives, a copy of The Velveteen Rabbit. Its a lovely story and a lovely re-read. By the time my partner is home I am printing off the waste collection timetable for 2025/26 and she is busy planting seeds in the garden. I note that there are a lot of maintenance tasks that need doing so I think if tomorrow is sunny I might have a go a doing some of the boring but necessary jobs around the garden, there is much staking, raking and pot clearing that needs to be done. However tomorrow must be a training day, I must rouse myself in the morning and row, and row hard. Its time to begin the long haul back to fitness and well being so I need to get physically active regularly and to start the brain feeding again with the work needed to prepare the fourth collection in the Cancer Years series of poetry collections. I have twenty eight new poems to put into a collection and by the time I have finished the manuscript preparation there will probably be more than thirty, which is more than enough for a single sitting read.

In the post today was my latest oncology summary from the team to my GP, which of course I get a copy. Apparently I am tolerating the medication well and they (the oncology boys and girls) are happy to keep on giving me three month blocks of the chemo therapy drugs. Come June I will have been on this stuff for two years, if I can keep fit I see no reason why I should not continue for a while yet. For me it is the fatigue that I experience and the bouts of frustration with my self that get to me. I have “to do” lists and plans for the garden that I want to get done but I am not sure at times if it is the medication, my age or sloth that is stopping me from doing it. I think I am trying my hardest but I can never be sure. There are of course options but as always there are other things going on.

437
I could do yoga – once or twice a week
I could eat less sweets – a ban
I could eat fewer cakes – a ban 
I could read more – less TV
I could write more – less lazing around
I could exercise more – everyday
I could communicate more – talk to people
I could play music – less fantasy time
I could do less “phone” – more real time.
All of this I could do
But on balance my cancer 
Wouldn’t give a fuck.
I just might be more knowledgeable,
And fitter with fewer
Side effects from my drugs,
But I am not curable,
I’m being palliated,
managed and consoled.
How do you think that feels?
Yep, like Crunchies, Red Bull,
Football and violent TV,
flat out on a recliner
watching my garden overgrow
and daring myself to be happy.
						437  06-03-2025 

Saturday and I laze in bed reflecting and finally rouse myself to do my vitals and get up. I have breakfast with my partner and then I get ready to drive to the dinner venue. I take my morning meds and get on my way. Its a strange and perverse world in which technology seems to choose to work or not. I set my phone up in the car and everything visually works perfectly and provides the first verbal instruction but then stops. My Google maps becomes mute. So I undertake the journey to the venue slavishly following the blue line along the roads.

There were five of us dining, a chance to catch up, eat together and to laugh together. Of course we also put the world the world to rights and to condemn the Bastard Trump for being such a prick. We paid our bills and chose another date to meet but decide that it will be at a different venue. The food was okay but over priced so we will find another place to meet.

I drove home using the car Sat Nav and became aware that too would not talk clearly to me. All I was getting was muffled whispering out of one speaker, so soft that I could not hear what was being said so once again I was following the blue line, fortunately I know the knew the way back that my car suggested.

Once home I settle down and recover from the journey and then start to draft the blog. The evening is slow but there is Beyond Paradise and Death in Paradise to catch up on. I find it difficult to draft the blog, my brain feels sticky and treacly sluggish at the moment. I’m not feeling inspired and I feel that I am about to run out of spoons (energy). Night meds loom and so does the finger splint. It is the little things that need to be done that become draining, but I can lay in in the morning.

Friday and I am awake early again. I have time to do my vitals and check my messages and socials. Then I am up and into my training gear. After a brief breakfast I find that my dosettes are empty so I go through my dosette filling ritual for the next two weeks. I make a note that in two weeks time I shall have to buy my own vitamin D. With that important chore done I move on to updating my blood pressure data base, which takes a while as I load up the data. Thankfully my average blood pressure over the latest cycle is stable, regular and well within normal range, so I am quite chuffed. So far so good.

Next up is the finishing off of the cold frame by putting some seed trays in the cold frame and fill them with compost ready for my partner to sow them with Cosmos seeds. This goes well but the inner liner needs re-pining, so I find a long ago remembered box of ladybird drawing pins and re-fix the liner. Only now do I have the time to clear the kitchen and think about training. However the post arrives and in it is the De Montfort Hall programme for the rest of the year and I notice that Tim Minchin is playing a night. In excitement I dash to the website only to find it is already sold out. However I notice that La Traviata is playing so I eagerly book tickets adn a parking place. I guess one out of two is not bad. Now I am free to go and train.

I head to the garage and strap myself onto the rower and just as I am about to start my session my phone rings and I find it is my doctors surgery ringing me to find out how I am on my blood thinner. I do a quick checklist and provide the information I am asked for adn then I am left to my session. Slightly irked by the interruption I start my session at pace and carry one as long as I can. It turns out that by thirty minutes I have rowed a personal best. Well “Go me” is all I can say to that.

With a sense of achievement I retreat to the sofa and record my session before starting to draft the blog. My day from here is predictable as my partner and I are going for a meal with friends so I shall be showering and dressing up in adult clothes.