Monday and I wake up after a good nights sleep and fairly soon I am up and getting ready to accompany my partner to the gym, she to do sensible exercise and me to have breakfast and sit in the lounge and write letters. On arrival I order a bottle of water and a bacon brioche bun to be told that they have run out of brioche buns, I can have sourdough bread toasted or not. I opt for sourdough untoasted with brown sauce on the bacon. When it arrived I discovered that I know sod all about sourdough bread. One I should have had it toasted and two I should have chosen something else altogether. My consider opinion is that sourdough bread is an aberration and a baking abomination. It is tasteless pap that is beyond bland and tasteless, it is a pointless food best suited to being used as blotting paper. I can’t believe it has become a “thing” amongst a certain group of people.

While a chewed my way through the sourdough wedge I wrote a letter on my laptop to a friend up north. While writing I also listened to another episode of Mark Steels In Town. So this is what I do until my partner reappears, showered and ready for lunch. We go off to one of our favourite garden centres that does the best food in their restaurant. On arrival we discover it is “Golden Monday” where anyone over 60 can get a cheap meal and as a consequence it is pact with people who look like they are on an outing from either A&E or the care home. My partner and I eat and before we leave I buy two camellias to finish off the garden master plan.

On returning home my partner goes off to the dentist and I finish my letters. There is of course a quick trip to the post office to send my letters and to pick up a paper and a box of Tunnock’s tea cakes. Back home I do the days cross words and then sort out some life admin like ordering my usual monthly drugs. With the return of my partner and the evening coming we dine and my partner then goes off to do her singing lesson while draft the blog. I have Mark Steels in Town in my earbuds as I draft the blog nibbling a Tunnock’s tea cake. With this done I take to Amazon and order the goods I need to undertake phase one of project 2 in the garden, so by the end of the week I will ready to go, the only the weather is likely to throw a spanner in the works. This strategy means that I can devote tomorrow to training and further letter writing. While I draft the log I get a message from m y friend who is still recovering from long COVID to say she has caught COVID again, it is such rotten luck. So the evening will pass to the point where I take my meds and go to bed hopping for another good nights sleep. Tomorrows excitement will be the Tesco delivery, which I must remember to update before going to bed.

Friday and I wake up after a reasonable nights sleep. There is a plan for the morning so I take my vitals (all good, continuing the trend) and then I am up showering in readiness to the GP surgery to get my autumn COVID and Flu vaccines. I have time to walk down via the village shop to pick up a paper, I plan a village café full English as a reward once I am jabbed. At the GP surgery I try to book in but they have not got my paper work ready so I hang around while they produce some for me. After a few minutes I am handed a sheet of paper head with the number two and told to wait to be called. Instantly I am waved at and as I walk over to jab station 2 I remove my fleece. A couple of questions and the COVID jab is in my arm adn a woolly cloud attached as I have bled a bit. Within a blink of an eye I’ve got the flu jab in my right arm and this time there is no blood. Fleece on I am directed out of the back door of the surgery.

With the major job of the day done I head for the village café for my full English. I am mortified to find the village café is closed, the owners have had the temerity to go on a three week holiday! I feel slightly crushed I always enjoy the breakfast there and the fact that they only deal in cash. The local pub has opened up one of its bars as “L___’s Café so feeling disloyal but hungry I head for the pub. Actually the place is quite nice and the menu slightly more “fancy”. I order eggs royal and settle down to do the crosswords. That is me for a couple of hours before I meander home, meeting a neighbour on the way who had just returned from Spain to promptly catch COVID. Lucky I had just had my jab!

Once home I am soon joined by my partner and we go off to a garden centre for lunch. There is some shopping to be done and we meander a bit. This particular garden centre seems to be running down and many of the things we were expecting to see are not there. I wonder if it is going to survive its parent companies woes. We return home where I settle down to watch a rugby match and drift into the evening which includes a new series of Have I Got News for You. The household goes to bed and I am left to take my night meds and get ready to go to bed however I stumble over the film Joker and I am hooked. I had not seen it before and I just watch it entranced by Joachim Phoenix’s performance. It is a tour de force and spell binding. Needless to say I had a late night.

Saturday I woke up and felt very stiff from hard row on Thursday, I take my vitals and they are once again good. I breakfast with my partner and then we both head for the garden. My partner plants the flowers we bought yesterday while I get to grips with the piles of rubbish and old pots that have mounted up by the top shed. This is Hippo Bag time So I wheelbarrow out load after load of stuff to he Hippo Bag where the garden stuff joins the disassembled exercise bike that was already in the bag. Its a long several hours as the bag gets filled and finally tied off ready for collection. I am knackered and after clearing everything away I flop on the sofa and stare at the TV where there is a rugby match on. I finish writing a letter and then its time for Strictly, film week. I am not sure why I like it, I think it is the frustrated dancer in me, shame I have no sense of rhythm, or tune and two left feet. I go to bed feeling very stiff and absolutely spoonless. My night meds taken I settle down.

Sunday adn I wake up and damn me I am stiff. I lay in bed waiting for my back to ease and then take my vitals, (all good there). I get up slowly and have breakfast with my partner who then goes off to shop while I clear the kitchen. With my chores done, I get my arithmetic up to date. When I look at the cycle average blood pressure readings its clear that for the last two or three cycles there has been a clear rise in my blood pressure. Since having a break from the cancer meds and starting a new cycle my blood pressure has clearly and significantly declined, by the time of my next oncology review I will have the information I need to argue for staggered cycles to avoid the fatigue building up. With my sums done I watch todays rugby match but I can feel myself getting stiffer. While I watch I order new work trousers, book tickets to Stuart Lee v Man Wulf and renew my PC cleaner software. In the end there is only one thing to do, and that’s to bite the bullet and to train. I get myself into my gear and go to the garage to strap into my rower. I am only going to do 30 minutes so I get on with it. At the end I am rewarded by my best thirty minutes yet.

I am surprised by this session. When I look back at my performances since August when I started to train again I find that I rowed a full kilometre more today. That’s good progress over exactly two months. So despite my feeling stiff and not like training I have come good. Its very reinforcing to se these results so I need to continue to train regularly and to be confident enough to push myself a bit more.

The evening meal is followed by the Strictly results show, no spoilers here but for once the great British public seem to have got it right. The TV provides the wallpaper against which I draft the blog that I have neglected over the last couple of days. The evening passes and then its time to take my night meds and see if I can get a good nights sleep.

Thursday and I’ve stuff to do and probably not enough spoons to do it all, so I take my vitals (all good) and get up and straight into my training gear. With my morning meds taken I head for the garage and my rower. I get myself strapped in and set a session for 45 minutes and then I go for it. I’m tired of being careful all the time so I up my rate and get on with it. The outcome is very pleasing, in fact spectacular. I get further than before on this cycle of exercise and at the 30 minute mark I had done a 1000 strokes, this is good.

Once I have recorded my session I clear the kitchen and make breakfast. With a good start to the day I gather spades and a rake and head for the front garden. I level up the pile of chippings left by the stump grinding and move all our bins to a better location. By the time I am finished I’m knackered, so I get the tools away and retreat to the sofa for a rest. A bacon sandwich later I’m feeling more chipper. The afternoon is spent writing letters. I make my usual trip to the post office and pick up a paper so that I can do the days crosswords, another successful day without the use of Google to complete them. The evening comes around and I am fit for nothing apart from an early football match, a film and one episode of All Creatures Great and Small before drafting the blog.

Night meds get taken and I am off to bed knowing that tomorrow I have a morning trip to the GPs for my autumnal COVID and Flu vaccine jabs. Hopefully that will be all the jabs I ned to see me through the winter. I feel like a dog going for its jabs. All I have to do is to remember to train tomorrow, a loosener after todays good effort. I have to say things seem to be going well, dare I hope to spread my wings again?

Wednesday and I wake knowing what my day holds, vitals (good again), and then the odd chore before a day of letter writing. That is exactly how it turned out apart from a quick trip to the post office for stamps, ( the cost is outrageous), crosswords and a crockpot meal that I put on the wrong setting. (disaster), followed by football, Where the Crawdads Sing and drafting the blog. Its as simple as that until night meds and bed. However the weather looks like it might pick up tomorrow so training, gardening, cleaning the dishwasher and writing are all on the potential to do list. Some days are just days, what I get done has to be sufficient while I wait the outcome of my heart scans and the coming oncology review. When they are done I can plan a strategy until then I wait and keep on an even keel. The real challenge is to get up when I wake up and not faff about before I actual get my arse out of bed.

Tuesday and partner goes to work and I wake up slowly taking my vitals as I go. They are good so its a good start to the day. I ring the GP surgery and book my next set of bloods and then check my messages and social media. I take a look at the news before finally getting up and getting into my training gear. It’s pouring with rain and the garage with my rower in it is quite chilly. I strap in and decide to go for a 45 minute session. I get myself going determined to get myself over the 200 PAI points mark on my fitness app. I seem to get into to a rhythm quite quickly and the session goes well, in fact its the best 45 minutes I’ve done since I got back to training.

With my session recorded I clear the kitchen and then make a late breakfast. There is some organising to do before I clamber out of my training kit and start to think about receiving the Tesco delivery and occupying myself on this very rainy day. My solution is to write letters. The Shed is not the best place to be right now so I opt to type a letter. Part way through my letter writing the Tesco van arrived, backed into the drive way and a very wet and pissed off looking driver appeared. Needless to say there was not a lot of chat just some focussed delivery business. The goodies get squirrelled away and I return to my letter. Once finished, my letter gets sealed as usual and I debate whether the rain is too heavy to go to the pot office. I decide to make the trip so that I can get cake for the guest we are expecting tonight.

Pulling on my blue boots and my prison issue weather proof parka I make the trip to post my letter and but a paper. The cake I buy is suspiciously cheap and from a brand I do not recognise but in this weather I’m not going to slog it down to the village co-op. Back home I fall upon the crosswords in the paper and that is where I am when my partner returns home followed shortly our over night guest.

After a cup of tea and a biscuit my partner and our guest go off to a local restaurant and I make myself tea and settle down to a night of European football. As the games roll on and my eldest daughter goes to the gym I am left alone to draft the blog. This is how the evening passes until its time for night meds and bed. Its been a good first day of October, tomorrow I may decide to have a rest day from training adn concentrate on getting up to date with my letter writing, I’ve been out of contact with too many friends of late and need to catch up.

So here we go, its Monday, last day of the month and the day after a really lovely weekend. Now its back to battle and it would appear rain! My partner is up and reading to go to the gym so I do my vitals, which continue to be good, with that out of the way I set up Tesco delivery and then get up and pull on my training gear. I down my morning meds on the way to the garage and strap into the rower and set the session for an hour, if I am going to get fit and stave off the side effects of my cancer drugs then I need to push myself. So I set off and grind and grind and grind. By the end I am hot and sweaty but pleased with myself. I have done 10+k, that will do me, its 500 meters further than I did last time I rowed for an hour.

I record the session in my journal and notice that the garden swing seat cover has come loose so I venture out to find a zip left undone and an eyelet ripped free from its tether. I do a quick fix and return to the house to shower. Refreshed and clean I clear the kitchen, put my washing in just as my partner returns from the gym. We lunch together and chat and look at a possible showering aid for her mother. By the time I have finished with the tape measure and watching product videos it’s time to get my washing into the tumble dryer as the rain continues outside. My afternoon is then spent editing the third of The Cancer Years collections. The draft that I have been sent is a mess and I notice for the first time that the poem numbering was awry in the first two collections. This means I have to change the numbering font and some other content of some of the poems. I eventually get to the point where I have something to send to the Americans along with a somewhat terse email along the lines of “this is what I am supposed to be paying you for”. With my efforts winging there way to the project manager I start to draft the blog. There is washing to reclaim from the tumble dryer and the evening meal to have. No idea what the evening holds but I can feel myself flagging.

Evening turns out to be a binge watch of Joan and then night meds before bed. This period of time is a waiting game. I am waiting to see if my cancer pills bring down my PSA, nothing unusual there but now I am also waiting for the results of my heart scans and I have no idea how long it is going to take the radiography consultant to view the results and then write a report before sending it to the cardiologist, who will then decide when or if he is going to see me. So its all a bit up in the air at the moment. It’s just there are more balls in the air for this particular juggle.

Saturday and its a day that my youngest daughter comes to visit. So I get up lazily and get ready to greet my daughter have taken my morning meds. I read for a while and watch part of an early football match until my youngest daughter arrives. The family have an early lunch and my daughters go shopping while I watch a rugby match. Then comes the highlight of the day, an uber taxi into town to see Hairspray at the Curve theatre. It was a joy to be out with my family and to be seeing live music. From the comfort of the first row of the balcony it was a brilliant night. At the end of the show we Uber home where everyone goes to bed while I empty the dishwasher, take my meds and follow them. Its been a good family day with all of us having time to catch up and to rest.

Sunday is a late start for every one as we all take a chance to lay in and catch up with our sleep. Slowly the family get up, I take my morning meds and we all go for Sunday lunch at a local pub. Its a real treat to go out to eat on a Sunday and we are amongst very few who are doing so. The food is good and plentiful and we leave the pub well fed and satisfied. My youngest daughter says farewell to us and I watch my local rugby team lose on TV. I finally finish my current read and and start to draft the blog. The evening sees the binge watch of Ludwig followed by night meds and then bed in the hope that I continue my run of good night sleep and I am rewarded for resisting the temptation of a cold Red Bull. Back to training tomorrow after a sustaining weekend.

Thursday and the wind of change is in my nostrils as I wake up, there are things to do today. I check my vitals that are good. Without too much procrastination I get up and into my training gear. I take my morning meds and head for the garage. I am soon astride the rower and setting up a 45 minute session. I crack on pull quite hard through the session until a friend rings me. As I have my ear buds in I can slow my rowing and carry on the conversation. We catch up with how we are and what is going on, I confess falling asleep on yesterdays scan. When we are through I carry on my row and finish the session quite strongly. There are signs I am getting fitter or perhaps less fatigued by medication.

I shower and prepare to go to the hospital for my comparison scan. I have not eaten since yesterday a requirement of the scan. To fill in time I read the meters and do other low level house maintenance tasks until its time to drive to the hospital. On arrival I find my way to nuclear medicine and check. As per usual there is time to read some of my book. I am called in by the same nurse as yesterday who goes through the procedure and inevitable sticks a canula in my arm, same arm as yesterday as I am told I have “good veins” in that arm. Now there is a recommendation for a junkie. She irradiates me and removes the canular. I am free to go for a whole hour to go and eat and drink whatever I like.

Hospital restaurants are strange places, I feel like an interloper amongst the medics who appear to be eating appalling diets. I grab the last all day breakfast sandwich, a fruit flapjack and a bottle of water. I settle down and read some more of my book as I nibble way through what is claimed to be sausage, egg and bacon with a hint of tomato sauce squished into soggy white bread. Strangely satisfying. Having eaten I find my way back to the nuclear medicine with its “irradiated people” only where I can have a pre-emptive piss before my scan. The operator that I had yesterday pops to tell me that they are running about twenty minutes behind so I continue to read until I am called.

Todays operator is an old person who puts the connectors on me and then presses the scanner up against my chest. She adjusts the scan and tests the alignment and then tells me that its going to take nine minutes, that’s half a minute longer than yesterdays scan. I wonder way it takes longer to do the relaxation scan than yesterdays stress scan. I do what I am told and mimic the actions of a statues for nine minutes. The operator appears from behind the glass bubble she is sitting and prepares me for the laying down scan. She looks at me and says “I noticed there was some movement on yesterdays scan, we don’t want to repeat that again today do we?” This woman was capable of putting a horses head in my bed. So now I am petrified of falling asleep or breathing too heavily and stare at the ceiling determined not to move. I thought I did okay but when she comes out of the glass bubble, she says “There was a little bit of movement but I think it will be okay”. I swear I did not move but I could have micro napped I guess. She ushers me out and tells me to wait till she tells me I can go. I do what I am told and she duly tells me I can go home.

I arrive home and settle to refill my drugs wallets for the next two weeks. Today, post scans, is time to put my cancer pills back on the medication menu. So today is the start of a new cycle, cycle 17. Hence the renaming of the phase of the blog to Chemo II the Reboot. I’m back into the battel with my PSA and my prostate cancer in earnest. I’m very tired after my activities of the last two days so I watch a football match, part of some train hack thing and then tack my meds (cancer pills included) and head for bed knowing that the Americans have sent me a new edit of my next collection which is wrong.

Friday and I appear to have slept quite well, I wake to her my partner doing business work in the office down stairs. I check my vitals, again good, and then check messages and end up organising our builder folk to return in January to extend our block paving frontage. I eventually get up and make a late breakfast before trying to re-edit the book manuscript. Its a pain to do and I am glad to stop in order to go with my partner for early afternoon cake and drink at a local garden centre. The place has good food and shop but the only plants they have right now are pansies. Of course we buy more on the way out, you can never have enough pansies. We have a long chat over our snacks and drinks and then return home. My partner settles down to read and I with an immense piece of will power change into my training gear. I go to the garage and get myself sorted to do a thirty minute session. Its difficult to get going but I do and end up with reasonable session.

I record the session and then set about catching up with the blog for the last two days, stopping only for tea. The evening will be filled with a rugby match and perhaps some TV before I take my night meds and go to bed knowing that tomorrow my youngest daughter is visiting do that we can all go out to see Hair Spray in the evening. Its going to be a full family weekend.

Wednesday, I wake to the sense that I am on a time table, its hospital day. I take my vitals that are good and get up. As I have time I get into my training gear and head for the garage and the rower. I strap in and get going on a half hour session. Part the way through I began to think “this is bloody hard work” and then I realise that the resistance level is up a notch and then it made sense why I found my trainers stored the wrong way round on the foot bars. It later turned out that my eldest daughter had been on my rower. I continued through the half hour and finished my first resistance Level 5 row for over ten months.

So having had a more energetic 30 minutes than I had bargained for I shower, take my meds and organise myself to go to the hospital. My drive here was smooth and I parked up with plenty of time. I consciously ambled to the nuclear medicine department and presented myself to reception. The first chore was to fill in a wellness questionnaire to make sure I was not breathing germs all over the department adn then I was invited to take a seat. Rummaging through my bag I got my book out and started to read Before We Forget Kindness, the book I have been keeping reserve in anticipation of long hospital waits.

Its not long before I get called in and introduced to a double act who check my name and date of birth and begin to explain what is going to happen to me. They stick contact patches all over my chest and ankles and wire me up. The woman of the team shoves a canula in my arms and as she does so the team explain that they are going to give me two lots of drugs. The first is a drug that simulates exercise so that they can see what my body does under strain and the second one is to irradiate me. So once they were happy that I understood the woman started to pump the exercise drug into me while the bloke monitored the machine and my blood pressure. They started to ask if I could feeling anything and to be honest I was getting nothing. The way they explained it was expecting distressed breathing, chest tightness, stomach cramps and light headedness. I got a bit of tightness in my stomach area and that was that. The whole thing could not have lasted more than three or four minutes at the most after which the woman said the radiation stuff was in me as well and that bloke said it was all looking good on his monitor. So they unwired me, lowered the couch and told me to walk to the door and back adn then sit on the chair while the woman removed the canula. It all went to plan.

I was then given my next instructions. Go to the café and eat and drink what ever I wanted, including caffeine products and to return at one o’clock to the scan waiting area where there were toilets for the irradiated. So off I went to the small café at the main entrance and bought tuna sandwiches, a diet coke and a Mars bar. I slipped in a bottle of water to be healthy but that ended up coming home with me. I ate adn read my book until it was time to return to the scan waiting area took advantage of the irradiation toilets. Very soon I was called into the imaging room.

I reclined quite upright with my arm elevated over the L shaped scanner. Once again I was wired up with some new contacts stuck to me. There were quite a lot of preliminary jiggling about with the camera to get the angles right adn even a brief practice shot to make sure everything was right and to calculate how long the scan would be. The operator popped out of the glass box in the corner of the room adn informed me that the scan in this position would be 8 minutes and that I was not to move, breathe deeply or wriggle. So off we went, me doing what I always do and promptly closed my eyes and relaxed and let the technology get on with its job. Eight minutes latter the operator cheerily popped out of the glass box and said all was good now for the second scan with my in a recumbent position. We go through the same rituals and I am given the same instruction, so I lay back and relaxed with my arm elevated and resting on top of the scanner. This one was going to be eight and a half minutes. I duly lay still and closed my eyes and let the experience wash over me. Next time the operator popped out of her glass box she came over to me and told me there was a line down the image which might have been caused by heavy breathing or something but I was going to have to do this scan again. I knew exactly what had happened. Give me eight and a half minutes to lay still with my eyes closed and I fall asleep, that’s why there was a line down the image. So this time it was an eye open time where I minutely examined the bland white ceiling tiles, vents and lights and even the I’m not quite sure if I made the while eight and a half minutes fully awake. However the scan was okay and I was released from the machine.

The operator explained that I was to wait in the scan waiting area while the images were checked by the doctor and that I should keep the stick on contacts in place just in case I needed another scan. It was not a long wait before the operator came out and said all was well and that she would take me to the reception where they would arrange a date for the comparison scan. I had read in the information that they sent that a comparison scan would be done at some point in the future suggesting it could be weeks, so imagine my surprise when the receptionist asks “can you do tomorrow at 2pm” Yes I can I reply and she prints off and appointment letter there and then. What’s more I can eat and drink whatever I like between now and four hours before the appointment.

I drive home to find an Amazon package for me. Its the bolts I order to mend the garden swing seat so i set to and make the the temporary fix. Finally I indulge in a chink of lemon drizzle cake and watch an episode of Star Trek; The New Generation while drafting the blog. My partner returns from visiting her mother and we start the journey into the evening. There will be football and the new David Mitchel comedy Ludwig before I get to my night meds and another early night before tomorrows repeat performance at the nuclear medicine and another chance to read more of my book. I shall delay for one day my return to my cancer pills so that tomorrows comparison scan is done with the same medications in me, so tomorrow is the day to relabel the blog and not today as I had intended.

Tuesday and I am woken by my partner going to work. I take my vitals, could be better but they will do. I have a plan today so I get up and get ready to go to the village café. The village pub has opened its own café and offers soft seats, a menu and toilets, where as the village café, has no toilet (less than ten seats), I bit of paper at the counter as a menu and only takes cash. However its breakfast has everything and in particular white bread toast loaded with butter, and you get two, at least of everything. My plan is to eat well today as tomorrow I cannot eat before my radioactive scan. On my way I buy a paper and arrive at the café as the only person in there. I order, grab a bottle of water from the fridge and take possession of the window seat that gives me prime viewing of the village mini roundabout, a centre of excitement when big lorries realise they have come the wring way. I set about the crosswords as my breakfast is being engineered behind the scenes.

Breakfast is delicious and a luxury as there is no cooking or washing up involved. So I have a happy and contented time devouring breakfast and finishing the crosswords, all for less then £7! Another bloke comes in and chats to the waitress/cook about the pubs he has been to recently. As part of keeping himself engaged and getting out and about he he takes himself of to different pubs. He knew the price of every pint in al the pubs. He chatted about ones he found on Saturday night with only six people in it adn how some made him uncomfortable but his favourites were the ones with free live music and reasonable beer prices. I admired his getting out there and would consider it if I was a drinker.

I left and came home where I watched Kier Starmer’s conference speech. it was okay, suitably Labour and straight forward. I could not help thinking that that the row of women cabinet ministers that the cameras kept going to were all thinking the same thing, “me next”. Rachel Reeves and Angela Rayner looking particularly hungry, but it would seem there is a real girls club. I noticed how often in the interviews how often they references each other but not their male colleagues, interesting.

With the politics over I set about clearing the kitchen and then drove to the garage to check my tyres adn to fit my new magic dust caps that tell me if am loosing pressure out of them. A dash of petrol in the tank and then I am back home. I spend time mending the garden swing seat before popping on its new winter rain cover. With that chore done I cover the wooden garden seat and pop the cover over the new sunshade. There is more rain on the way so getting things away and under cover seemed a sensible thing to do. I put the bins out and then start to draft the blog. Tonight is the start of the Great British Bake Off so I expect I will be watching that as the Tesco order arrives bring with it the lemon drizzle cake I slipped into the order. There are times when I just fancy cake.

Tomorrow is an important day. I go for the irradiated scan of my heart to see if there is anything wrong with it physically. I cannot eat before hand and must not have caffeine of any kind, that why I have been drinking water for the last four days. It means spending at least three of four hours at the nuclear medicine department, so a book is essential. Once I am out of there its a Red Bull and a Snickers for me. However it is also important as it is the day I have agreed to start taking my cancer pills again. This means a renaming of the blog phase and more importantly I am likely to start experiencing more pronounced symptoms of fatigue. I really must try to keep training, but it could be a challenge. The aim is to see a reduction in my PSA by the 16th of October at my next oncology review, or at least the 12th when my bloods are being done.