Wednesday, bin day and the day I do not have to go to the hospital for an assessment. I slept well last night and wake up with a sense of relief. I can get on with losing weight and getting fit again. I spend time idling and then do some clean up chores, By lunchtime I am ready for a walk down to the village to get a paper. My partner and I walk to the village shop the long way round and pick up fruit and a paper on the way. On our return we sit and eat lunch on the patio. So a slow and gentle morning with the only thing of note being a tax bill. This reminds me that I must do my last tax year return and make sure they know I’ve stopped working in this tax year.

So its time to get myself “world ready”, which means some grooming and then some exercise before the garden guy arrives. All this against the background of avoiding the magnet that is Wimbledon and the craving for sweets.

As am preparing to set about some grooming a friend calls. We chat and compare notes for about 35 minutes. My friend has long COVID and has to manage her energy reserves all the time, so I really appreciate the fact that we spend that time talking. Keeping friendships alive and vibrant is difficult when there is limited energy to put into the effort necessary, so I really do appreciate my friends call. After the call I spend some time readjusting my beard before getting ready to train.

I admit that I get side tracked by Wimbledon for a few minutes as plucky Brits fall short or scrape through. I finally get myself into the garage and set up the rower. emboldened by my performance yesterday I set the resistance level to 5, my normal lowest level. The time is set for 30 minutes and I get under way. The moment I make the first pull I know the difference and know I am in for a demanding half hour. Finishing becomes the task as the muscles feel the strain and begin to burn. I get there, no where near what I would a month ago considered an acceptable session, but I get there.

Pleased that I have completed the session on my usual level I change clothes and record my session while downing a pint of squash. I am realising just how long its going to take me to regain my basic fitness. I need to mix up my exercise so I need to think about difference home gym options and the possibility of going to the gym to swim. The down side of the gym is other people and their COVID carrying potential. I do not want to get ill again before we I go on holiday next week. So I guess I will have to think about a weights and stretching routine to alternate with rowing for the next ten days. I settle down with Wimbledon and know that I have the excitement of the final of the Great Sewing Bee ahead of me tonight. The garden guy is buzzing around and tidying up the front lawn as I draft the blog. I realise I have run out of spoons and have slipped into neutral, I’m already thinking about how I will spend my day tomorrow. In thinking about it I realise that I have not fed the hedgehog, which is something I must do before I fully sink into my evening.

Tuesday and it is oncologist day. I get up and have breakfast and then get the paper work out and wait for his call. Just after 9 o’clock “he who made a pact with the devil” rings and asks how I am. So I give him the list of ailments that I have had since we last spoke, its a long list. I tell him about my GP referral to urology due to my exercise induce blood in the urine. He suggests that I will not find them useful and we talk about options. From his point of view I am still in a “good as it gets” state. He suggests that he gets the specialist nurse to ring me later to talk about options. We say our farewells and I stare into space for a while.

Rousing myself from my reflections I get myself sorted to completer the grouting on the bathroom floor. I spend the next couple of hours on my hands and knees grouting. Not something you get to say often. By lunchtime the job is finished and I sit down to a dish of chicken soup and wonder when the nurse is going to ring me. I am very apprehensive about tomorrows urology assessment and feel unsure about the wisdom of it. I retreat to the Shed and sort out the feeding of the hedgehog before settling done to write a letter. It is my last stamp, which I must put right. I close up the Shed and walk over to the post office dropping my letter in the box on the way and then buy a couple of books of stamps. They now come in books of 8! The stamp now has a barcode attached. Another techno change in this changing world. I return home and contemplate a training session.

My phone rings. It is the cancer nurse. She is cheery and tells me she has talked to “he who made a pact with the devil” and is aware of my situation. I explain how I am and she is clear that I do not need the urology assessment. She and the oncologist both agree that the blood is a result of the apixaban I am taking. We talk about exercise options and management of any blood loss. At the end of the discussion we agree that I will not attend tomorrows assessment and that the nurse will cancel it with the department. She says that she will go and see them to do that after our call. I thank her. I am so relieved that I am not going to the hospital tomorrow. For the first time for what seems weeks I feel I can get on with life and take control of my regime and my life balance. It feels like I can get on with life the way I want to now.

I go to the garage and train. I do another rower session for half an hour. Surprise, I set a personal best for this level. I get myself out of the garage and retreat to the sofa where I record my session and start to watch Wimbledon.

Our dinner guest arrives and the evening begins with a meal. I leave my partner and friend to chat post dinner and I start to draft the blog. Serena Williams is finding out that 40 really is too old to come back after not playing for a year. My evening feels good for the first time in a long time and I have the sense that I can look forward to tomorrow without anything other than my cancer to fight. And I know how to do that!

Monday and I wake up knowing my blood results are in so I’m immediately up and firing up the family PC so I can print out the results. Once printed I get a coffee and start to process them. I do my usual recording and coding and then read the relevant information and reflect upon what they mean for me and what I might need to do. These results are in essence a good set. Crucially the PSA has dropped again and is now lower than it has been for a year. Go me! My eGFR (kidney function) is the best its been since November 2019, once again Go me! The Urea is up but according to the information this maybe due to dehydration at the time of testing. Given that I have had COVID and been infused with an antiviral protein plus the antibiotics, coupled with my not training it not surprising that I’m dehydrated. I had actually trained for the first time in 36 days the day before my blood tests, neither had I done my usual pre bloods water loading. This affects both Urea and Platelet levels. The overall conclusion is that I need to get back to a regular exercise routine and to maintain my hydration regime. As a result I’m back to drinking water as a regular habit.

So today my agenda is set by my results. I shall train, drink water and spend time in the Shed and set about re grouting the bathroom floor. So much fun. I change into me training clothes in anticipation of training at some point. I get to the shed and settle in just in time as it throws it down with rain. I write a letter and then stop for lunch. Healthy tomato soup on the patio. The delivery from Amazon has arrived containing another tube of grout reviver so I decide t make a start on the bathroom floor.

I hate crawling around on the floor, it makes my back ache so I am quite relieved when Tesco deliver around 4 o’clock. We get the food stowed and I pack up my work stuff, the rest of the floor is a tomorrow job. I finally head for the garage and the rower. I get on board and set off. Its a terrible session, I feel knackered and under par but get through the session.

The session gets recorded and I up load the images to the laptop and update the draft blog. I slide into the evening with no plan. The plan runs to some NCIS and the Lincoln Lawyer. After two sessions of the Lincoln Lawyer I am out of spoons and retreat to bed and think about what I want to ask the oncologist at tomorrows session. A say session, in reality it will be a phone call where “he who made a pact with the devil” will be trying to end it as soon as possible and I will be trying to have a conversation about my cancer.

Sunday and I wake up with blood results my first thought. I go downstairs make drinks and return to bed with my phone. Still no blood results, so it will be after midnight if at all now. I weigh myself more in hope than any sense of earnt reduction. I weigh in at 96.3 kilos. That’s a decrease of 1.5 kilos. I have no idea how that has happened, I cannot believe that two sessions on the rower have made this difference. So starts the Sunday clear up, kitchen followed by some hoovering, I wonder if Tolstoy or Alan Ginsberg or even Tempest do or did their own hoovering. Any way its probably a comment on my lack of creative urge at the moment. So my partner and have a late breakfast bacon sandwich and then crack on with house organisation. I undertake a complete stock take of my quartermasters stores complete with clip board. I discover that there are some very out of date cans which I pop into a bag There will be a sort out and those still in date can go to the Sainsburys food donations. I am eerily fascinated what someone would do with a can of five bean salad and a tin of prunes. I suspect these are hangovers from the COVID Boris boxes we received. Anyway by the time I’m finished there is a list and I am clear about what we have a surfeit of (tinned tomatoes) and what we require (baked beans). I was gratified to find a Christmas pudding, which means I’m ahead of the game for the coming one. I might now hunt around for bargain crackers and other Xmas goodies, if I play my cards right I could have the festive season sorted by the end of July.

I’m knackered by the mornings efforts, I suddenly run out of spoons so I retreat to the sofa and Glastonbury on BBC i-player. First up is Haim, who are cracking and a band I a would go and see live. George Erza follows in a surprise appearance, average and then Celeste, not my cup of tea and finally Wet Leg do a short gig, energetic but middle range. Declan Mc Kenna follows in what looks like a scout uniform and strange shades, with a drummer that looks like an old colleague who is actually at Glastonbury selling fish finger sandwiches. Life can be strange but true. Diana Ross bless her, such a strong back catalogue but unfortunately she now sings flat but hey at 78 who gives a toss, certainly no one in the mainly pissed, stoned and tuned in crowd. Truly more karaoke than smooth superstar. Whilst watching my eldest daughter plaits my hair for me.

So I continue to watch through Elbow and drift into the evening. My sister calls and lets me know she is going in to hospital tomorrow for a minor routine procedure but might be in over night. She is letting me know what is going on and to tell me that on the paper work I am named as her next of kin. I guess this is a necessary piece of medical bureaucracy. She also tells me that she will not be signing a DNR as she wants them to do everything to save her if anything goes wrong. Noted. I wish her luck and promises to ring me when she gets home . I head into the evening unclear about what I will be doing except intermittently checking to see if my bloods are in. My evening passes with light drama followed by Kelly Holmes documentary about being gay in an army that viewed it as illegal. I like to think things have changed. I make one final check to see if my blood results are in. They are! I’ve not got the time to check things in detail but my eGFR is 61 the highest its been since November 2019, that’s unexpected. Crucially my PSA has dropped again for the third time in a row. It’s down 0.2 to 0.8, the lowest its been for a year, another surprise but very welcome. The rest of the results seem to be there or there about. I am surprised these are better than I had hoped for given my recent COVID and infections. I go to bed to hopefully sleep more easy.

Saturday. I waited up till gone midnight last night waiting for my blood results. They did not get posted so I went to bed. I woke this morning to a cup of coffee and immediately look for my blood results, still not posted. My partner goes to the hairdresser, my daughter goes to the gym, I eat breakfast on the patio while my washing gets done. I read, I do puzzles, I hang my washing out on the line, I re-tighten the toilet seat, you can see how desperate I am. In the end I start to draft the blog and think about training and spending the afternoon in the Shed. Still no blood results, I guess there will not be now till midnight at the earliest.

In the end I watch two tennis finals, go shopping at the garden centre and return to an evening of two films and Paul McCartney at Glastonbury. I do find time to feed the hedgehog and check to see if my blood results have been posted. They are still not available. The kitchen will be cleared and I will do the post midnight check of the test results before I go to bed. All this is working my way towards Monday when I shall start my new regime of eating a more sensible diet and continuing my training sessions. The adjustment to being re-retired is taking time and has been tricky given how I have responded to this months injection.

Friday and its vampire day so I am up and ready to trot off to the GP surgery to get my blood sample done. My partner makes me a coffee while I get myself together. I don’t want to sound whingey but my injection site from Monday is sore, hard and definitely bruised. I get to the GP surgery, sign in and notice the guy sitting in front of me is clutching a box of FIRMAGON. A fellow prostate cancer sufferer waiting to go in and get his jab. There was a moment when I thought I might tap him on the shoulder and introduce myself and suggest we form a club, but being English of course I do not. I do notice that he is slightly limping with his hand in his pocket when he reappears and books a doctor appointment with the receptionist. I get called in and flourish my bloods form and bare my arm. The nurse who does bloods is extraordinary, she has the needle in my arm in a flash, no pain, no sharp scratch, and bleeds me with expert precision. In no time at all I have a fluffy cloud taped on my arm and I am on my way. So starts the wat for the results.

I buy a paper on the way home and read it over a fried egg sandwich and coffee on the patio. I read and do puzzles. I am engrossed but become aware of a new sound. I look up and there is one of this years squirrels taking peanuts out of the box and feasting. I sit rock still for ages and watch the little animal feed himself full. On occasions I assist my new small friend by gently shooing away the wood pigeon that tries to intrude. Lunch time comes around and I begin to get myself ready to train. I take my time and get myself comfortable and then start another half hour row. It goes okay and there is an improvement over yesterday.

I have a few minutes rest after the effort I go and shower. Before I get into the shower I dip test my urine and get a positive result for blood although there is nothing to be seen by the naked eye. I note the result and get on with my shower. Its been a while since I gave my hair a good wash and dry. By the time I’ve finished drying my hair the garden guy has arrived. I make him coffee, pay him and then excuse myself as I need to go and collect my eldest daughter from a police station where she is collecting data for her doctorate. I’m on time and sit outside the police station till she appears. All is well and we drive home.

My evening is a strange mixture of Indian take away, NCIS, women’s international football (it like real football only the goal keepers are famously crap), and Billie Eilish at Glastonbury. Eilish is a product of home schooling, fact. As I listen to the Eilish I also draft the blog. Mostly I am waiting for the witching hour when my blood results will get posted. No matter how I feel, no matter how many dip tests I do or how much research on google I do it is the science that is the marker for how well I am or not. Given the bout of COVID, the UTI and the kidney infection I’ve had I’ve no idea what my results will look like. I’ve had so much washing around inside me I’ve no idea how my results will go. To top it all my injection this month has been the worst its ever been in terms of prolonged soreness, bruising and lumpiness. I keep trying to balance resting and reactivation but its a frustrating process that leaves me irritable and difficult to live with, fuelled mostly by the anxiety of no longer trusting my body and wondering what is going to happen next.

Thursday and I sleep late. A brief breakfast and a pot of berry tea on the patio sees me start my day. I get stuck into some puzzles and I find one has an error. I immediately switch into “outraged of Leicester” mode and smartly send my findings to the publishers. I doubt I will get any kind of response but I’ve enjoyed the diversion. Time for a celebratory Whitby lemon iced bun! For those of you who have a nerdy streak here is the proof.

My partner and I eat lunch on the patio. A friend rings and we are able to chat for a while about families and the the perils of changing school years as a child. After a suitable break I get myself ready to train for the first time after 36 days of no training at all. I am apprehensive as I prepare but I make my way to the garage and get on the rowing machine. I set the level at 4 and the duration for 30 minutes. I set off carefully. It goes okay, I survive. So thank you to all those people that sent me messages of encouragement over the last couple of days.

I climb off the rower and return to the house. I run a bath and let myself soak. I’m not sure how things have gone yet, but I get myself to the sofa and update the blog before tea. My evening is going to be gentle and slow, tomorrow is a bloods day so I shall be up early to take myself to the GP surgery to have my blood taken. This is in preparation for my oncology appointment on Tuesday. It feels that so far my re-retirement has been hijacked by COVID and my cancer, its making the transition more bumpy than I anticipated.

Wednesday and I wake up early as the plumber is coming. I’m not feeling great but hey that’s how it is at the moment. I do a toast and marmalade breakfast but dump coffee in favour of my fruit teas. I get my lovely glass tea pot out and make a pot of very berry to wash the toast down with. I had forgotten how much I liked the fruit brew. The plumber arrives on time and I show him through to the kitchen. He looks , he sighs and then begins the job. Of course it is not straight forward, he will need to chop the pipe work and run new isolation hoses into place. I retreat to the sofa and start todays blog. As I write I’ve no idea what this is going to cost me, the plumber that is, I might have to break into my 50p piggy bank. After much sawing, wrenching and fiddling the new tap is in. Once again we have hot running water in the kitchen and no annoying drip drip drip of a leaking tap.

So I pay the plumber and then get on with a great deal of doing absolutely nothing. All I want is for the soreness of my injection site to wear off, its a real pain literally. Apart from bringing in the bins, reading Owen Meany and doing the odd puzzle I’ve done a glorious bugger all today. I napped at lunchtime, had soup and read some more. In the end I resort to pain killers to relieve the soreness, not something I usually do on day three after a jab. Mid afternoon is a highlight, my partner returns from her walk and we indulge in the just delivered Whitby Lemon Iced Buns. A true indulgence washed down with my first coffee of the day.

The buns went down well. As I say a real indulgence but an example of making the world come to me. Tea time comes around and I clear away the bun debris and blog for a bit as the evening approaches. Today is Great British Sewing Bee day so that is what I shall watch tonight, once I have popped out and feed the hedgehog. Tomorrow I am determined to train, I have to over come my anxieties about passing blood if I train. Wish me luck.

Monday, and its one of “those” Mondays. Its a jab Monday. Having bathed last night my body is ready for clean socks and pants as is traditional when visiting a GP surgery, with which I duly obliged coupled with easy slip down waist and trousers to facilitate the jabbing. Peanut butter toast, coffee and pre jab paracetamol are taken. Without any more to do I walk down to the surgery. I book myself in and wait, occupying myself by reading the information board.

Its mostly joyous news that no matter what you are suffering from their are people to help by telling you that you are not alone. Does this help, I suppose it must. As a psychologist I spent my entire professional life trying to get people to talk about the difficult stuff and I have to admit that sense of Universality that Yalom writes about so well did appear to be a powerful factor in some peoples progress. For others not so much. My cancer is my cancer and knowing that others have it is little comfort to me, I’ve read the survival curves. Neither does it help when my malady is turned in to a TV industry of advertising. A campaign that has gone from one in four having cancer in a life time to 1 in 2, in just under three years. That cannot be right, so who is telling the truth and who is bending it to induce sufficient fear to donate?

I get called in and hand over my jab kit to the nurse and we chat about how shit COVID is while she makes up the solution to go into me. There is a lot of “stuff” to pump into me and it needs to be done slowly or it clumps and forms a lump in my abdomen, its one of the side effects. So nurse pumps it in, pops on a taped down fluffy cloud and checks the date and time for the next one. I am then dispatched to the world again and already I can feel that this is not going to be a good month.

Home and I fill my medication wallets for the next two weeks before tackling the challenge ahead of me. The dead tumble dryer is sitting in the facilities area doing nothing except support a swathe of filled washing baskets. How can one household produce so much? I do one load a week and that’s me done, what lays before me is the evidence of over fussiness and too many clothes to choose from. Anyway I remove the baskets and begin my surgery on the dryer. Diagnosis is not good as all the usual things like filters and water tank are okay. I check the heat exchanger and find it clogged with lint and damp fluff, no air could possibly get through that coating. I remove the offending layer of felt and then stick the hair dryer into the vent and give it a good blast. I am hoping that this will dry out the whole heat exchanger and the connecting pipes. I test the machine, no drum movement. It lights up and does all the digital noises for selection but when the go button gets pushed there is nothing. Its time for surgery. I don my head torch and grab my tool kit and I am unscrewing the back panel toot sweet. It comes away to reveal the impeller fan, which is linked to the drum. It appears to be stuck and my gentle probing of it is not doing anything. So as all good engineers do I give it a tap and voila it comes free. A judicious application of special silicone WD40 and it turns freely and the drum starts to move. I run a test on the mains and it works, if a little noisy. I put the back plate back on and test run the machine, it works, go me! I replace the laundry to its former glory and sit down for a coffee. By now my injection site is bloody sore and giving me gyp so I down more paracetamol. I once read the possible side effects of paracetamol and immediately stored it in a locked part of my mind.

I become restless with the soreness of the jab site and I am not quite sure what I am going to do. In the end I feed the hedgehog and retreat to the Shed. I write a letter as is my way and take a trip to the post box, moving my car so that Tesco can deliver later. Tesco duly rock up on time and the family scamper about stowing the goodies, I note that I need to tidy the “quartermasters” store where I keep all the back up goods, like toilet rolls, kitchen rolls and baked beans. I am done now. I have run out of energy spoons and I collapse on the sofa and very appreciatively eat the tuna pasta my partner makes. There is some NCIS but I am restless and sore so go for a bath using the unicorn poo bath bomb my son sent me for fathers day. I laze for over an hour with my ear buds in listening to music. Once out I find I have absolutely no energy at all and go to bed.

Tuesday, I wake up early and sore, I knew this was going to be a bad month for lumpy jab pain. I get up, do breakfast and then dress ready to take my daughter to a police station. She is collecting data for her doctorate this week and as the rail unions have decided to strike this week, (I am not sure how I feel about that yet) I have agreed to drive her there. The journey goes well and I drop her off and she attempts to use her “multipass” to get into the police station. She has not rung so I assume she is now busily coding the content of interviews. Beyond that I cannot say what is going on. I drive home, empty the dishwasher, make coffee and settle on the patio to catch up with the blog.

The post arrives and in it a lovely surprise. A friend has sent me a book in response to pleas for ideas of what to read. It is John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. I am really happy as this is a book that I read when it first came out. Of course being me I read all I could get my hands on as I like it so much. But this gift has prompted me to research him again and of course he has written many more books now. So I have the joy of rereading Owen Meany and then acquiring his more recent books. Its lovely to rediscover such an interesting writer. Its a super gift. I have much reading before me. It is also an interesting experience to find my reading history catching up with me. This book was new out and the trendy, on point, book to read when I first read it and here it is a gain. It is a peculiar feeling especially as at about the same time I was reading Herman Hesse and was recently thinking about rereading the Glass Bead Game. So is this what retirement is for; the rereading of ones literary history. If it is I am in for a treat and all those books on my shelves will be dusted down and appreciated again. I wonder what I will find new in old friends.

I eat lunch with my partner on the sunny patio and then it is time to wrestle the cardboard mountain that my eldest daughter has created. If I say it myself I am good at compacting the recycle bin and get the maximum into it. So I set to work on the mountain and soon I have the pile of packaging in the bin. Its a strange kind of satisfaction over coming the recycling, tomorrow it will be gone, no longer my circus or my monkeys. I top up the blog draft and contemplate more paracetamol prior to a walk. I must try to keep some movement in my day till I feel able to train again.

The village walk goes well and my partner and I do our steps and return home to put the bins out and settle in for the evening. We eat on the patio and I ring my daughter, who tells me how her day has gone. I then slip into the evening of blogging and reading Owen Meany. My jab site is still sore and hard so I shall take more paracetamol tonight but I have a rule that after day two I do not take anything. So I hope for a good nights sleep and to wake up less sore in the morning.

Sunday, its Fathers Day, for me it is also an important date today because three years ago someone looked me in the eye and told me I have metastatic prostate cancer. So here I am three years on having gone through various stages and still trying to fight and live a curious and interesting life. So today I celebrate, quietly. I get up late and make a marmalade toast and coffee breakfast, which I polish off while watching a cookery programe and move onto start the blog.

I laze unashamedly and open my fathers day cards and presents, I am touched, its always nice to be validated spontaneously. I have a face time call with my youngest daughter who is busy decorating and preparing for Glastonbury next week. I continue to laze until my partner and I go for a walk around the village. On our way we collect some food from the shop before returning home where I watch a rugby match. I preload with paracetamol before tomorrows injection, and then eat dinner before sliding into another evening. I note that I am feeling better, but have yet to get myself training, I guess that’s my priority hurdle right now before my weight and lack of fitness get totally out of hand. If I want another three years there is work to be done.