Saturday, and I wake up and process my blood results which I gathered after midnight last night. I did not sleep well as a result.

Overall, they are reasonable. The increased Urea is slightly raised and reflects either too much protein or not enough hydration, so drinking water and staying hydrated will sort that. I’ve been there before, and it has always responded to hydration. My eGFR or kidney function although below the normal 60 level is good for me at 57 given my history of kidney failure in 2019, so I am cool about it and think that it is okay. The real kicker is the rising PSA from 0.8 to 1.6 in four months. It is flagged as an alert on the results platform. I’m disappointed but at root I knew that sooner or later this was likely to happen. It makes my review on Tuesday more “sharp”. We will certainly have something to talk about. One thing that has surprised me is my rise in platelets to 171 a rise of 22. It’s been a while since I’ve so comfortably been in the normal range for this, no idea why.

I watch some women’s world cup rugby, eat the bacon sandwich my partner makes for me and drink fresh coffee. I draft the first section of the blog and get myself up for the ordinary of the day like shopping for vegetables and more bacon. I feel myself withdrawing and processing so I may or may not add to this day’s blog or not.

My day was quiet as I felt my way through the feelings about my blood results and the rising PSA level. It’s a difficult time, I am anxious, more anxious than I usually am, and I find myself rereading information about my treatment. If my medication has stopped working, then there needs to be a rethink. The problem I have is that I am not sure I trust the oncology service to pick this up with any sense of urgency. I am also frustrated and angry with myself for losing my exercise and diet discipline. Yet again I must start out again and focus on reducing my weight. Tomorrow I will weigh in and then move on.

Friday I am awake quite early as I hear my partner go off to work! I get up, have toast and coffee and then head for the GP surgery to have my bloods taken. I have totally forgotten to preload with water for the last 24 hours so my platelet count will probably be crap again. I arrive, book in and then take a seat, however I am called in immediately by the nurse. This woman is a goddess. She can get the needle in me without me feeling it and extract the required vial of blood before you can say “Bobs your uncle”. I am in and out quicker than a prime minister. Back home I read a bit and then go to the Shed. I am feeling a bit overwhelmed, probably the aftereffects of the conference. I write a letter and take my time doing it. It’s a slow morning. I finally get to lunchtime with the letter completed and make an egg sandwich for lunch, wash it down with coffee and then return to the Shed.

I am all written out, I think about another letter, but I have not got it in me so I cast around for something to do. I take down my paint pallet which is supposed to keep paint workable and to my surprise find the acrylics on it are indeed still usable. I rummage in my art bag and find a small board. I spend a lot of time just painting and using up the paint on the pallet. I appear to be fixated on gardens, trees and sky as this board turns out to be similar to one I have done before. It has taken time and distracted me for a while. There is a strange pleasure in playing with colour regardless of how talentlessly you do it. I guess it’s the process not the product.

Like all my others it will see it’s days out in the Shed. I pack up the Shed and go to the post office to send my letter grabbing chocolate while I am there. Back home I check Fort Hog and find the food bowl empty, so I refill it and reinstall the garden camera. I lock the Shed up for the day and return to the sofa to read, nibble M & Ms and await the return of my partner, who after briefly returning from work at lunchtime has gone off to see her mother with her brother. I continue to read Reaper Man. I like the idea of Death being made redundant due to developing a personality. Unfortunately, the consequences are tricky but amusing in Terry Pratchett’s Disc World.

My partner returns and after a coffee she goes to make tea and I draft the blog. My evening will be reading and TV as I wait for midnight to arrive. This is when the results of my blood tests are posted, if not tonight then just after midnight in the following days. They have to be on the system by Tuesday the 1st of November as this is the date of my next review by the oncologist. These weekends of waiting for blood results are always difficult as the logic of my life is in the arithmetic of the blood results. Either my status will remain “as good as it gets again” or something different. The something different is never going to be “better”, “as good as it gets” is really as good as it can get. Any change in the arithmetic will mean the wind is blowing harder on my dandelion life clock. Hence these weekends I can be a bit edgy.

Thursday and I wake up in my own bed to familiar sounds of the house. I get up to make breakfast, put my washing in and read the cards and letters that were waiting for me on my return from the conference. I take my time over the correspondence and indulge in a second coffee. I am aware that I am decompressing from the conference. It’s a sort of mental check to see how I am. You know when you fall over and you lay on the floor and mentally check your body over to see if you can wiggle your toes or if you are bleeding. I do a similar thing only I check myself in terms of all the symptoms of my condition. I’m tired but functional.

I am greatly heartened by my correspondence. I am very lucky to have people who write to me. I am also blessed by people who either give me books or recommend them. A woman at the conference suggested a book to me after I had made a public comment along the lines of “It’s because rich bastards own the land nobody can get access to nature”(not a complete truth but close.) Anyway, during a coffee break an unknown woman comes up and suggests I read a particular book as she thinks I will be suitably angry, based on the sort of person she thinks I am. I was so taken aback I ordered it instantly from Amazon. It has arrived and she was right, I’m only on chapter two and I am truly pissed off.

I also have a new book that I have been given by the friend that drove me to and from the conference. I have spent some of today reading it and as ever with a Terry Pratchett book I have smiled and laughed.

Lunch comes and goes, and I go to the shed and write a reply to one of my letters. I finish the pages and then check to see if the hedgehog has eaten its food. I am gratified that the dish is empty, I gather up my Shed things and then close up the Shed before refilling the hog’s food dish. A quick trip to the post box is followed by my hanging my washing up on the airer and retrieve the garden camera. I review the camera captures and copy then to the compute file Hedgehog 19. By now it’s time for tea and football, which goes to plan until my eldest daughter reminds me that I promised to take her to her circus skills session tonight. I am about to grumble but she bribes me with fruit pastilles so I comply and take her. Back home I watch football until everyone else goes to bed. I draft the blog, set the dishwasher going and extract my blood form from my files. Tomorrow is a blood test day so I shall be up early to trot down to the GP surgery to have the blood taken. So I will spend tomorrow night waiting for midnight to see if my blood results have been posted. This is in preparation for my next cancer review on Tuesday. It’s a time of anxiety so I will try to keep myself occupied.

Wednesday, third day of the conference. It is a good day, full of excellent presentations and thoughtful discussions. I am left very tired but pleased that I am now stronger in managing the reality of my situation than I was at the last conference. At the last conference I came to the end of the conference in a distressed state thinking I would not see the people there again. This time it was not an issue. I am driven home, for which I am very grateful, and get home tired and drained. I unpack, eat, watch football and the last Doc Martin. Finally, I take my night meds and draft the blog. Of course, my day has been much fuller and stimulating than the above indicates but I am far to spent to elaborate.

Tuesday and I wake in a strange bed with unfamiliar sounds around me. I am of course at conference, so it’s time to get up and find breakfast. I manage this successfully and get into the conference room in time for the first keynote speaker. From that moment the day did not stop except for food, coffee and toilet visits. I took a few minutes out to cancel my professional insurance that was due on the 1st of December. The conference dinner was brief really and was followed by the communal poetry reading and entertainment. I performed two of my poems and was applauded, but in fairness everyone was. At 10 o’clock most people went to the pub but I retreated to my room to draft the blog, pack and get some sleep. There have been ups and downs during the day. Somebody, a person who in my mind will be for ever “pony woman” gave a really good presentation on the way horses interact therapeutically with difficult children. There were some boring history bits but generally it was stimulating and of course there was a group crisis when the only black woman walked out of the group with no explanation. I am glad I am here; I think I’ve coped quite well with it, and it’s been nice to be reminded of some of the things that made it possible for me to do what I’ve done in therapeutic communities. By the end of tomorrow I will have had enough though.

Monday and I am up early as I am off to a therapeutic community conference in Birmingham. It’s just 7 o’clock and I am in the shower before an early breakfast. Plain muesli and fresh coffee, keeping it simple as I am to be car passenger today. My bags are ready to go along with my emergency food, just in case. A friend picks me up about 8:45 and we drive to the Woodbrooke Conference centre. We arrive just as the Greek contingent arrive and queue up to get our ID badges and room keys.

The conference starts and I settle into my TC mode. There are some familiar faces here that welcome me, it is comforting. There are interesting presentations and being a therapeutic community conference there are small reflection groups and “big” community meetings. By the time dinner comes around I’m tired and have a lot to reflect on. I take myself off to the quiet room with a coffee where I sit with 26 empty chairs and reflect upon the content of the last community meeting. I chat to the chairs (not out loud obviously, that would be weird, or so the pixies tell me), and think about the issues around dialogue and silence. It’s an old teaser at these events. I sit for a long time wondering what the question would be that might help my thinking at which point the chairs suggested this; “What’s the difference between a chair and a chair with a silent person sat in it?” Struck me as a good question (perhaps I am too easily pleased with myself). After staring at my 26 new chums (11 without arms and 15 with arms) I finally decided that my answer would be, “I can no longer see the chair.”

Time to finish my coffee, retreat to my room, listen to Diwali fireworks and draft the blog. I’m out of spoons so I will make one more drink, take my meds, set my alarm and go to bed.

Saturday and its excitement day as we, my partner, eldest daughter and I are off to Birmingham to see Cirque Du Soleil. We breakfast and I check the train tickets. By about 9:45 we are ready to leave so I summon up an Uber to take us to the station. The Uber driver had an interesting approach to speed limits, he ignored them. We arrived at the station with time to spare and while away on the platform. We had discovered that although I had ordered the tickets together and asked for reserved seats, the seats allotted us were not together, clearly too difficult. Anyway, we found our seats and settled into the journey and experienced the “being packed in like sardines” experience. We eventually arrive at Birmingham New Street and find our way to the world.

We walk through the centre of the Bull ring and find our way to the canal path that takes us to the Utilita Areana. We have hours to kill before the performance, so we dive into the Cosy Club to have lunch. It looks plush and we settle in and order. My choice, a dirty chicken burger was a mistake, not good. What is noticeable is the reduced quality of the Cosy Club menu, it is much poorer than it was. No more ham hock hash for example. So, it looks posh but doesn’t live up to the look.

I cannot move on without pointing out that in their wisdom the owners of Cosy Club seem to think that those of us using the “gentleman’s” toilet do so wishing to be observed by a bevy of young debutantes from the pages of Country Life! Not only do they overlook the urinals, but they sneak into the stalls as well. I present a couple of examples and hope that Cosy Club have paid the royalties due and have consent.

Having whiled away enough time we move on to the Utilita Arena. We get through the security and take our seats, discovering that the start time is half an hour before the time printed on the tickets. There is of course no filming or taking pictures of the performance, but I did snap the drop curtain.

The show is just excellent and full of real theatre and some touches of absolute brilliance. There is a twenty-minute break before the fun continues. The second half is also excellent. I am enthralled by the musicians especially the guitarist that also plays accordion, the whole musical backdrop to the stage performance is amazing. The end comes too soon for me. We leave and walk back by the canals until we pick up a taxi to the station. The journey back is less crowded and when we pull into home we hop into a taxi after stocking up with chocolate goodies. Home and I feed the hedgehog before settling down to eat the chocolate and watch football. I go to bed tired by the travels of the day and very much peopled out.

Sunday and I am up early to watch the England rugby team thrash their latest opposition in the women’s world cup. I go back to bed and wake again at about 10:30. I set about trying to mend or stabilise my collapsed plastic greenhouse.

I get the tools away, my new plants under cover and then indulge in a bacon sandwich. The Sunday call to our youngest daughter gets made late but we arrange to visit her in November. My afternoon is full of rugby, league and union, and then I pack for the conference I am going to for the next three days. Always a problem to decide on which image and wardrobe to choose, but I decide on an ice hockey jersey-based look draped in a long black cardigan. As the conference is going to be at a Quaker conference centre, I decide I need to take survival rations. I take a walk down to my local Co-op and stock up on chocolate, wine gums and other “can’t live without” items. I pack my “technology backpack” which in effect is my traveling office and run through my pack and to do list. Tea follows along with Dr Who and a Strictly catch up. My final tasks of the evening are to feed the hedgehog, clear the kitchen and put the final touches to my packing. Of course, I draft the blog not sure if it will be possible over the next couple of days, but I hope to be able to post something. I shall go to bed nervous about the coming conference but just hope I am able to juggle my spoons, yesterday took quite a lot out of me and I think I shall need to keep a sensible pace for the next three days.

Friday, and it’s throwing down as I surface to consciousness. I grab my phone and do my social media before getting up. I go for the comfort of a fried egg sandwich with real coffee. My task of the day is to patch the Shed roof. I gather together my resources and get into the garden. Ladder up against the Shed I climb up and try to identify where water might be getting in. I mark out an area of seam that appears to be the most likely source of the leak. I cut a roofing felt patch and then work the adhesive into the roof. Finally, I lay the patch in place and tape it off. Hopefully a job well done. Its lunch time after I have cleared away my tools. After a dish of soup, and putting the evening meal in the crockpot, I go back to the Shed to write a letter only to find the Shed still leaks, so I improvise.

I write my letter in the Shed and then take a trip to the post box. The drip in the Shed bugs me and I can’t leave it alone. I go into my man cave and look for a solution. I find some frame sealant and return to the Shed to try a new approach. I fill the ingress point for the leak with filler and smooth off with a pallet knife. I rehang the drip pot just in case. In the toing and froing from the Shed I notice that my gutters are overflowing, the water is pouring over the top. I cannot leave it, so I find the steps and set about clearing out the guttering. My gutter hedgehogs had not been cleaned this year and as a result a blockage had built up. I spend my time standing on a low wall cleaning out the blockage and rearranging the hedge hogs. I finally get it done and get the stuff away. By now I’m wet and tired but remember that the real hedgehog needs to be fed so I’m back to the garden and refiling the hogs bowl in Fort Hog.

The evening is the crockpot meal then TV rugby followed by Have I Got News for You. Then there was the final ever episode of Mock the Week. All that is left for me is to draft the blog and to prepare for tomorrows family trip to Birmingham to see Cirque du Soleil. It is an adventure that will test my spoon juggling. Night meds and bed now.

Thursday, and I wake very late and blunder my way into another day of political cluster fuck. I have my muesli breakfast washed down with fresh coffee. As I sit feeling increasingly wired, I watch the unfolding resignation of Blunder Truss. One moment there is a man introducing the podium team and the next Tosser Truss is resigning. Ding Dong the witch is dead, it’s a Dorothy moment.

For the first time in years politics is entertaining and fun. Much better than loads of poor dramas on TV. This year the TV license is well worth the money. Where else could you get such intrigue, farce, incompetence and a blood bath? Now we are going to get the unedifying spectacle of the auctioning of the Ceasarship, it like watching the Fall of the Roman Empire.

I have a celebratory peanut bagel and prepare to train. Today I’m doing 45 minutes on the rower at my “gentle” level. I get changed and while my partner is visiting her mother, I settle to my session in the garage. It’s a session that goes reasonably well as I stretch out the stiffness from yesterday.

Post session I put out the recycling and empty the dishwasher. I check Fort Hog and find an empty food dish, so I put in a refilled fresh dish. I notice that there is a leak in the Shed. It’s been raining all day and there are drips of water on my writing table. I look for bitumen spray in my man cave but there is none, so I order some to arrive tomorrow. I guess I know what I will be doing tomorrow at some point. I change into my Merlin robe and settle down to watch an early evening football match on my laptop. My partner returns and makes tuna pasta we settle down to a cosey evening of film and TV. My daughter rings to say she cannot get a taxi from her circus skills class. The reason for this is that the taxi drivers will not take out of town rides if Leicester are playing at home, which they are tonight. I pull on clothes and drive off to pick my daughter returning home to watch the end of the football match that had denied my daughter a taxi. The evening goes on until I draft the blog and then take my night meds and go to bed. It’s been an entertaining day and it seems the fun is going to continue for at least a week.

Wednesday and I wake up to slow, that kind of slow where you know it’s going to take a while getting going. I eventually do get myself together and have my usual muesli breakfast but today it is accompanied by fresh real coffee. I enjoy my coffee immensely and then head for the shed to write a letter. I am there till lunchtime when I am tempted out by the promise of a bacon sandwich. While filled with bacon sandwich I book train tickets for our trip to Birmingham to see Cirque de Soliel. I return to the Shed and get a call from a friend. It was a luxury to have the time to chat at length and to catch up. I am fortunate that I can pace my life as I wish most of the time but that is a luxury she does not have as she battles long COVID and still has to provide for her family. Its half term soon and the demands will be intensified. At the end of our call, I go to the post box and then return to train. I go to the garage and put the resistance up a notch on the rower and decide that I will do 30 minutes. This level is my standard level so half an hour at this stage begins to feel like a move back to normal training. It’s tough going but with Seasick Steve in my ears I make it and do a reasonable distance.

At the end of the session there is little time to rest, so I shower and put on my glad rags ready to accompany my partner to the hospital. We set off and arrive at the hospital in good time and wait for the consultant. He turns out to be a real sweetie and just expertly professional. He listened attentively to my partners account, took her hand in his and gently put a finger on a spot and said, “It’s here, isn’t it?” and it was. He then told us exactly what was wrong and what to do with it. He provided the required injection there and then and told us that if by chance it persisted to come back again. Our decision. We go home to fish and chips. Before I can settle for the evening, I have to check Fort Hog in the dark. The food dish is empty, so it gets replenished, and I am free to don my Merlin robe for the evening. I settle down to draft the blog and while the rest of the evening away. It’s been a good day. Night meds and bed, but not before the Home Secretary is dismissed and the Chief Whip goes. Such fun.