Saturday, early morning just gone midnight and I log into to Patient View to see if my blood results have been posted yet. They are and they are not comfortable reading. My PSA level is up, my platelets are down and my Urea level is up. I am taken aback and go to bed with options going through my mind as I try to think it through. In the morning or the afternoon I will print them out and give them more thought.

I wake up in the morning and make tea and coffee and chat to my partner about my blood results. I have a couple of working hypothesis the main one being that I was dehydrated at the time of the sample that could account for the Urea and Platelet score. The raised PSA score, although in the “normal” range, has more than doubled. My initial thought is that I have slipped into eating too much sugar and fed my cancer. The working solution is to drink water and stop eating sugar, with a view to getting another blood test after a month to see if it is having any effect. Breakfast comes around late on the patio after a shower and choosing what I am going to wear to my first social solo outing at lunchtime. Just after eleven I am on the road to Burton on Trent, to a marina to meet with a group of friends from work days.

Dead on noon I arrive, park and then whilst I walk over to the restaurant endeavouring to look cool I fall arse over head and graze my knee. I young guy offers me help and asks if I am okay. Of all the things I feel, it is not cool. I queue up to book into the pre booked Breeze Hut. All goes well until the “host” points to the square dotty thing on a card and says “just check in”. No I haven’t got the app so I waved my phone in the general direction of the square dotty thing and said “got it”. We smiled at each other and she directs me to the Breeze Hut. I slightly limp over to the hut to find three of my friends there. Hugs! That was weird but good and then we sit and start to chat until joined by another of our friends. We eat, we chat and check out how each of us is. We get the waiter to take pictures of us like tourists. The two hours fly by and we are evicted to an ordinary table on the veranda where we end up in fits of laughter as we remember some of our history and the escapades that we have had during lockdown. Eventually we say farewell and I drive home to watch football and to think more about my blood results. Its not every football match you watch where some one collapses from a heart attack and needs to be CPR’d and defibrillated on the pitch while their team mates form a human curtain, it kind of concentrates the mind a bit. Football over I have a smoothie and write the blog.