Thursday I wake and 7 o’clock and immediately know its a mistake, press my internal snooze button and snuggle back down under the duvet. Two hours later I wake to find a cold cup of coffee by my bed, clearly a kind thought but one that feel on sleeping ears. I orientate myself to the morning and run through the list of imperative things that I MUST DO today. There wasn’t anything life threatening or essential so I settled back under the duvet and read Wintersmith for a while, in fact till about 11:45 when my partner brought me another hot drink. I eventually contemplated getting up as I had not eaten for 16 hours, although I was not unduly hungry. Did I feel more rested? Not really but I did realise that my brain felt fed. Apart from the odd crossword and some poems my brain had had a pretty TV and football based diet of late. It seems to me that I spend quite a lot of time being preoccupied with my physical well being or more accurately how my cancer is going/growing and tend to forget that my brain needs to feed too. It made me think about friends that I have who are up to their eyes in the Real World of raising families, moving home, caring for loved ones and battling their own ailment and conditions. They are lives packed with do lists that do have MUST DO items on them and that they have even less time than me to feed their brains. Perhaps when I tell people to be kind to themselves I should remember to remind them to feed their brains as well, although I suspect that this maybe the last thing they can contemplate or feel they have the energy to do. Perhaps there is a balance to be had and that kindness is an awareness of my own ignorance.

Any way I finally get up and feed myself a midday fried egg sandwich and more coffee, plus my morning meds. I catch up with the blog having read my post and start my water drinking in anticipation of my blood test tomorrow. I need to be as hydrated as possible to ensure my platelet count is up and my urea count down. It might help my eGFR but I am dubious about that. Of course it will not affect my PSA count, that is down to how active my cancer is and the reality is that I cannot affect that. All I can do is keep as fit as I can and to keep active, or indulge in “vigorous” exercise as “he who made a pact with the devil” put it at my last face to face oncology review. I’m not sure what he meant by “vigorous” as applied to me a 74 year old, but in my training regime getting “vigorous” means I get to piss blood as a result of it. That is my double bind, my body no longer allows me to train as hard as I could do, therefore I loose weight more slowly, loose fitness faster and generally live with the frustration that I could be doing more “vigorous” activity to fight. Rocket is not pleased with this as fighting a good fight is tricky when you can’t go all out. Still after all this time its not a time to quit, so downing a pint of lemon squash I go off to the garage to get a solid hour in. I have today and tomorrow to train as I am out at the poetry Stanza and with friends for a meal on Saturday, which is not ideal preparation for the Sunday mornings weigh in. I am desperate to be under 96 kilos by as much as possible. I go to the garage, its cold, and mount the rower, punch in 60 minutes on level 4 and, with eyes closed, begin to pull strokes.

I return to the lounge to record the session in my training/diet journal picking up another pint of lemon squash on the way to keep my hydration up for tomorrow. The session went okay the acid test will be whether I piss bold or not, it did not feel like I pushed hard in the session so I hope not. Done now anyway so on with life. I change and return to reading Wintersmith. There is nothing of note on TV tonight so I intend to read and have an early night with as many pints of lemon squash as I can take. I might get the results just after midnight tomorrow but it could be Saturday or Sunday. I need to keep my focus and not be distracted from training and getting ready for the weigh in on Sunday. There is however Christmas tree acquisition and decoration to be organised so my next 72 hours could be quite busy.