Monday, jab Monday and I wake up feeling below par. I put on my leopard over blanket and sit in bed and finish reading Touch. Its a good book and has held my attention for a few days now. If you like the idea of being able to jump from body to body, then this one is for you. If you like the idea of there being “estate agents” who will find the right person for you to jump into for a while then this book is really for you. I come to the end and decide I should probably get up.
There is a cereal breakfast and coffee to try and get me going but it doesn’t and I slob around disconcertedly for a while. I clear the kitchen, empty the bins and still feel no better or energised. It comes round to half an hour before my GP appointment to have my 28 day injection. I get dressed and set off for the surgery clutching my boxed injection. As I walk along I become acutely aware that there is a profusion of flowers and shrubs in bloom. The cherry trees are in blossom, the magnolia trees are heavy with blooms and the more I look the more I see. As I walk down one of the jitties I am struck by the smell of new mown grass as I pass a small but neatly mown front lawn. I breath it in deeply. All around me spring is in full force but my body won’t join in. Usually at this time of year I get a lift, a burst of energy, a skip in my tread and silly ideas, like taking up jogging again. Not this year, at least not yet. This year my body is resisting. Although my senses drink in spring, spring inside is not happening.
ON arrival at the GP surgery I check in on the screen and sit and wait to be called. The nurse beckons me in and soon she is pumping me full of chemicals that in theory are saving my life, holding back the cancer and giving me more years. All this, except my PSA is rising, it becoming more difficult to find a non lumpy place to get the needle in and I am still being sore for two or three days afterwards as I nurse my egg sized lump along. I return home and have coffee. Its time to do more death admin. I might have buried my sister on Friday but here I am sorting out some of the donations to Cancer Research UK that people have either addressed to me or have asked me to forward to the charity. So I duly juggle the IT to pay in cheques and then make donations on the website. I write short letters to people thanking them and telling them that their donations have been made. The trip to the post office includes getting a paper and some no alcohol beer before I return home and for no reason watch an art programme on TV. I start to draft the blog as the sun continues to shine brightly. I feel my injection site getting sore and so make another coffee to wash down some more paracetamol. I should really put the camera back in the garden, fill the bird feeders, top up the hedgehog canteen and train, but right now I just want to rest. I will see how it goes for the next hour. I should say that friends have messaged me today with accounts of the fun activities that they are doing and offers of books and coffee at some point. All of this lifts me and encourages me to grit me teeth and get on with things, so perhaps my garden wildlife will be fed after all.
My hedgehogs, squirrels and birds are all fed so I made the effort. I once joked with a friend that in the unlikely event of this atheist finding himself at the pearly gates being weighed in the balance and being asked if I had any argument for admittance, I would find that all I could offer would be “I fed the birds”. I’m not sure that along side my other stuff that this would swing it. I settle into my evening with coffee and pain killers. I end my evening with my night meds and more paracetamol.
