Wednesday and I wake to the sound of my partner going to see her mother. I check my social media and emails before taking my vitals. My blood pressure still seems to be at a stable lower level after the introduction of steroids to my meds. I get up and get into my training kit determined to train again today. First comes morning meds, now enhanced with the steroids, thankfully in pill form, followed by breakfast. With the basics out of the way I set about clearing the office of all the things still on the floor and taking up the rest of the carpet tiles and underfelt boards in readiness for “Bob” to remove the parquet flooring on Saturday. Why on earth the flooring has risen the way it has is a mystery but what is clear is that it needs to come up. After a lot of grunting and heaving I get everything out, which leaves it clear to begin work on. Not a pretty sight and having everything that came out of he office strewn through the house is a pain but necessary.

With the clearing done and the old felt and tiles in black bags ready to go to the recycling centre tomorrow it is time to train. By now my partner is back and planting yet more flowers in the garden, I go to the garage thinking a quick 30 minute session will do but end up setting myself 45 minutes instead. I think I have some sort of morbid need to push myself to avoid what I think steroids will do to me. From the off I try to keep a good pace going and it seems to work quite well, by the end of the session I am well over 9 kilometres and over 600+ calories burnt.

I am knackered after the session, which I record as I rest over a pint of orange squash. Eventually I get myself together and go for a shower. Feeling more human I go to see what my partner has done in the garden and find her popping the last of the forty plants we had bought to bed out for the winter. I rake up the fallen leaves from the Acer tree at the top of the garden and then invite my partner to walk down to the co-op with me to get soem fruit. I am craving fruit since I stopped eating sweets and other goodies, so with the garden packed away we walk down to the village and plunder the fruit racks in the shop.

Back home we are in time to see the garden guy arrive so its coffee making duties for me before I unload our fruit haul and settle down to a few odd bits to nibble. I scribble a poem that reflects how how I feel at the moment as the roses get pruned and coffee drunk.

470
“Fuck I earn my life”
is what I think 
as I gasp nine kilometres
and forty five minutes
after pulling the first stroke. 
I am looking forward to Christmas,
in seventy one days,
it means chocolate 
and an Armagnac, 
to celebrate my 
sweet things celibacy. 
Not quite purgatory,
but not quite Limbo
as I fight my way through 
the next wave
of scans and bloods
and anxious waits. 
If the arithmetic is wrong
then I’m on the 
path to gone,
if good the bout
continues.
There is a line in the sand,
I have to be up to scratch,
and earn my right to stand. 
You see chocolate 
does not come easy.   					470  15-10-2025

The evening arrives, gardener gone and I start to draft the blog while my partner makes tea. I shall slide quietly into the evening meds knowing I should write something for the new poetry website but also knowing I am too tired to do it tonight, what I have done today is going to have to be enough.