Thursday and I am up early and running on automatic to get myself to the GP surgery to have my winter flu and COVID jabs. So having downed my morning meds I walk to the surgery and I am met by the receptionist who finds my paper work and ushers me into one of the injection booths. I find my usual jab nurse in the next booth and say hello. My nurse checks I am who am and then sticks the COVID in my left arm before sticking the Flu jab in to my right arm. It is extremely quick and gives my time to have a quick chat with my usual nurse and confirm my next regular cancer jab. I am soon in the local co-op getting a paper and making sue I avoid the sweet aisles.

I get home and set about the days cross words until my partner returns from her bobbing about in the water class at the gym. We drive off to a local garden centre and order what was to be a lunch of modest proportions. I order what I think is going to be a ploughman’s lunch and it turns out to be a feast of ham and cheese and loads of salad stuff. What was most outstanding was the two huge pickled onions that defied being eaten fully. The amount of ham was stupendous and by the time I had munched my way through it all I knew I would not need tea later. The garden centre is preparing for Christmas and there are a lot of staff being busy creating a winter wonderland, or at least a bright and shiny consumer grotto.

Leaving the garden centre involved walking past the sweet and food area so having dallied at the “Weird Fish” area we drove home. Once home I settle down to recover from my huge light lunch. I am soon watching an early evening football match, which gets followed with several episodes of Blue Lights. My partner goes to bed and I take my night meds but I begin to feel crap so delay until gone one o’clock.

Friday and I wake up late, do my vitals and finally get up, my partner having been to get her winter flu jab. I am feeling the effects of yesterdays jabs and potter about getting breakfast and then bring my blood pressure data base up to date. I work out the average for the previous chemo cycle, and I work out the averages for the first of few days of the Cycle that started with the introduction of steroids. It is noticeable that my average blood pressure seems to be dropping since the introduction of steroids. However I withdrew sweets and goodies at the same time so I may have introduced a confounding variable! Life is never simple. Having done my sums I grit my teeth and try on the trousers I ordered. To my relief they do not fit, they are too big, Yippee! This means a trip to M&S to return them and a proper “trying things on” shopping adventure.

I return to my laptop and jot a note/ poem and then start t catch up with the blog while I listen to The Infinite Monkey Cage. while my partner returns from the gym and puts a “knitting to” film on the TV.

467
It’s a confusion,
I’ve no idea 
what is making me feel
like this. 
My cocktail of medicines,
inoculations and add-ons
is playing havoc with my mind. 
All of this pharmacy 
allegedly keeps me alive
but keeps me in fugue. 
This bewildered wandering 
through my mind and body 
crashing wave like 
against my personal universe
not knowing what chemical 
is responsible for what. 
I’ve no helm 
by which to steer myself.
Is this me,
or have I wandered away
and become a luckless vagrant
not sure anymore 
that I have a history?
I stand and hope something 
wears off and I get 
to once again 
glimpse the mirror 
and recognise a person
I can be. 

				467 03-10-2025

The evening creeps up towards tea through the continuing teeming rain. I guess there maybe food, rugby and Blue Lights, but I am sure there will be night medication and then bed before a tomorrow that will include dining with friends. I’ve already run out of energy spoons and hope I recover enough spoons to enjoy tomorrow and to feel more chipper.