I leave the house at 1 returning at 5 after an ice cream at cafe Gallo. It seems so long ago since I bought that record player at the charity shop next door.
Before I leave and after I return I have all the chores like eating, exercises and meditation, oh and medication too.
It's probably mediation I need at this point.
It's 2am and it's Weetabix time. Even this is proving exhausting. I've not read the label again and am today a tablet or two short of a picnic this week. Yesterday my two at morning and lunch was supposed to be just morning, like today, then taper off with one each morning.
Too tired to care, never mind read or eat a tablet. Constipation can get in the way as you increase the shakes and suddenly you're in a new meltdown. This is why I've written about how brutal the end processes are. You are mentally and physically broken now.
Notwithstanding all that I managed to get the mouth guards in with the toothpaste and by 4.20am they'd had a couple of halves of football and another tick in a box for 90 minutes.
With 6am approaching it's another opportunity to visit the loo, put some more burn cream on and get another 2 hours sleep before getting up for breakfast and the golf.
It's funny how it can shift from being behind schedule to a couple of positives putting us on front of the curve. Usually nothing more complex than a carbohydrate or two hundred. Like the hiccups timing is everything. They can have a surge while my prostate is active or they can surge while I'm trying to sleep. Anyway whoever studied waves and wave theory knows the nonsense Im currently Havering about.
When I holed the putt for a par at the first I realised why I was here. I missed the birdie at the 2nd but the ball had landed a yard from the hole so any disappointment was tinged with joy.
I'll ignore the next two as I should but hit a driver to 15' at the next par 3 and got a birdie.
Who cares about the rest he laughed as he got back in the buggy. It's a tough old slog but a four at 11 is always a treasure and a par @18 is one to savour. Happy days and I'll sleep for real tonight.
I keep wondering why people expect Caitlins generation to pay for our mess. They're in their 30's and why should they stay to pick up the tab that we clearly chose to run up through our lives. I'm delighted with my cancer care but what have I left them in terms of investment and infrastructure in the care industry. Not enough, I would hazard a guess. We've sold everything that wasn't bolted down and put on hawk with long term investors our hospitals.
Nothing like a round of golf to gain some perspective. Well that and the demise of Alex Salmond who died yesterday and was of his generation. Only a few years before me at St Andrews and yet such a different time. The end of noble entitled politics and the rise of the new type.ive always had a fond image of him as he took the baton on for the commonwealth games in a merry old way. Was it Kuala Lumpur, not sure but he looked jolly. He's been long regarded as a master of Westminster but the irony will always leave us wondering how much he enjoyed playing the game and how much he wanted it to come to an end. When his time had been and gone as an actual leader of a country, some saw his immediate folly was to want to get back into the Westminster comedy show with other luminaries like Boris and the racist. Somehow he couldn't see Brexit coming or willed this beast upon us as a useful device to call for another indy ref. Some people may know, some will say that is politics, I think it's like closing the library in the evening all week so there's more of a backlash. I don't know but he's got a place for putting the independence case and that was good. He had a place for saying we would join the euro at the first step create a republic and ditch the monarchy, he didn't. If politics meant that we split the room so easily then we shouldn't be independent. If we had a cause of getting behind our entrepreneurial skill and our abject rejection of poverty then I'd vote for it. We can, should and one day will do better but for the time being we are just moving the deci chairs as usual.
It's easy to look wistfully across the Irish sea. However, the question I always ask myself is how much has your country been drained by the charlatans as they exist before during and after any power struggle. Gorbachev was one minute being praised and the next responsible for the disasters that befell the collapse of the Soviet Union, when two tribes went to war. The ologarks have a way of sneaking by and not every paedophilic prince is ever caught, tried and condemned.
My recovery was going well but ran into the post chemo crisis again. This time bowel tightness, food frailty and flat on the back. From golf optimism to 24 hours later.
I'm in the Western and trying to get it sorted. In just 3 days I've lost a stone and it was all going so well. Golfing on Sunday was great but alas I forgot to have a morsel after and that meant tea was too late and bowels never broke more than wind.
Suddenly you're two days later, the mask doesn't fit and your radiotherapy is interrupted for padding.
It's mental, it's easy to do and yes I'm on my second insert. Hopefully by 3pm I'll have an open bowel again but I need fuel fast. It's just been flat lining since Sunday.
It's those micro moments that are so hard to explain. Binary choices you get wrong.
Giving yourself over to survival is perhaps the hardest thing. You have only one job and that is let the treatment do its work.
That means your bowels are no longer your own and smells are someone else's problem
Exhaustion is part of the deal and don't pretend you can even leave the front door. 10 steps could cover your days now.
The treatment is paramount and allowing it to do what it needs to while you pick up the pieces is an essential learning
Certain trauma grinds me down like the sore throat and ulcers. It prevents eating is sore but not disastrous. I can go without painkillers if need be as I have for 5 days now. Closing my bowel off is another story. That shuts me down like a culled bison. I can't function knowing if I put more food in it's only going to get to the blockage faster. I can't eat, no energy and I cant do the pain of trying and failing. So when the heavens opened on Tuesday at 8.07am I couldn't describe the relief. When a second pack of 12 golf balls came flying out at 10.22 there was a palpable sense of Christmas. All my Christmases and more had just arrived. Others who have endured constipation with ease will wonder what my problem was, I think like the Can'cerre Camino every problem is unique. You find out more about your little psyches than you could ever imagine. Blockages are clearly one of my kryptonite cases.
As I tip toe around the house with my nappy on I'm reminded at any moment I now have no control. This is the current predicament but it's certainly more joyous and as I say no painkillers are going near me. Codeine paracetamol is probably what shifted the balance or the tiny bit of morphine. Neither will pass my lips again and the throat can scream at the Weetabix instead.
Today is Thursday and it's #29. Tomorrow is my last so I better get myself settled and ready to depart.
With all the interventions I'm clearly not to be coughing for a while or far from a toilet. Luckily there are dad nappies available now, and I'll be buying a pack of pampers for myself. This is no time to get precious about style.
They advise you double up on the Laxido to ensure you don't get caught again but at the moment it seems a bit overplayed. I've had suppositories aenama and Ghostbusters up there so I'm not exactly getting bunged up, but I won't risk it either. I told them codeine paracetamol is no longer, like morphine going to find it's way into my pain management. Pain can be pain for the time being. It's wearisome but it's something that sits more comfortably.
I've got to move to a low energy hi carb so will be gradually increasing to 5 bottles of feed. My Weetabix is about the only solid I'm having along with Jackie's soup, so from now on I'm going virtual carbs. It's been pretty ghastly and I don't enjoy it. I completely powered down overnight in the albergue western. I had no idea if I was getting out and cared even less. Every fart meant a trip to the toilet and after many trips through the night, another sleepless one. When you lose sleep at 61 there's a lot more disorientation takes place and weird things happen in the head. I'm grateful to be home now with a fully caught up sleep regime.
The two weeks after treatment will be fun, indeed.
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