22. Training plans

Mile 19 – Undulating.

When you commit to a marathon training plan, it will take over your diary. You will plan your life around fitting in the training runs, especially the longer ones on Sundays, and you will feel very uncomfortable if you haven’t completed the mileage by the end of the week.

Vitality Health Insurance motivates you to keep active by offering rewards. You can earn points by recording steps or exercise activities, and by doing so you achieve bronze, silver, gold or platinum status. You are rewarded with free coffees, cinema tickets and a host of discounts. Your premiums for the next year can be cheaper if you reach the higher statuses. I have embraced this incentive by either walking 12,500 steps (8 points) or cycling for 30 minutes on the static bike in the garage (another 8 points), five times a week, and I am as obsessed with earning 40 points a week as I would be with a training plan.

Last week the exercise was going well, but I pulled a muscle in my back on Thursday morning, on the right around my ribs, affecting me from shoulder to hip, and for the first time since mid April I was limping and struggling to get up. I’m trying not to think that this is how it all started last year, but by Monday I had started to recover and feel much better about it.

As T.S. Eliot said, (I think he wrote it on the back of a marathon T-shirt), “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go”, so, also on Thursday, I had a go at 75 minutes on the bike rather than the usual 30. It wasn’t bad, I’ll try it again. I think it is about time I ventured out on the roads. Cycling on the turbo trainer must be harder work than normal because you don’t have a chance to freewheel downhill, so I’ll go for a short spin outside soon.

On a similar theme, I have been walking further than usual, with a good hour and a half along local footpaths on Monday. I needed a good stretch afterwards to avoid my calves cramping up, but it is good progress.

—oOo—

This week I had a review call with my Health Coach from Vitality and she suggested I should imagine how life will be when the treatment is over and I’m in remission. It was clear that she had spoken to some clients who came to the end of their hospital visits, and found the empty week yawning before them. My retirement started badly, with the health issues and cancer diagnosis, and I didn’t really establish a routine that I can pick up again now, so it’s timely advice. It has been easy to depend on the Wednesday hospital visits to provide a structure to my week, so what can I do with the extra days, and with the confidence that I can plan activities with little risk of having to call them off at the last minute?

Never one to put these things off, I called at the local library to see if I could volunteer for something I should be able to do – helping people use IT. Another friend had planted the seed a few months back: he is involved with a digital inclusion project, the idea being to assist or train people to use their PCs and phones for the things that increasingly can’t be done any other way: making an appointment with your GP; buying train tickets; or paying for parking. In effect, I have been doing this sort of thing since the first computers in schools were introduced when I was teaching in the 1980s. It turns out the West Sussex Libraries Service offers just such a service, so with some training and guidelines which they will provide, I hope to be giving instruction here or nearby in the near future. I’ll have to decide how much time per week I can promise.

I wonder if computers have changed much since those days?

—oOo—

Wednesday’s hospital visit should have been quick, but we had to wait for lunch and then for my consultant to be available. He asked me to go for a blood test at Worthing Hospital which I did this Monday. He uses the NHS for measures of paraproteins and light chains, although it will be a few weeks before the results are known. They should give the verdict on how my five cycles of chemotherapy have performed.

He also discussed weaning me off the steroids, in particular the Dexamethasone. I’ll carry on taking Prednisolone for three weeks after cycle five has finished, reducing each week: 7.5g, 5g then 2.5g.

I have yet to hear from UCLH about the stem cell transplant, but I’m definitely on their NHS waiting list. Going private might have seen me admitted a little earlier, but I’m assured that the wait will not cause a problem, the cancer will not develop significantly in just a few weeks.

So, there will be a gap between cycle five (which finishes a week after this Wednesday’s treatment) and the stem cell transplant, during which I can have a trial run at normal life, with no chemo, hopefully few side effects, sunshine, and I can practise my future routine.

—oOo—

Sorry the blog is a bit late this week. I have been reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver and can’t put it down. 

Our social highlight of the week was a get together with friends, boating at The Anchor, Barcombe, on the River Ouse. It is a really peaceful way to spend an afternoon, except for us making a noise, of course. We managed a trip without crashing into the bank, and we even retrieved someone’s football.

Thanks for reading and take care.