47. Planning for after the finish line

Mile 44 – Made easier by lots of supporters and plenty of food stations.

After crossing the marathon finish line, you have to find both your supporters and your way home again. A bit of forward planning can help although these days, with mobile phones, it is probably not quite so necessary. I have been to marathons where big letters are displayed in the meet up zone so you can head for your initial. Not too bad for me, but an “Alan Young” would have to have made it clear which initial he would use.

Nowadays the runner might WhatsApp “finished” and receive the reply “see you in the pub”.

I’m thinking more about what life will be like come the spring, when I hope to finish my next round of chemotherapy and to be on maintenance treatment in remission, mixing with people and regaining my fitness. Sue and I will have spent a year with cancer treatment dominating our lives: it’s as if the COVID disruption never stopped for us.

I have plenty of things I’d like to do, such as sport and photography, volunteering and socialising. Sue has taken up an art class now on top of returning to her choir, and she is hoping to do more of her proof-reading. As to how we fit everything into the week and have time to do things together, we will have to see.

What will this blog become? If not a myeloma diary, perhaps just a diary. I might not post every week and I certainly hope not to have to find more marathon analogies.

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After last week’s trip to UCLH we returned to another old haunt this week: Montefiore Hospital in Hove for a blood test. Once more we felt welcome in our home from home. Some of the staff have moved on and we will miss them, but we recognised most of them and met a new nurse who appreciated my juicy veins. Strangely, although she jabs needles into people all day, she is scared of having them jabbed into herself, even the tiny COVID injections.

Next week the Consolidation II Dara VTD treatment starts. That translates as Daratumumab (Darzalex), Bortezomib (Velcade), Thalidomide and Dexamethasone: the same as I had in April, May and June. I’m not sure whether the side effects will be better or worse this time around. As I recall they included fatigue, then extra energy and no sleep on Dex days, followed by hangover Saturdays, all alongside disruption to my digestive system. Whatever happens, I know I have already been through much worse and eventually come out smiling on the other side.

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The Couch to 5K is going to plan, by which I mean their plan. I confess that I underestimated this: when I started, I secretly expected that with my years of running behind me, I would be back to peak performance after a fortnight. No such luck. I am finding the levels of exertion in the programme just right, this week 90 seconds run, 90 seconds walk, three minutes run, three minutes walk, then repeat. Next week I will move on to five minute runs. I am having trouble with the breathing, which I guess is very common, as my trainer Yasmin Evans keeps mentioning it. She suggests breathing in for four steps before breathing out, but that feels like swimming a length underwater. I’ll change coach to Denise Lewis; she might be gentler with me.

I had a sign-off call with the physio at UCLH this week, an opportunity to go through my remaining aches and to test my sit to stands. I managed 28 in a minute the first time we met and 30 just before the Stem Cell Transplant, then 35 this week – possibly a world record?

new world record of sit and stand is 30/30

This chap does 30 in 30 seconds but I’m sure you agree it is unlikely he would manage another five in the next half minute. I do confess to using a chair though.

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Of my stem cell buddies who went through the treatment at the same time as me, one is just about to start his second SCT (he’s having a tandem-SCT), not something I would fancy at the moment. Good luck, if you are reading! Another is hoping to go straight onto maintenance without further consolidation treatment – good luck!

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I caught up on some overdue socialising this week, taking the opportunity, since my 100 day isolation ended last week, at the Gurkha Spice one night and for lunch at the Red Deer next day. 

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To celebrate my birthday, I went to volunteer as a number checker at parkrun. What a complicated job! The objective is, for every fifth runner, to take the position and time from the timekeeper, then, as they pick up a numbered token at the end of the finish funnel, check their token number and note their name. It was fine for the first few, then twenty crossed the line together. In the rush, I picked individuals, like the man with the bushy beard. I took his name and time but when I looked around for him to take his token number and name he had vanished, probably run off to see his friends. In the meantime, another 40 people had crossed the line. I am beginning to think that running might be much easier than volunteering.

Sue and I later had lunch at Bolney Vineyard, then the boys came over in the evening to help us with an escape room gift we had received for Christmas. Just as well they were there, we would never have managed it on our own.

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Printing photographs to enter a competition is no small feat. Last week I did the printing part on my sister’s A3 printer. I also ordered some mounting boards online and they arrived. It took half an hour to remove all the packaging, as I suppose the shop didn’t want them returned because of dented corners. In the week I found it was possible to buy the boards from the local Seawhites art shop for the same price. I’ll do that in future and save on bubble wrap.

The next challenge is to cut windows with a bevelled edge in the board. It is something I had learned years ago on a picture framing course. My cutter has a tendency to slip but I was able to borrow a better one.

I’ll hand in the prints this week and let you know how the competition goes the week after.

Thanks for reading and take care.