Blog 126. Pressing Concerns

Well,  I hope I never have to go through that again.  It was a supreme test of my stamina and endurance, such that I wondered if I would ever see normal life again.  The ennui was as bad as the physical torture that I suffered but, at last, it is all over and I can endure life to the full again.  What’s that? The radiotherapy for my prostate cancer?  Good God, no.  That’s still rolling on and hasn’t been too bad.  No, no, I was writing about having to sit through Wimbledon on the television with the memsahib for two weeks, this being the one event in the entire year that she refuses to miss.  I have written about this before, of course (Blogs 95 and 96 et al), but this time it is different.  A side effect of my treatment is said to be fatigue.  Although I have not suffered that exactly,  it is true that I have been rather lethargic and disinclined to do much of anything.  The  result is that,  instead of pottering in my workshop where I would normally escape every afternoon, I have collapsed onto the sofa in the Drawing Room where – of course – Wimbledon has been well and truly under way from 1400 until (potentially) 2300 every weekday.  The tennis itself hasn’t been too bad (apart from the grunting on court); rather it has been the bouncing up and down, the running commentary and the shouting from Mrs Shacklepin, sitting next to me, that has tested by spirit:
“Why did you do that?”
“Double fault. Double fault. Double fault.  Go on, have a double fault…”.
“Nooooo…!”
“Get on with it!”
“Out.  Great!”
“Bugger it!”
“Bloody hell, he’s broken him!”
“Oh, God, that’s it.  He’s blown it.”

Curiously,  Jane favours only the male players; she considers women’s tennis to be little potatoes and not worth watching, which seems to me to be rather disloyal to the sisterhood. As far as I can fathom she likes someone called Lebedev, who is Russian, Camnorrie, who is English, and someone called Brodie (who I thought was a character in an old television drama called The Professionals).  She quite likes a bloke called Alcatraz too.  She doesn’t like a man called Jockerwitch because he bounces the ball too much and always wins.  Her dislike of the last player does not prevent her from watching him however.  Anyway, at last, it is over for another year and I can live normally once more – or fairly normally.

The three weeks of radiotherapy (to date) have been more of a monotonous routine than a burden: 
Up at 0600; 
Make Jane a cup of tea to bring her up to periscope depth; 
Drink half a litre of water; 
Execute enema routine; 
Drive to the Big City Hospital in the rush hour (sixty minutes); 
Check in to the radiotherapy department; 
Drink another half litre of water; 
Wait half an hour with legs crossed, and clothes peg on standby; 
Drop trousers, ease down pants, and lie on a hard bench while the radiographers play The Golden Shot with my torso [“Up a bit, left a bit… Lined up. Take cover!”]; 
Be blasted with radiation for ten minutes; 
Rush to lavatory on completion [“Anyone who can’t swim, up on the stairs!”];  
Go home for breakfast.

Any male readers (or women with penises) genuinely interested in the whole process may be assured that radiotherapy treatment for prostate cancer is painless and (in my experience) free of any side effects other than a need to visit the urinal at frequent intervals immediately after the treatment. It is true that I was initially embarrassed by the sartorial inelegance of padding into the treatment room without shoes and trousers, but I overcame this by ensuring that I always wore white socks (their tops neatly turned down), and by ensuring that my underpants had been properly ironed.
Jane very kindly comes with me for moral support and to drive in case (ahem!) I need to find a convenient tree on the journey there or back.  My son, Rupert, came down from Hertfordshire last week and very kindly stood in for Jane for two days, which I thought jolly decent of him; we enjoyed a good period of bonding and shared an expensive breakfast in The Big City after one session. Jane and I are usually home by about 1030 but, by the time we have then finished our belated breakfast and read the newspapers, we find it hard to work up the energy to do much else with the day.   In any case, the weather in July has not been particularly encouraging for external activity.  Indeed, so far, July has been pretty awful, with high winds and heavy showers, though the temperature has been about average for the time of year.  The Meteorological Office reported the other day that June had been the hottest month on record and that July would be hot too.  This made me wonder if the forecasters are living on Venus, or possibly Mercury, for the report bears no relationship to the weather in my part of Britain.  I believe this is called ‘gaslighting’: the practice of convincing someone that a situation is totally different to their own perception of reality.  June was, indeed, not too bad, with a few hot days and temperatures in the high 20s, but it certainly was not exceptional.  Still, we pay billions of pounds to the Met Office to predict the weather, so the report must be true, mustn’t it?  It also fits well with the new religion of belief in man-made climate change, so that just about wraps it up for any discussion on that issue.  We don’t want any blasphemy here, thank you.

Anyway, to return to my ten minutes in the microwave, all has gone as well as one can expect and I am two thirds of the way through, with a week-and-a-half  and only seven (out of the original twenty) zaps still to go.  My PSA level (an indicator of prostate cancer) has dropped to zero and soon I will be free so that my life can move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.  Or into a cool, wet, windy August.

I ask you: can there be anything more difficult to iron than a woman’s skirt?  Trousers: no problem; shirts: a doddle; even our large French 8-person tablecloth the size of a frigate’s topgallant sail is relatively straightforward.  But a woman’s skirt or dress?  What a pain.  They are full of pleats and fiddly bits and have a surprisingly large area when you take into account that they are, essentially, a cylinder or truncated cone.   I was thinking of this, muttering to myself, as I slogged through several of the memsahib’s summer frocks the other day, ironing  (as part of Dhobying) being one of my duties in the Shacklepin household along with Decks and DIY.  I manage to fit in these jobs at the same time as my high-level demanding responsibilities as Strategic Planner, Television Remote Control Operator and Executive Command.  On this occasion the ironing burden was exacerbated by Jane having surreptitiously added several summer skirts and dresses, extracted from winter storage, to the pile for ironing – they being badly creased after twelve months folded in a drawer.  I ploughed on, finished the last skirt with relief, then picked up the next item in the pile.  It was a fitted cotton blouse. I sighed: I had found something worse to iron than a skirt.
One could reasonably assume that I would be relieved of my duties for at least the duration of my radiotherapy treatment to combat prostate cancer, two of the side effects being lethargy and fatigue.  However I ended up with the job because I had complained of being cold and had plaintively asked that we light the gas fire.  This plea from a poor invalid in a state of vulnerability, was greeted with refusal and incredulity by Jane because it was July.  She immediately turned my weakness to an advantage by suggesting a form of occupational therapy to warm me up, namely the ironing. 

I certainly walked into that one.

Nine days to go…

16 July 2023

PS. Alcatraz won.