The joys of getting older

As so often over Bank Holidays, I’m feeling thoroughly disorientated. As I take my morning pills, I’m somewhat surprised to realise today is Monday. Christmas Day is such an unusual day, changing the day of week it occurs from year to year, that any sense of it falling on Sunday this year has been lost. It doesn’t help with doing Sunday chores on Saturday this time. Getting older seems to make it harder to adjust to the change in routine. However we have survived another Christmas, quiet as it was.

The celebrations got off to a bad start when I rang my step brother on Christmas Eve. I was surprised we hadn’t received a card from him & his wife. It made me anxious something was amiss. I was assured they’d posted a card. However, my anxiety did have good cause. Mid-November my step brother had had a stroke. I gather in most things he has recovered. However, his speech has been badly affected. He is having difficulty recalling words & their meanings. This seems such a pity. This is man who is usually extremely articulate, speaking in whole sentences rather than phrases. No more. He’s even having difficulty with reading & understanding what he has read. I tried to reassure him he was still in early days. Certainly the Fox found improvements months after his stroke. My step brother is aware things are still getting better.

By the time I’d told him I was once more troubled with cancer, I was only too aware of our mortality. I suppose I have to admit most of our friends are 60+. With the growing years we’re all also increasingly having health worries. Another blink of the eye, & it will be a case of who’s going to have to go into a home or sheltered accommodation, or even die, first. All of which reminds me to make the most of the time & health that is still left. Once again we are thinking of holidays, though nothing is going to be booked until I’ve completed my radiotherapy & hopefully been told all is still looking well. I can easily avoid times when the chemo is due i.e. May & November, & allow a little time to recover.

We’ve no definite ideas yet. We did look into a coach holiday to Austria in June but that seems like more hassle than we can cope with. Now we’re thinking France, possibly Brittany or Alsace. Later in the year we’re thinking maybe Italy once more. Before all that I’m wondering whether a long weekend in Barcelona might be nice to celebrate my refound health & the end of weekly/daily trips to the hospital. Spain is not a country we’ve ever visited. Barcelona, though, looks a fabulous city & by all reports is very easy for wheelchair access. We’ll see. All is in the air at the moment. First there is the radiotherapy to be endured.