A much quieter week, following the busy birthday week.

From a health perspective, and following on from the birthday week, I have been going over the many images we took during that week and two things stood out. 1. How my features have been impacted by the disease and the medication that has / is going through my body. How I look, especially my face, has changed irreparably. 2. My body shape and I have taken the step to begin to manage my food intake, off the back of me weighing myself. I am currently the heaviest I have ever been - see previous posts for my reference to how the weight aspect is affecting me psychologically. One possible, instant impact, has been a slightly light head - probably down to the reduced food (fuel) intake, or the items with less sugar content. A natural effect and to be expected, but one I will monitor.

The usual back pain and rusty fingers are my constant companions and, as I am doing more varied tasks, both of those are affected differently, depending on what I am doing each day.

This is my third full week of retirement, and it took until Friday before I actually had a day where I was able to just do nothing / decide what I wanted to do, without any pre-existing commitments. Was nice to be in that position, but not one that will last. I continue with the focus on one of my main book projects, with a new chapter being devised and bulked out significantly. Connected to that, a fellow author has been in touch regarding a different subject, but in the course of our conversations, he has provided some additional info for this same book, from his own archival personal collection - nice!

I had a mix of helping both of the kids with key needs during the past week. I spent a whole day with each of them, separately, in the course of the help they needed. Dedicated time, on specified tasks, but nice for quality time with both of them.

I finally completed all pension related elements that I needed to do, now that I have reached that magic 55. It is over to the pension providers to sort their aspects and something that will take some time yet. Sandra and I discussed this key milestone and what it means. An important decision that was made, as a direct result of having this disease and the prognosis that came with it. My completion of the applications was a stark realisation of the situation I am in, how long I may have left and what I can possibly fit into that remaining time. Great to have the choice, but a hard reminder in tandem with that.

Moving further and further into this new phase of my life, one that has a whole new range of unknowns; let’s see what comes next……………stay tuned.  

Thanks for the interest from all of you.
Regards
Peter