Where have I been all this time?

Blog March 2020
I have had a worrying time just lately. 2018 ended on a high because I had successfully dieted and lost 20kgs. Then in the first week of 2019 I got the results of a blood test that suggested I might have prostate cancer.
I missed the first appointment at the hospital because of the floods. I wasn’t particularly worried at the time, because we were told to expect a once in a hundred years flood event, and we’d just had one of them 20 years ago. The ‘Night of Noah’, in 1998 hadn’t threatened our home at all, so we thought we would be safe.
We were safe. The water stopped at our front gate, at two o’clock in the morning, when we could do nothing but sit in the dark and worry. The power had been cut some time earlier and the only evidence that anyone else remained in the entire suburb was a single candle in the window of one of the flats opposite. The flood would have been so much easier to deal with during daylight hours when we might not have felt so totally isolated.
Why was a controlled release timed to peak in the middle of the night? Why didn’t they open the gates twelve hours earlier? Did they think that the rain was going to stop before the dam reached its maximum?
I suspect they were covering their arses. So long as they operated by the book, and to the letter, they couldn’t be held responsible for anything that happened.
Enough on that subject. The waters finally subsided and I was able to get to the hospital. I had a series of tests over a period of months and in the end received a firm diagnosis. I did indeed have prostate cancer and, although it was in the early stages, it was threatening to effect the urinal sphincter. Not wanting to spend the rest of my life wearing incontinence pants, I decided to undergo radiation treatment.
The eight weeks of treatment coincided with “Strand Ephemera” and “PUNQ”, so I was installing a major artwork on the strand, taking it down again, setting up a temporary gallery in the city, sitting with it for a month, and taking it down again, all while I was going out to the hospital every day. It was very stressful, but not really bad. I could almost enjoy lying down for twenty minutes a day being fussed over by attractive young people.
The prostate produces PSA in response to any stress, and radiation treatment is a major stressor, so I had to wait four months until it calmed down so I could be tested again. Meanwhile bushfires raged across New South Wales and Victoria. Fortunately that was primarily a television event for me, but it did nothing to help me relax.
A year after the original blood test I finally had another one that showed a much lower PSA score. I’m not necessarily absolutely free of cancer but it is unlikely to grow back fast enough to kill me before my time is up. I will have tests every six months to make sure it keeps behaving itself. Heavy rain put the bushfires out at about the same time. Then covid19 started to make the headlines.
So, all in all, I have had a very stressful couple of years. Most of my regular activities have been cancelled, and I am staying home as much as possible. I should have plenty of time to write, and I have started, but am finding it hard to settle. I have been averaging about half a page a day for the last week, so I won’t promise to have anything written within any timeframe.