An Early Start, A Long Loop

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThe alarm went early, before the sun had properly committed to the day, on the sensible assumption that a day this loaded needed every spare minute it could get. Physio booked for the afternoon meant the whole thing had a shape to it already — decided in advance, which is either restful or slightly ominous, depending on your outlook.

Grab was the order of the day, given the physio appointment sitting at the far end of it — no sense wrestling with parking twice over when someone else could do the wrestling instead. The morning rounds went smoothly enough to almost feel suspicious, everything ticking along without the usual small snags, which is the sort of thing you learn not to comment on too loudly in case it hears you.

Then came the virtual interview on CML — chronic myeloid leukaemia, for anyone not fluent in the acronym — which had been sitting somewhere at the back of the week with a faint hum of nerves attached. As these things so often go, the anticipation had done rather more work than the actual event required. It went better than expected, questions landing in places already comfortably familiar, the whole thing wrapping up with that particular lightness that comes from a worry proving to have been mostly imaginary.

Barely time to enjoy that before lunch, this one in honour of Prof Chan Lee Lee's retirement — a proper send-off in miniature, the kind of gathering where the conversation keeps circling back to "can you believe it's been this long," said with the specific fondness reserved for someone who's earned the right to finally stop. Quick as these things go, but warm, the sort of lunch that leaves you glad to have been in the room for it.

No pause after that, straight into a workshop on chemo prescribing, the new online module debuting with all the slightly clunky enthusiasm new systems tend to bring — a few dropped connections, a screen that froze at an inconvenient moment, the general teething of anything digital meeting real use for the first time. Got through it, though, filed away for next time.

Then Grab again, out to Kota Damansara for physio, the city sliding past the window in that unbothered way it does when you're a passenger rather than driving. By the time the session finished, tired had properly set in — the specific, bone-deep sort that a day this stacked leaves behind, no single part of it dramatic, just the accumulated weight of a great many things happening one after another without much gap.

Straight home after that, no detours, the evening arriving with the simple relief of having nowhere left to be. Dinner, then Anita needed to nip out to Mid Valley for something — one of those small errands that seems to arrive precisely when you've mentally clocked off. Went along anyway, more for the company than the errand, the day finally winding down somewhere between the car park and the walk back to it.