Stardate 20180825.5 (mid August to the uninitiated) – Captian Myfunk Ellis log of the USS Prostateus.

Recap: A surprise attack by the Klingons has rendered the ship badly damaged in the Guynemium cluster and it seems Scotty, the ships chief engineer has done a runner in an escape pod.

“Computer!” MyFunk shouted above the chaos “Ships status”

“The ships cream crackered” The ship computer, damaged in the attack, replied in a cockney accent.

MyFunk momentarily did a double take. “Computer start self-destruct sequence”

“Nah mate. Warp core is James Bond” Replied the computer.

“Computer you are not making sense” Shouted MyFunk.

“The warp core is gone” The computer replied.

“Captain, Captain the Klingon ship has been severely disabled and won’t be doing anything for a long while. That tends to happen when you beam on board a rigged warp core” Scotty laughed and exchanged high fives with the rest of the engineering crew.

I have heard of and read many thought provoking quotes from famous people in my lifetime.

“I have a dream” Martin Luther King

“After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb” Nelson Mandela

However in August of 2018 the most important quote of the year for me, unfortunately, was,

“If you don’t use it you will lose it” Karen, Erectile Dysfunction nurse

Quiet please. Lights. Turn on the advert. Five, four, three, two, one and action.

Cue good looking old couple, they are retired and have a great big house and lots of loot. Oh and there goes samson their loyal Golden Retriever. No soup and bread for them in the evenings or sitting in the one heated room. Holding hands, looking deep into each others eyes. After forty years they are still very much in love. She nuzzles her head on his shoulder. He kisses her forehead. They are now gardening together (what gardening has to do with this is anyone’s guess) while looking lovingly at each other. Pictures on the mantlepiece. The son is a top lawyer and their daughter is a top executive. Lots of toothy smiles to each other and I love you repeatedly without words. I want to throw up and want to slit both of their silly throats and then feed the pieces back to them.

Enter the number one product of its kind. The Osbon ErecAid Pump (you have to say that with one of those really excited and polished American accents – “I have just discovered this where have you been all my life” etc).

It’s a pump. It resembles a cheap ray gun or spaceship prop from a really bad fifties sci-fi ‘B’ movie.

If the King is not exercised scar tissue will develop and that is another set of problems that you just don’t want (don’t I have enough already). We were told the choice is quite simple – use it daily, until the King functions on his own or you will lose the King forever. That sentence tends to get men’s attention pretty well.

From the nods in the room I seem to be the only one that had not picked mine up. That task had now shot to the top of the to-do list. Once armed with the prescription I headed off to my local pharmacy. A quiet pharmacy that I never saw busy – sometimes I wondered how it was surviving. Today there was only one other gentleman already waiting in there. Now for whatever reason as fearless as I am I was feeling like a spotty teenager on his first mission to buy a pack of condoms. Luckily the attendant at the register was a nonchalant male in his early twenties. I smiled to myself as this was going to be a simple hit and run.

Unfortunately, this is me. Somehow it was never going to be.

We smiled at each other and I handed over the prescription. He took it and punched a few keys in the register and then he stopped and looked puzzled.

“What is this?” He asked.

“I have prostate cancer and it’s a pump”. I had to get in the cancer bit because I had no idea where his ‘freak panic button’ was located and how far away his hand was from it. I wasn’t rude but I was far from happy having to explain myself.

The bell on the door jingled. We were now joined in the shop by a young mum and her baby.

He flipped the prescription over and back again like he was expecting a diagram to be on the other side. Defeated he now went to see one of the other gentlemen in the back.

The bell on the door jingled again.

Then three of them gathered around the prescription like it was a peace treaty and they were sure it was a trick.

The bell on the door jingled again. We were now joined in the shop by a middle aged man. This was a small shop now getting fuller by the minute with some freak holding up the queue.

The pharmacist now came out and asked why I didn’t take the prescription into a pharmacy nearer to my surgery, its six miles away. I explained it’s the surgery that I used to go to when I lived in that area and I have just not changed it because I don’t really get sick. He nodded and said he had to order it and it would take a few days. I wanted to ask what was the problem but I just didn’t have it in me and I now had enough eyes on me.

Finally, I got away.

A few days later I returned with a thick opaque plastic bag and walked purposefully out of the shop with my dodgy contraband, nervously scanning both sides of the street until I got home.

The bag was hidden for a couple of days while I formalized my plan of usage. Much like a carefully crafted pipe bomb I would imagine if I had to use an analogy. The date was set and the fridge and freezer were stocked with the necessary comfort foods, lemonade and ice cream to numb the pain. I was really going wild.

The house is asleep, the television glows and blares gently in the background and the first set of people are being murdered. My ego is carefully unscrewed and placed in a box on the table, right next to pride. The lids are shut.

The King has his suncream liberally applied and enters his private sunbed chamber at one end. The door is closed and the air is pumped out. The Kings says “hi” and stretches out on his sunbed. Welcome back your majesty and enjoy sunbathing. Soon a button releases the air which brings out the clouds and the King is having none of that and goes back indoors. The door is closed and the air is pumped out. The Kings says “Hi” and stretches out on his sunbed. Welcome back your majesty and enjoy sunbathing.

Groundhog day for the next ten minutes.

I have never shared the exercise routine with anyone. It was a routine to be done alone while I watched either ‘Medical detectives’, ‘Killer kids’ or ‘Bizarre murders’ as you do late at night. I would put it on par with doing a number two. It’s something that you have to do but you certainly don’t want or need an audience for it. It is definitely one to do on autopilot with various strangers meeting their grizzly ends in the background.

Other days are much harder though, thankfully they are few and far between.

Once I raged so much about my dad and him putting me in this predicament that I had to go to sleep instead as I was likely to cause serious injury to one or more out of the three of us. I would not be in this situation if he had had a conversation with me all those years ago, that was the sentence that started it all.

Someday’s it just seems never ending and sometimes I just want to give up. This thing is a great pride leveler. It will just strip it away and give back very little in return. Some days I am conveniently tired so tomorrow will have to do. Thankfully ninety nine percent of the time I just get on with it.

It makes me want to shake and slap some men because they have the choice to avoid coming to this because they have been informed, warned even. I never did.

Ego is carefully removed from the box and screwed back in, followed by pride.

Groundhog day again tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that until the king reigns again, sometime in the future.

I also remind myself that I am actually fortunate and that it could be a lot worse. The next step after what happened to me is no nerves or being ravaged by cancer. The step after that is death.

Prostate cancer, that gift that just keeps on giving.

Ice cream is ready. Now time to sit and continue watching some more people being bumped off.