Tuesday comes around and I wake up in the spare room again as my partner and I fight off the family cold. My partner gets a doctors appointment for today. I get up and look over the blood results that have come in. It is good enough news. The most important thing is that my PSA has not risen, so early on in the first cycle the PSA has been held. I take this as a win! There has been a big jump in my white blood cells, I assume in response to being poisoned by the chemo. (Yew tree needle sludge). I have absolutely no idea if this is good or bad, I shall find out tomorrow.

So my bloods I take as an early win. I have a soup for breakfast to get warm and clear the kitchen. It’s all about the dentist now. At the appropriate time I walk down to the village shop and buy a paper before doubling back to the dentist. I explain to her my situation, we have been here before, and we agree that today is about having a check to make sure there is nothing obviously wrong in my mouth. The check goes well and we decide another check post chemo in July is the best option. We also discuss aids to my oral hygiene while I cannot use my electric toothbrush. My dentist suggests a water pick as an addition, which will help avoid a build up of plaque and will keep the interdental spaces clean. I agree to consider it. I leave making a new appointment and paying my bill.

Once home I settle down to do the crosswords but first I amalgamate the newly arrived first aid replenishment pack with our existing stocks of first aid stuff. In the end I decide to have to separate boxes, one for the usual first aid stuff and a second one purely for bandages. It is not often that a triangular bandage or any other big bandage is required so it makes sense to have them available but separate. So we now have first aid bag of bandages clearly with the word “bandages” Sharpied on all sides. In a third small first aid bag I put all the spare ointments, salves, potions and pain killers into it and again write the contents on the outside of the bag. We are now covered for all our first aid needs now for at least a year. All that remains is to put them all back into the cupboard where they live.

As luck would have it the weather turns decidedly moist as my partner is about to go to her doctors appointment. I end up running her down to the surgery in her car. My the brakes are fierce. I drop her off and return home. Before getting comfortable with my crosswords again I refill the bird and squirrel feeders and as I do so note how many bulbs are now showing in the flower beds. My crossword completion goes slowly as it seems that everyone is having deliveries today including me. The blue slate that I ordered to put the new mini green house on arrives and I have it dumped at the back gate ready for me to barrow it round to the garden in due course. No ones going to nick two bags of slate, I hope. I decide which poem I am going to present to the Saturday poetry stanza meeting and send it off before making myself lunch. Its been a busy morning.

By mid afternoon my partner has her new antibiotics and I my intention is to rest and to think about doing a bit more reading and writing. One task I have to do is prepare for tomorrows oncology review. Its a face to face one so I shall be Ubering to and from the hospital in town. I need to be clear about what I need to report and that I want to ask. Clearly they need to know the frequency, duration and intensity of my Haematuria . They also need to know I have had a crap cold along with how else I feel. I need to know the significance of the white blood cell rise and whether the PSA holding is as good a sign as I am taking it for. So I need to pull all of this together so I can be effective and efficient tomorrow. My sole aim is to ensure that I start cycle 2 on Friday as planned. Nothing more, nothing less.

The evening has a cup football match to watch and more of the Patience series. I also have to decide what to wear to see the oncologist. Whatever it is it needs to withstand the elements, deal with the sweltering heat of the out patients department and have enough pockets to satisfy my pocket needs. I am determined not to get into trainers and joggers. It seems that so many people end up wearing these as a kind of chemo uniform. I perhaps get this on the actual days of chemo as you need something comfortable and which allows access to your body for the nurses but when I am going to see the oncologist for review I need to feel I am presenting as someone with something about them who has a definite say on what happens to them and has a head on their shoulders and isn’t going to roll over. I’m think I might give the suit a run out with the Ben Sherman three quarter length over coat with matching Chelsea boots. After all its Uber there and back so might as well look reasonable.

Monday and its a vampire day, at noon today I shall be having bloods taken in readiness for Wednesday’s oncology review and Friday’s cycle 2 start. So after another night in the spare bed to avoid my partner and I keeping each other awake with our cold symptoms, I get up and shower and dress in my “popping to the GP” clothes. A quick breakfast of toast and I am ready to put away my washing and tidy up my end of the recliner. By the time its time to go the GP I am just about organised. The walk to the GP surgery is a slow one, I am very low on spoons (energy) and so I take my time. Once there I book in and wait. In a very short time I am called in and my favourite blood taker gets to work. No pain and its over in a trice.

On the meander home I drop into the village co-op and buy a paper and a couple of pizzas, which I fancy for lunch. I also drop into the village chemist and buy the items on my “first aid kit refill” list. The house first aid kit has already been topped up with a first aid kit refill pack but I always add in a couple of basic additions. Brolene eye drops, Savlon, Canesten, Dioralyte and paracetamol tablets all get added to the kit so if we go away we have everything, and when the bathroom cabinet is bare we know that there are back ups in the first aid kit. Having done the overhaul this January we are now good for at least the next year. It also means the household could provide a field hospital with bandages given how many we have accrued. Once home I settle down to do the crosswords in the paper and my partner cooks me one of the pizzas for lunch.

I spend some time trying to decide which poem I will take to next Saturdays Poetry Stanza meeting. It is a zoom meeting this month so I will have to circulate my choice early in the week, hence my looking at the issue today. I am torn because I do not want to share something that is too “Me “cancery””, I have become sensitive to the fact that death, decay and disease “suck the life out of the living” as my friend eloquently put it. I do not want to be one of the life suckers, but at the same time I do not want to deny what is going on. It is uncomfortable. I find I have a poem that says this:

486
“fed up with death,
decay and dying.
It sucks the life 
out of the living,” 
said my friend,
and now I lay here
full of poison
and wonder how much
life I suck out of
my family and friends. 
The watching and not knowing
what to do for the best,
those feelings of uselessness
in the face of another’s pain,
swamping the everyday.
It’s the way kindness
gets blocked as each
tries to find a way
to cope with the storm. 
I try to calm myself
And let it pass,
but it:
No,
I suck.
Its not a good feeling. 
					485 30-12-2025

I continue my read through and in the end think I will go for something that describes how I cannot help myself plunging into myself when I write.

477
I long to write expansive poems like Darwish and Martinson that illuminate, that take the fibres of life and weave them into others being, To find themes that skewer the heart to the expression of life. I want to pull the strings that lead others down a path to hidden gardens and waves of engulfment that leave them feeling the hugeness of the sky, the speed of light and the briefness of life,
But I stumble,
trip over myself
and find dirt
in my mouth,
dark in my eyes
and a gyroscope,
running fast,
in my head,
leaving me 
facing death
and its cold 
finality.
			477  27-11-2025

I shall see how things go before I finally decide. Whilst I am doing this sorting I occasionally absent mindedly stroke my beard and note that more hair has fallen out between my fingers. It is the chemo at work.

The afternoon goes on and I listen to relaxing music as I draft the blog or read more of Fredrick Petersons poetry. A strange man, an American neurologist who at one point headed up a committee that was given the job of finalising the method of electrocution via the electric chair for the state he was in. Apart from his medical career he wrote poetry and collected Chinese art. His first published collection of poetry was Poems and Swedish Translations in 1883, which is the collection that I am reading. Its a strange mixture of original poems and his translations of his Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian contemporaries, which appear to be in no particular order.

So I read and draft the blog until the sun goes down, when I begin to run out of energy and start to think about what I might watch on TV. Last night saw the end of Sarah, the Woman in the Shadows and the latest episode of the Night Manager. At the moment Patience on channel four is the front runner as I suspect I will not get to see the Liverpool v Barnsley cup match. It would appear that an early night might actually happen, which will be good as I have a dentist appointment tomorrow. Strangely all the dentist can do is look at my teeth to see if there is anything obvious that cannot wait, there can be no jabbing pointy pins into my gums, it is an eyes only job as chemo makes my mouth super sensitive and anything that needs doing will need to be okayed by the oncologists.

Of course all that is really on my mind is whether the chemo, even at this early stage has affected my PSA score or not. That is something I will not know until the blood results get posted at midnight tonight. I am hoping I am holding my own on that front.

Sunday and another night of broken sleep due to the cold I have. There is little to say about the day apart from two things. Firstly I sent most of the day watching FA cup football matches and second: today is the day my hair started to fall out due the chemo. Last time I did chemo it took fifteen days, this time it has taken two days longer than last time. I suppose I should be glad as it means the chemo is working, at least on some level.

Tomorrow I have a set of bloods to be taken. These will inform my oncology review on Wednesday and will hopefully give the go ahead for Cycle 2 on Friday.

Friday was a day of mixed fortunes. The night had brought snow and the roads and my drive were covered in it. After getting up and doing my vitals, which were a bit better, I clear the drive while my partner makes bacon sandwiches for breakfast. My snow shovel earns it keep. My partner and I are due to have our nails done at 11o’clock but because of the weather we ring to make sure that the spa is open at the gym. There is a problem with doing us together so we agree to go in for 2:3o. This means me moving my chiropody appointment to later in the month. In the light of the new arrangements my partner goes to the gym to do a class while I rest at home.

Out of the blue my chiropodist rings me and says she has a cancellation at 12:30 and am I interested. I grab the chance and get myself ready. My car needs the snow taking off it, so after a bit of a delay I drive Elsie of the drive and off to the chiropodist. The roads are surprisingly good and I arrive in plenty of time. The chiropodist is chatty as ever and gets on with my feet. By the end of the session my feet are feeling brilliant, refreshed and very comfortable. I tip toe through the sludge back to the car and drive off to the gym.

My partner is already in the gym lounge. and as there is time to go before nails time I have a coffee and a sausage sandwich. Before going to the spa to have my nails done I go to the toilet and discover my efforts of clearing the drive of snow has induced a mild bout of Haematuria. I go to the Spa and get my nails done. I have all the builder gel stripped off and just a plain lacquer put on. I need to be able to see if my nails are being affected by the chemotherapy so a plain layer will let me do this. At the end of the session my partner and I leave and drive home in our respective cars.

Once home I start to monitor my Haematuria. It’s not a bad episode but I do not fully clear until 2:20 am the following morning. My evening is spent resting waiting for my Haematuria to settle down as I watch the final episodes of Run Away. Another intriguing ending of a happy nuclear family whose mother is a murderer and unwittingly the murderer of her own son whilst other characters walk away from shooting someone and another gets away free after throwing a young woman over a walk way to her death. Not exactly a moral tale, more of a modern “things are complex” tale.

Saturday and I have had a crap night. The cold I have has kept me awake, my throat is sore and I have a cough that a forty a day smoker would be proud of. I sleep late trying to rest and make sure my Haematuria has completely abated. I eventually get up and put my washing in before making soup and a chunk of panettone for mid day breakfast. I retreat to the lounge and watch a history making football match as Macclesfield beat Crystal Palace the FA cup holders. Its a fairy tale outcome, the stuff the FA cup is made of. I am still feeling delicate and rough so continue to watch football as I draft the blog. A the moment there is nothing to do but wait out the after effects of the cold and the chemo. Its clear that any kind of execration has consequences for me so I have to take a slow pace and try to be gentle with myself. My intention is to remain as inactive as possible for a while and give myself a chance to heal properly. But for now its simple chores like emptying the tumble dryer and organising the next Tesco order. Most of all I am tired and desperate to feel better.

Thursday and I wake up feeling slightly better from my cold. I take my vitals and they are more like my normal range. I have breakfast and then I make one last onslaught on the 1000 piece jigsaw that my partner has been doing for the past few days. She had got to the boring but tricky bit at the end were there is no pattern left only monochrome strange shapes and the last remaining “whimsies” . I set to work and my partner does but finds time and energy to do odd jobs that need doing while I push on. At about 3 o’clock the final piece is ceremonially put in place. Of course I take a photo jus to prove that we have done it. It is a great image but it was truly difficult.

With the jigsaw finally done I have time to update my blood pressure spread sheet and then its on to the task of filling the bird feeders. The birds have really gone for the fat balls in the heart shaped wicker feeder, they are a great favourite of the Robins. The dark descends as does the cold, it is supposed to be sleeting or snowing at any moment as I settle down to write the blog. There are crosswords to do, soap dispensers to fill and I am sure something will appeal on TV. I have to be better and able to travel tomorrow as I am having my nails done and visiting the chiropodist, so by the end of the day I should feel pampered. I am hoping the weather forecast is way off.

Wednesday comes around and I wake with a bloody cold. As if being jabbed on Monday, in the middle of chemo I haven’t got enough going on, a bloody cold is all I needed. So I wrap myself up in my thick dressing gown and lay in bed taking my vitals. They are not my average good, my blood pressure is up, heart rate up, but my temperature is stable and my SATs are average. I eventually get and still cannot find the pen top that I managed to mislay while recording my vitals. It remains a mystery, I expect it will turn up somewhere at sometime.

By the time I am up I crave soup and bread to go with my meds. I add paracetamol to my breakfast to fight off the cold. So fed and medicated I settle down on the recliner and run through my message and email check before reading the news. Apparently its going to snow. As I sit listening to the radio the emergency oncology folk ring me u to ask how my Haematuria is. I tell them that I am free of it since 5am yesterday. The woman says that is good news and to ring them again if I get a recurrence. I continue with my staring into space as I listen to the radio. I clear the kitchen and leave an instructional note for the household noting that if you stand honey top down it leaks! I also play loo roll fairy and fill the bathroom toilet roll store. Such mundane things are an adventure and an achievement when you feel crap. Eventually I get the laptop out and start to draft the blog. My early afternoon scone and boiled water slides by and my attention turns to the unopened Christmas Panettone. The evening comes and goes as I dose up on paracetamol and get myself to bed to rest soem more.

Tuesday, what a night. My Haematuria is back with a vengeance. From 10pm last night till 5 o’clock this morning I lay on the recliner, napping and going to the bathroom to take yet another sample. For hours it seemed that it was not going to stop and then at about 2:30 in the morning it began to show signs of abating. By 5:49 it was all clear. By the morning I’m very tired. I had given myself to 4 o’clock in the morning to show signs of improvement after which I was going to ring the emergency numbers. Fortunately it did not come to that. As usual I took a photo to keep a record of the episode, it does not make good and chatty content but it is the reality of what I am battling at the moment.

By the morning I am clear and vey tired. To add to this i am feeling the effects of yesterdays 28 day jab. Its a perfect storm. Once I surface at about 9 o’clock I start to ring the help lines, the prostate nurses and the emergency helpline. I leave messages at all of them and in due course they come back to me. Some want me to ring else where others say they will return my call. Once called I give the information requested and in return I am promised another call. After some toing an froing. There is a plan: continue taking the Apixaban and monitor myself. If it starts again ring the emergency line again. Ta Da!

While all this is going on my partner and eldest daughter set about getting all the Christmas stuff I did yesterday put away in the loft and garage. I am so pleased that they have done it, I could not have faced it today, or maybe even longer. By early afternoon I am still on the recliner and have competed todays crosswords, which leads me to start drafting the blog. My plan today is to be inert, to do nothing of effort and to drift through the day till it is bed time, when hopefully I will just full asleep. So by then I will have watched a football match and the end of Stranger Things. I did scrawl a brief poem, my tiredness shows in it, but I think it shows I am remaining positive.

486
I can't just sit here
fearing the fear 
of haematuria.
However, rest I must,
lazy and patient.
Sometimes the mixture 
of death and life
appear like a bag
of Pick and Mix,
there is no predicting
the bitter from the sweet.
The taste of life
becomes exotic food,
unrecognisable and knowable
only when tasted. 
Its a better way 
than starvation. 

                                                         486 06-01-2025

This is all for today, I now sink into autopilot until tomorrow arrives.

Monday, its a jab Monday so I am up early and note that the first snow of the year is laying as a thin dusting on the front drive. I’m up early and showered before breakfast and then clambering into several layers of thermals and thick knitwear before picking my way down to the GP surgery. My usual nurse calls me in early ad we have a bit of a chat while she prepares my jab. Its on the left side this time so hopefully it will not become too sore as the day goes on. I meet a bloke with a walking frame going into the nurse station, he is being very careful and then learn he has partial amputations of both feet, so I reckon I m bloody lucky. On the way home I buy a paper for the crosswords.

Once home I get into the garden and fill the bird and squirrel feeders. The full feeders should see them through a couple of days. Then with great pubic spiritedness I sweep the front drive to make a snow free path for the Tesco delivery person to deliver. The kitchen gets cleared and I finally get to do the crosswords while I wait for the food delivery. It arrives about on time and my partner and I unload the goodies. I return to the crosswords and drafting the blog. I rest for a bit but know that before the day is out the Christmas decorations will have to go away. That’s a loft job and its cold up there.

I de-Christmas the house and by the end of the afternoon everything is boxed up and ready to be put away. The putting way will have to wait until tomorrow. For an evening treat my partner and I have Indian takeaway before we watch TV. I take my meds and then discover I am passing blood again. It is depressing as it means I face a long night. My 28 jab is sore and I am tired. What can I say except all I can do is keep moving forward.

Saturday I wake up after a disturbed night. I took paracetamol at 4:30 in the night as I had chronic pain in my back. I try to revive myself with a shower before breakfast but to no avail. in the end I go with my partner to buy food for weekend from our local garden centre. With provisions secured we stop off at a second garden centre for a bacon sandwich an americano. My back pain is no different so I down more paracetamol. I am assuming this is all relate to the effect of chemo.

Once home I settle down to soem basic chores and admin. I also order the kit that is needed to put up the new small greenhouse that has been delivered. I get to the middle of the afternoon and find I am passing blood again. Haematuria is the name for it and it is becoming a source of anxiety. It is manageable but it is never a great experience. I now have management strategy for it which involves monitoring it. I have found that to date my urine clears over the ensuing hours and I am returned to the state of clear urine. There appears to be no reason or pattern to this at the moment and so I continue to monitor and record the haematuria in case I need to provide information to the medics at any point. Of course the last thing I want to do is go on collecting urine samples so now once a haematuria episode is over I take photos of the samples and throw the real ones away. It means I keep the data. Here is an example.

So far my monitoring seems to work to show that my Haematuria is transient. I think my backache preceding the latest episode maybe an indicator of an impending episode. This is something I shall continue to monitor. It is not a fun thing to have to do but this is all part of the battle against my prostate cancer.

It is exhausting coping with this, so I spend most of the rest of the day resting and trying to stay calm and collected. I read and reread a letter from a friend and diary in my next face to face session with the oncologist prior to the start date of the second cycle of chemo. The evening passes with a binge watch of Red Eye before I finally take my night meds and go to bed hoping for a long nights sleep.

Sunday and I got my wish for a long lay in. I check my vitals and note that my blood pressure seems to be creeping up, this could be the chemo and meds or just my anxiety about how I am at the moment. After bacon sandwich I start to draft the blog against the background of a TV midday football match. My intention is to meander through the rest of the day, performing minor tasks and preparing myself for tomorrows 28 day injection. Its that time of month again, so I shall take pre-emptive paracetamol this evening and get an early night. It is the first 28 day injection while being on chemo, so it could be an interesting time. At the moment it seems I am in the wars but this was to be expected, so I may not be as communicative as usual as I hunker down and go into a kind of semi hibernation in order to preserve my energy.

Thursday and its new years day, the auspicious 1st of January. What a day to turned out to be. January 1st 2026 was the day that I became a grandparent again. The newest youngest grandson appeared in the world at 19:34, weighing in at a very respectable 7lbs 11 ozs. Mother and baby doing well. The new boy arrived after a day of me reading and resting and wondering how things were going, it was a great relief to get the good news. It will take time for everything to settle before we get to meet in person but hopefully not to too long, sometimes these things cannot be rushed.

I spent the evening with a quite warm glow feeling very happy that everything had gone well. At midnight I turned in for what I hoped would be a good nights sleep.

487
As the year comes forth 
so does Leonidas,
not for the hills 
this one. 
This one is for love 
and a modern world,
but in times to come
this king may need
to stand his ground
and face a world
more harsh 
than his parents time.
A brother for Maximus,
a son to Phoebe and
a grandson to Roland,
he follows in a line of 
mythical people, 
how can his life 
not be charmed?

					487 02-01-2026

My night was not the calm and peaceful one I had hoped for. Early into the night I found I was passing blood in my urine. So I spent the night testing urine samples as my body responded to the challenge. As the hours passed by my urine cleared until in the morning it was clear and back to normal. It seems very unfair that after such joy that my body could do this to me. In the morning I check my vitals and find my blood pressure is a bit up. I get up and make breakfast before reloading my drugs dosettes, one of my rituals to keep myself organised and on course. With my drugs rattling in their boxes I then update the family tree to include the new grandchild. The new generation of the wider family is growing and I wonder if they will ever all come together at sometime in the future. Having got myself straight I take time to start drafting the blog. There are an increasing number of things that need to be done but I find myself struggling for energy. I know it is the chemo that is draining me and I try to keep drinking water to flush it through me. I am hoping that I’m going to be through the worst by Monday as this coming Monday is a 28 day injection day. My intention is to rest for the weekend and hope to recover some equilibrium for the coming week. All I can do is keep going and see if I can make progress.