Tuesday, oncology day and civil partnership anniversary. I get woken up at 7 o’clock with coffee and slowly emerge. I squeeze into the medium weight tweed suit and I am ready to go by 8 0’clock. What followed was a nightmare drive where every road had road works and delays. What should have taken 30 minutes took an hour and twenty minutes. My partner phoned ahead to say we might be late. We arrived at 9:20 for a 9:25 appointment but still got to sit in the waiting area for a while amongst all the other bemasked ill.

I and my partner get called in. He who made a pact with the devil is there to greet us. He asks how I am, I tell him I am physically fit but what about my PSA. He goes over the options. None of them are fun but the upshot is he doesn’t have a clue why my PSA is going up. We both know that my body has done the inevitable and found a way round the effects of the medication by changing its own cell surface chemistry, clever old mother nature, bitch. Any way one option is to change my antiandrogen to a new one, Enzalutamide (Xtandi), I cannot pronounce either of them because I am dyslexic so I will refer to it as “new shit”. However before he prescribes me “new shit” he describes a PETT scan which apparently can see how much of my body is cancer ridden, which he says is going to be more than all my other scans can reveal. If we do this we get to know how extensive my cancer is and then as he put it they (the medics) can see whether radio therapy is worth a shot. He described it as (and I kid you not) as “spot welding” bits of the cancer. There will either be bits worth “spot welding” or there isn’t but either way I get to be prescribed the “new shit” once its done. This is all of course my choice and he gaily informs me that there is “no right answer”, so its down to me. (Is this where medicine is these days, it seems a bit odd). I decide on the PET scan on the basis that I want to know how much shit I am in. The rest is admin, a new blood form, he will refer me for a PET scan and book an appointment for me in February, but I have to make sure that there is sufficient time between the PET scan and an appointment with him so that the results can get to him. I am to monitor this and liaise with the cancer nurses. He runs me off a crap printer copy of information about the “new shit”, gives me a new blood form adn waves us off. I and my partner walk to the car and drive into town to look at rugs.

I eat a scone in Lewis’s café as a belated breakfast and my partner and I chat. We get the first scan pictures of our new grandchild. It is a momentous day. We send messages and talk about it for a while and then go rug hunting. The rugs in Lewis’s are not what we want and so we leave town and drive home, where I get out of the tight medium weight tweeds and slip into more comfortable trousers. I drive us to a village down the road where I have booked a table for lunch at a rather nice restaurant. We settle down to an anniversary three course lunch. It is excellent food and a good celebration meal to mark our anniversary. Feeling well fed I take us to our local shopping centre and we go adn buy a rug. More accurately we discover that what we want is not in stock in store so we order it over the internet while in the store. It will arrive on the 29th. While there we stroll to a sofa shop and accidentally find a recliner sofa and chair that we both like. We are tempted and talk to a salesperson. We decide to have a coffee and thin about it, which we do. The upshot is we decide to drive home and check the measurements.

The measurements don’t work out. The things in the shop are bigger than what we have, which is a potential problem. So there will need to be a period of thinking to be done. My partner begins to tidy the house as we have a guest staying tomorrow and I settle down to read about PET scans and the intended “new shit.” I am stupid. I should stop reading about the “new shit” and the drug trails with there outcome data, death rates and side affects. I particularly love the way the researchers talk about toxicity levels and the levels of side effects. By the time I have finished reading the real research and outcome information in the journals and papers, not the Janet and John shit that McMillan put out, I am thoroughly dispirited. This is going to be a crap period of time by the sound of it with fatigue and headaches as a minimum. I could get lucky, all I can do is keep doing the things that keep me fit and that the “new shit” (four tablets once a day) once it starts has some effect on my rising PSA levels. Until the new PET scan is done and I see “he who made a pact with the devil” in February its steady as I go as usual.

I get to the evening and start to draft the blog, deciding that this is worthy of a new stage, namely Rocket Booster stage. I just need to continue to Rocket but with renewed vigour till I get to do the next oncology review with the PET scan outcomes. I confess I find it difficult to find yet more enthusiasm and energy but wat else can I do. There is bugger all on TV so I read and look forward to the gay banter with the chiropodist tomorrow morning as my feet soak in her warm magic potion and she pleasures my feet into a state of contentment. I finish my medical admin and then read myself towards sleep.