Thursday and I am awake early in anticipation of my oncology review at 11:20. Normally I would check my emails and go back to sleep, but today I get up and make breakfast. More cholesterol friendly muesli and a decaf coffee. I eat it while putting together my crib sheet for the review and bring up my Excel spreadsheet for my blood pressure, which now includes an cycle average blood pressure chart. So breakfast done and my coffee table work space cleared for action I watch the Harvard University Justice lecture number 10 on Aristotle’s politics. Its fascinating stuff, and Michael Sandel is an excellent lecturer. The original lectures were given back in the early 2000’s which means there is still use of the overhead projector! Remember them with there acetate sheets and infuriating drying pens. However he is brilliant at getting the audience of students to participate and doing the philosophical arguing. It gets close to review time and I sit expectantly waiting for my phone to ring. It doesn’t and it continues to not ring for an hour and a half. By now I have text’d the specialist cancer nurse and started to watch the second series of the Good Place. I have even amended the reading instructions for my poem, Too Sore to go to Peaky Blinders, a Sonnet. I am not sure if I have shared that on the blog before, if I haven’t here it is with its new reading instructions.
(Instruction for reading: Add your own commas and full stops. Only comas and full stops everything else is too fancy, but in iambic. You may use 1 octave, or two quatrains to make up the first stanza and the remaining sestet for the final stanza.) Too sore for Peaky Blinders, a sonnet Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck Cancer.
Any way by the time I have done all this no one has rung me. My partner goes out for a walk to the shop and only as she returns does my phone ring. At last there is someone from the oncology department. Not the consultant, “he who made a pact with the devil”, but one of his staff. So she tells me what I already know about my falling PSA and tells me bloods are okay, I point out they are the best bloods I have had in four years, go me, and then she asks how my blood pressure is. I tell her its an average of 127 over 75 over the cycle so far to which she responds “Oh that’s good”, note the lack of curiosity about how I know this. Lets face it I could just make anything up, but I didn’t. So there was a bit of chat about my gut being off a bit and the persistent tiredness and fatigue along the lines of yes that what this drug does and then she says she is happy to prescribe me another two cycles to which I respond the conversation had been that we would move to three. She askes me if I am happy with that and I say yes, thinking I could have pulled any number out of the air. We part company with her saying she will tell the pharmacy to order it in and I will hear in due course. So that was it. Goal achieved, now I can plan the next three months of my life knowing I’ve got the drugs to do it. My next review will be just before Christmas. Another new year beckons, first step in the new five year plan.
I eat a late lunch on the patio with my partner on the patio and settle down to do the daily crossword puzzles. I drift up stairs intending to do my vitals but find myself sleepy and decide to nap. I wake at well gone four o’clock with several messages on my phone. The hospital pharmacy has text me to say I can pick up my drugs next Tuesday afternoon, the 11th, so that goes in my diary. I do my vitals, which are all good but I am having a hot flush. In the freezer I find the box of lollies that I bought the other day and relax, happily sucking it as I cool down. I know its only coloured water but it feels more virtuous than an an ice cream. One more chore to do and that is contact the tree people to come and give us a quote for removing some of the trees in the garden. I also catch up with the messages friends have sent me during the day asking how the review went, which went unanswered or got only perfunctory responses.
Back on the sofa I start to draft the blog, while in the distance I hear Thursdays Tuna pasta being prepared, before my partner has her on line singing lesson tonight. My evening could well be full of The Good Place or a film. On the horizon is the Rugby World Cup, in fact the opening match is tomorrow night. I shall be lost in that no doubt. But for now I devour my tuna pasta and glide into the evening able to plan a little ahead. Mind you planning things is a double edged sword, things can go wrong, whereas if I don’t plan anything there is nothing to go wrong, thus saving me from a ton of anxt. Night meds and bed is always the bottom line, but after todays early start I think an early night is called for.
