Saturday and I wake up slightly later due to my late night last waiting for my blood results. I am still stunned by the fact that they were all in the green zone. Not a single test was out of the normal range and my PSA has edge down again. I’ve checked back and I’ve never had an all green set of results before so I make no apology for putting them up here once again.

My partner brings me a hot water and we chat about the results and how I am. I check to see if my book has actually arrived on Amazon, but it hasn’t and I doubt it will between now and Monday at least. We decide to go for breakfast at one of our favourite garden centres.

Strangely the garden centre is devoid of plants but the restaurant is open. Our tables next to a family group who have come out early for a Prosecco breakfast. I opt for eggs royal and a berry tea. My partner and I have more time to chat and review where we are. I am afraid I am becoming boring about the book but just want to get it done and see the real thing in my hand, until then it does not seem real. Once it becomes real, if it does, then I can push the go button on at least another two or three collections. My partner also has irons in the fire that will effect our future and we chat that through as well. We leave the garden centre and drive to another where we can buy fresh meat and vegetables. Its been a successful morning so on the way home we drop into yet another garden centre café for hot chocolate and toasted tea cakes. More chat and planning time. So after a prolonged jaunt I drive us home where I settle down into one of my regular Saturday tasks, namely filling my drugs wallets for the next two weeks.

I get into an afternoon of rugby until my eldest daughter has a problem with the printer. It means firing up the main PC and doing checks on the printer and seeing what is going on. It takes a while to run through the possibilities it eventually I track it down to a faulty cartridge. I pop a new one in and bingo the printer returns to working order. In test printing a document I use the first document in a folder called “blog”. It is dated 1st January 2020, which is just a few days before I finished the cycle of my first bout of chemo therapy. I read it and realise how difficult that time was and how lucky I am to be here four years on. The issues of survival are the same but now they are more nuanced and subtle, a different kind of grind, it is shift from the hope of cure to containment, palliative care and the struggle for the best possible for as long as possible. I add my four year old blog as a reminder to all of where I was four years ago.

So this is a new year.2020, the roaring 20s is what everyone seems to be calling them. I wonder where they get such fanciful ideas. I woke up feeling still 2019 and still with cancer. I’ve not made New Year resolutions but will attempt to make some life style changes. A few diet changes, more fruit, protein and less carbohydrates, certainly no sweets or sugary things. More of the things that give me magnesium like avocados and nuts. Of course I will keep taking my drugs and making sure I get my B12 shots on a regular basis. More exercise is going to be a priority when I can. I need to keep pumping the blood round and making the heart and bones working. I need to combat the weight gain, by exercising on a balanced diet.
 Finally I need to learn patience. I’ve no idea whether or if my nails will grow normally again, I have to wait. I have no idea if my beard will grow back, I just have to wait. I have no idea if my hair will grow back, I just have to wait. I have no idea if I will get my sense of taste back, or lose the metallic taste, I just have to wait. I do not know if I will stop getting cramp in my calves, will just have to wait. I’ve no idea if I will get my strength back, but I can work on that.  I have no idea if I will completely lose the numbness in my fingers, I will just have to wait. I have no idea how my body will continue to respond to being stripped of testosterone, I will just have to wait. I have no idea if I will get to be able to sleep for more than three hours before needing to empty my bladder, I will just have to wait. All this and I have not yet reached the end of cycle 6, I’ve still got another 5 days to go before I have come to the end of the chemotherapy. I have no idea how long the cumulative effects of being poisoned since the 3rd of September 2019 will last. All I can do is wait. I’ve no idea if how I feel about being a sexless fat semi male is going to change or whether I will continue to avoid mirrors, dislike the feel of my own body and think I smell of chemotherapy. All I can do is work when I can, be scanned when I am told to, give blood samples when I’m told to, attend oncology appointments when I am summoned and pretend that it’s possible to live a life with some sort of meaning, efficacy, and contribution to make. It becomes an “as if” life. I shall live “as if” it is all possible while knowing that I live on an island with the sea of the real world lapping or storming around me. The direction is to keep putting things in order for the family, doing the right things, staying focussed and under no circumstances buckle. So here I come into 2020, waiting, learning patience and waging my own internal war.
As for the practical things of the day. I did my claws, visited my partner’s brother to deliver his CP invitation and cooked a curry. We also ordered food to be delivered tomorrow at 8:30. Tonight I watch football, write the blog and plan my day as my partner returns to work tomorrow. So tomorrow I fix the direction and focus on the life in hand.”

Its been a grind and here I am in my second bout of chemo, a different kind of chemo that is less toxic but more insidious and not time limited. It will go on being given to me as long my body will tolerate it. As I say it’s side effects are more subtle and has me juggling my energy spoons each day. I think on balance my “as if life” has more made me change my expectations of what I can possibly achieve.

I go into the evening hoping for a smooth run through to an early night and a good nights sleep. I need to renew some of my “2020 vows” to learn patience and to keep to the things that got me this far. The difference is the lack of energy and the greater level of invasion that the cancer has made into me over the last four years. It is all a question of how effectively I can adapt and be creative. So onward to tonight’s chemo, sleep, time to come and, under no circumstances buckling.