Thursday and I wake up late after what feels like a deep sleep. Its almost the start of my oncology review time slot but I gamble the oncologist will not have their act together enough to be at the start of the slot. I do my vitals, check my cyber messages and litter and then get up to a toast breakfast and morning meds. I am meandering through emails and messages when the oncologist rings at half past ten. Its not “he who made a pact with the devil” but his registrar. She asks me how I am so I tell her I am not training, that exercise makes me piss blood and that I am tired, she takes all of this in her stride and tells me the good news is that my bone scan shows no new cancer and no increase in my existing cancer. She tells me that my PSA is now 0.973. They clearly rounded it up for the results that I got. So in fact I had a drop of 0.027, go me. She returns to the blood in my urine and notes my white blood cell count is good, my platelets are good and my kidney function is good and that as long as I do not get anaemic I should regard blood in my urine as part of having my cancer. Well there is a cheery message, although she did acknowledge that this was not a “nice” thing to have happen. Drink lots of water was her advice. With that said she went ahead and told me she would write me up for another three cycles and ring me again in twelve weeks. So basically the logic in the arithmetic is that I’m fine as can be, therefore the rest is in my head. I shall attend to my headology in due course.
After the call I renew my Rentokill insurance on the house, discontinue the mail redirection from my sisters old address and have a post oncology review doughnut and herb tea. I turn my attention to advertising my book, I have no idea how to do this so review my resources adn my options. I can pay the people who published my book a wodge of money to put it on more platforms, but that is costly, or I can put something on my YouTube channel and perhaps circulate a post on LinkedIn. I decide to post on LinkedIn to my network, a meagre 200 or so people. I’ve not posted before so its a bit of an adventure and feels narcissistic. As I am doing this the hospital pharmacy tells me I can pick up my next cycles of chemo from them on Monday afternoon, and as I finish replying to them I get my first ever “thumbs up” on LinkedIn.
Emboldened by this experience I checkout my YouTube channel that currently only has some restricted videos on it. I check the sound quality on my laptop as I explore making a video to upload. The sound is really poor so I hunt the internet for an affordable microphone to use. Not surprisingly I find one on Amazon, so I order it. It should be with me tomorrow afternoon, so I might be uploading by the evening. In the meantime my partner returns from seeing her mother and we sit down to an early tea before she has her singing lesson tonight.
Tonight there might be football and a bit more of Bodies, but I need to rest before a busy weekend ahead when my youngest daughter, her partner and my grandson visit.
