Thursday and the wind of change is in my nostrils as I wake up, there are things to do today. I check my vitals that are good. Without too much procrastination I get up and into my training gear. I take my morning meds and head for the garage. I am soon astride the rower and setting up a 45 minute session. I crack on pull quite hard through the session until a friend rings me. As I have my ear buds in I can slow my rowing and carry on the conversation. We catch up with how we are and what is going on, I confess falling asleep on yesterdays scan. When we are through I carry on my row and finish the session quite strongly. There are signs I am getting fitter or perhaps less fatigued by medication.

I shower and prepare to go to the hospital for my comparison scan. I have not eaten since yesterday a requirement of the scan. To fill in time I read the meters and do other low level house maintenance tasks until its time to drive to the hospital. On arrival I find my way to nuclear medicine and check. As per usual there is time to read some of my book. I am called in by the same nurse as yesterday who goes through the procedure and inevitable sticks a canula in my arm, same arm as yesterday as I am told I have “good veins” in that arm. Now there is a recommendation for a junkie. She irradiates me and removes the canular. I am free to go for a whole hour to go and eat and drink whatever I like.

Hospital restaurants are strange places, I feel like an interloper amongst the medics who appear to be eating appalling diets. I grab the last all day breakfast sandwich, a fruit flapjack and a bottle of water. I settle down and read some more of my book as I nibble way through what is claimed to be sausage, egg and bacon with a hint of tomato sauce squished into soggy white bread. Strangely satisfying. Having eaten I find my way back to the nuclear medicine with its “irradiated people” only where I can have a pre-emptive piss before my scan. The operator that I had yesterday pops to tell me that they are running about twenty minutes behind so I continue to read until I am called.

Todays operator is an old person who puts the connectors on me and then presses the scanner up against my chest. She adjusts the scan and tests the alignment and then tells me that its going to take nine minutes, that’s half a minute longer than yesterdays scan. I wonder way it takes longer to do the relaxation scan than yesterdays stress scan. I do what I am told and mimic the actions of a statues for nine minutes. The operator appears from behind the glass bubble she is sitting and prepares me for the laying down scan. She looks at me and says “I noticed there was some movement on yesterdays scan, we don’t want to repeat that again today do we?” This woman was capable of putting a horses head in my bed. So now I am petrified of falling asleep or breathing too heavily and stare at the ceiling determined not to move. I thought I did okay but when she comes out of the glass bubble, she says “There was a little bit of movement but I think it will be okay”. I swear I did not move but I could have micro napped I guess. She ushers me out and tells me to wait till she tells me I can go. I do what I am told and she duly tells me I can go home.

I arrive home and settle to refill my drugs wallets for the next two weeks. Today, post scans, is time to put my cancer pills back on the medication menu. So today is the start of a new cycle, cycle 17. Hence the renaming of the phase of the blog to Chemo II the Reboot. I’m back into the battel with my PSA and my prostate cancer in earnest. I’m very tired after my activities of the last two days so I watch a football match, part of some train hack thing and then tack my meds (cancer pills included) and head for bed knowing that the Americans have sent me a new edit of my next collection which is wrong.

Friday and I appear to have slept quite well, I wake to her my partner doing business work in the office down stairs. I check my vitals, again good, and then check messages and end up organising our builder folk to return in January to extend our block paving frontage. I eventually get up and make a late breakfast before trying to re-edit the book manuscript. Its a pain to do and I am glad to stop in order to go with my partner for early afternoon cake and drink at a local garden centre. The place has good food and shop but the only plants they have right now are pansies. Of course we buy more on the way out, you can never have enough pansies. We have a long chat over our snacks and drinks and then return home. My partner settles down to read and I with an immense piece of will power change into my training gear. I go to the garage and get myself sorted to do a thirty minute session. Its difficult to get going but I do and end up with reasonable session.

I record the session and then set about catching up with the blog for the last two days, stopping only for tea. The evening will be filled with a rugby match and perhaps some TV before I take my night meds and go to bed knowing that tomorrow my youngest daughter is visiting do that we can all go out to see Hair Spray in the evening. Its going to be a full family weekend.