Wednesday and it a crucial day, todays the day of my oncology review where I know things will have to change. I don’t bother with my vitals I just get up and get ready to travel to my appointment with my partner. When we are both ready and I have a suitable suit of armour on, all black with some finery I order an Uber. It is pouring with rain. We arrive at the hospital and do the long walk through it to the oncology building and check in at reception. We sit and wait, watching others go in. I am suddenly called by the nurse to be weighed. She weighs me fully clothed including my much laden jacket. 104.2 kilos, ridiculous unless something strange has happened since I weighed myself (naked) in the morning. Goes to show how much crap I carry around with me and the weight of my clothes. I go back to waiting. I wait and wait till long after my appointment time. and then I am called.
My oncologist has a student with him, I am not fussed, “He who made a pact with the devil” askes me how I am and I reply “curious”, not out of bravado but because I know already he has no magic rabbits left to pull out of his hat. The Enzalutamide and steroids have stopped working, the PSA continues to rise and I now have an enlarged right kidney. He runs through the options and I and my partner asks questions, and there is talk of quality of life and the like. It comes down to doing chemo, the nasty toxic hair loss type, going private, being a guinea pig on a trial, having a stent in my kidney, or not, and doing nothing. He is at pains to point out that there is no right answer. He provides an average prognosis but its just a guess really based on iffy data. So that was it. I am to stop my current chemo pills and steroids right now. He will see me in two to three weeks, it would have been two but the fucking doctors are having a strike, cunts! I am given a bloods form and we leave. He tries to be comforting but I’m not in the mood, I have all the decisions to make, I am on a Sticky Wicket.
We walk over to the hotel opposite the hospital and I conjure up an Uber. The journey home is silent. Once in the house the kettle is put on and I immediately take the Enzalutamide and the steroids out of my dosettes and from my drugs draw and junk them. There is not a lot said and in the end my partner goes to see her brother in the village, I change into my training kit and go and row for an hour in the garage. I row slowly, its all about just doing it and trying to get on an even keel and get my brain thinking straight.
By the time I have rowed my partner has returned and is cooking and we all slip into the evening. There is food, football and Shetland to watch before going to bed. My night meds are now much reduced, I go to bed exhausted trying not to think about anything, but of course I do, but not cogently at all.
Thursday arrives and I find my partner ready to go to the physio and then onto “bobbing about in the water” with the gym ladies mafia. She brings me hot water and I then take my vitals ,which are okay, but there is no longer a cycle 31 to record them under and I wonder what heading to record them under. I write a couple of poems, of which one is below, modified for the blog.
472
I am searching
for a name.
What do I call
my blog now?
Now that chemo
does not work
and I have choices
to make,
none of them good.
He, the oncologist,
listed my options, calmly:
have a stent,
be a guinea pig,
do chemo again,
the hair falling out kind,
go private,
do nothing.
“Take your time” he said
“I will see you in three,
would be two
but there is to be a strike.”
The Uber home was silent,
My partner went to her brothers
And no doubt wept
while I rowed an hour.
So what do I call this?
Purgatory perhaps
but no sin is involved,
It is a Sticky Wicket
And there you have it.
472 13-11-2025
I get up and shower before making a fried egg sandwich and taking my morning meds now without the steroids. I am down to just 4 tablets a day, in any other circumstances that would be good news, but not so right now. I idly wonder if I will get withdrawal symptoms from the loss of the Enzalutamide, I guess I will have to wait and see. With my partner out I start my Christmas wrapping. I had squirrelled away several packages, which I now retrieve and wrap. I have given up on cellotape and now prefer stickers, so much easier both for me as wrapper and the recipient as ripper. I am part way through when my partner returns from her cancelled gym class, so I have to ban her from the wrapping room until I can finish and get everything away. I have lunch while drafting the blog and continue on until its time for me to go to the chiropodist.
It is truly one of my delights to have my feet done, I always come away with happy singing feet. It feel like looking after myself from the bottom up, chiropodist, urologist, oncologist, beautician (nails), dentist. My chiropodist is a single practitioner and very much in demand, when I work out what her earnings must be she’s doing very nicely thank you. I drive home to continue drafting the blog and sliding into the evening now dark well before 5 o’clock. Tonight there will be chicken crock pot followed by England v Serbia in a word cup qualifier followed by Celebrity Race Across the Word on catch up. Then I am off to bed for a second night without Enzalutamide. I have plans to talk to people but I have things to organise first and a lot of research and thinking to do over the next two to three weeks. This is truly a Sticky Wicket.
