Tuesday and I finally surface after an appalling night. I shivered and trembled nearly all night as a result of my body responding to my 28 day injection. For some bizarre reason it is always worse when the injection is in the right side. Its difficult to explain but after a few hours I become like a junkie withdrawing. There is nothing that touches it, I just have to try and keep warm and sleep it off. Last night I thrashed around so much my partner escaped to the spare bed to get some sleep.

When I finally surfaced my partner brought me a hot water before going off to the gym. When I get up I feel exhausted already, which I attribute to the thrashing around in the night and my body trying to keep itself warm while fighting off the 28 day injection. I make myself chicken soup and take my morning meds. It is only then that I think about my blood results. Of course I divert myself by first buying a reading lamp to go next to me at my end of the sofa so that I can read in comfort in future. I am about to embark on Dante’s Divine Comedy, Clive James translation so I need a decent light to read by. I find one that I think will sit neatly next to me on the end of my sofa and illuminate me sufficiently. I am amazed that I can order the lamp and it, allegedly, be delivered by 10pm the same day. That’s the wonder of Amazon, which my credit card statement bears witness to.

I finally get to open my blood test results. Overall I am pleased, the things that need to come down are coming down and the things that need to go up, are. I knew it would be slow progress if progress was to be made and so it seems to be turning out that way. The critical one is the PSA score which has decreased by 0.3. It does not sound much but it is crucially in the right direction, down.

Obviously they are not perfect but then given my condition they cannot be, but they are moving in the right direction. At this stage of the game I have to take what positives I get and celebrate them. There is an element of backing myself in all this. With out the belief that I have the capability to overcome the hurdles I would just flounder so I hold onto my belief that I can succeed and keep a positive mind set even when things appear to be tough. My eldest daughter bought me a key ring emblazoned with the following, that I think sums up the attitude I carry into all this.

With my bloods caste up in the usual table I settle into my end of the sofa and draft the blog. A friend rings me on her way to having a massage and we chat for a while, catching up on family news and seeing how each other is doing. I enjoy the conversation and the contact it helps me stay engaged with the wider world. The afternoon stretches out before me as I pick up Dante’s Divine Comedy to read, moving my knitted rat book mark, a Christmas present.

So the afternoon passes and I slide into the evening and the final episodes of Bergerac. It is to be an early night, meds and beds as I need to think about what I am going to say in my oncology review tomorrow. There is nothing in the bloods to stop me going for Cycle 3, the critical bit is whether my allergic reaction to cycle 2 will be seen as an impediment. I am thinking not as I managed to have cycle 2 and seemed to have responded relatively well to it. Onwards has to be the call.