Tuesday and the blood results are in!

I discover this good news as my partner brings me a hot water while I am still in bed. This is indeed good news. It is also heartening that everything in pink ( the out of range readings) are all moving in the right direction, i.e. towards normal. Even my kidney function is doing its bit to get better. I scribble a ditty in celebration.

501
Hip Hip Hurray
down goes my PSA,
the chemo rechallenge
has been examined.
Its a thumbs up
I have back up,
there's fight left in me
so let there be glee.

                                    501 24-02-2026 

My partner brings me toast in bed as a treat and then goes off with her friend to a garden complex that has food and an array of shops. I get up heartened by my blood results and set about my chores for the day. First up is reading the meters and getting the readings off to the supplier. Of course they keep telling me to get a Smart Meter but I reject their approaches. When I read the meters I know what the readings are and by not having a Smart meter I am saving the rare earth metals and all the other resources that are used in the manufacture of the meters. In fact my not having a meter is the greenest option possible.

Its that time of the month, drug dossete filling time. Its an important ritual where I fill my weekly drugs dosettes to ensure I take all my medications when I need to. As this week is a chemo week there are additional steroids to be added in around my chemo day. It is not an arduous task but requires a period of concentration to ensure each half day has its correct allocation of drugs in the right order. I beaver away popping pills out of their plastic strips and making sure every half day is right. Last to go in are the pre chemo steroids, these protect me while my immune system is down and helps me through the initial shock of being poisoned. At last I am done and now have a fortnights supply of my medications ready to go. It is one of my corner stones of the structure that I maintain around me to support me. I know if I have a bad day at least my drugs are sorted and all I have to do is take what is in the days container and not bother with fiddling about with packets and wrappings.

So with my bloods cast up in the usual grid, my meters read and my drugs sorted for the beginning of cycle 4 I settle down to draft the blog. Lunch time comes around and I am not sure what I am going to eat. I have lived on toast and eggs for the past couple of days and need to add some more substantial items to my diet. What ever I choose I have John Berryman’s poetry collection to finish reading and it is likely that I shall write something for the poetry website. In the end I settle on soup and end up watching a film with my partner and her friend before they go out to dine.

My evening is pie and chips, which I later regret, but there is football and some TV. Best of all was a brief phone call from a friend who wanted to say how good it was that my PSA had dropped. At the end of the evening I take my meds and go to bed feeling like my gut is in uproar, tomorrow it is going to be toast again. It is also the day of my oncology review, another indecently short phone call that I will wait hours for no doubt. The good thing is that my bloods are good enough to get me om the next cycle of the chemo rechallenge.