Thursday arrives after a night of spectacular thunder storms, which kept me awake for a part of the night. I go through my rising rituals and eventually get up to make breakfast and take my medication. After yesterdays oncology review and decisions made there I add my pre chemo steroids to todays medications. Deciding to go for cycle 8 now feels a bigger decision than it did yesterday. While my partner visits her brother to sort out future care for their mother I start to draft the blog for the day and include a poem that comes to me.

534
It’s alright to sound confident
as I make the decision to 
go for cycle 8
with reduced dosage.
A day later I’m not so cocksure.
I start the extra steroids
to protect me
and with them come the doubts.
In my head at the time
my reasons and logic were impeccable.
Now I’m not so sure, 
as I face the reality of post chemo 
toxicity and fatigue I waver. 
Part of me longs to stop,
to rest and see if my PSA 
will rise or fall. 
I crave rest,
a period of my particular normality 
and maybe a little recovery.
For today I have to live 
with my chosen option
and tomorrow watch the drugs
drip into my veins 
and hope my belief 
in logic and reason
are well founded.
It is my act of faith
in science and myself.

						534 28-05-2026

I stop writing and get on with my to do list for the day, which incudes unloading yesterdays compost buy from the boot of the car. I am already thinking about tomorrows trip to the oncology clinic and wondering if I can get an Uber to drop me closer so I do not have to walk so far through the hospital to get to my chemo session.

At lunchtime I am joined by my partner who then goes off with her brother to look at a possible care home for their mother. I have lunch and spend time in the garden taking photos of the amazing peonies and the roses that are coming out.

I’ve never seen the peonies look so good. This recent sunny weather is bringing the best from the garden including a crop of rogue foxgloves, which the bees love, and some giant weeds. As Cicero said ” All a man needs is a library and a garden”, I have both and I am therefore blessed. In fact I am doubly blessed, I know I am loved and cared about, what more could a chap want?

My evening will see a meal eaten and then probably TV to keep my mind from tomorrows chemo. The closer it gets the more anxious I get but I cling to the belief that my reasoning was and is good, so I will do cycle 8 and then see what new data there is before doing anything else.