Friday and in a determined effort to be ready for the visit of my youngest daughter and her family, including the two youngest grandsons my partner and I go to the garden centre for breakfast. In an attempt to fuel myself for the day I order the largest English breakfast they have. A rare treat, which I enjoy heartily. Once full of breakfast my partner and I go to the food hall and lay in provisions for the weekend family visit. Returning home we squirrel away the food and with a delivery from Tesco due later in the day I am beginning to think that we could do with a larger fridge/freeze.

I spend some watching the tennis and being impressed by the fact that a British player actually won and progressed to the quarter finals, in fact two British women reached the quarter finals. The day progressed to yet another world cup football match involving one of the hosts Canada. It was a scrappy game with the hosts grabbing a draw late on. In the middle of the game Tesco deliver early and mid match we are faced with getting all the food stashed away. I eventually went to bed having taken my meds and focussed on getting up early to greet the visiting family.

Saturday and the news is that my youngest daughters family are ill, a tummy bug has laid them low so they are not coming today, maybe tomorrow. I am disappointed but pleased they are taking the sensible decision. I take to watching the tennis again and remain impressed as the British number one wins and gets a place in the semi final. My partner and I return to our favourite garden centre to buy “million bells”, a small plant that flowers profusely and does well in our garden. Of course while there we pop into the café and indulge in a bacon roll and a decaf coffee, which I have found my body will tolerate. Once home my partner head to the garden and finds homes for all the new plants. I do potter for a bit in the garden but I am not much help and end up watching the British tennis player play for the second time in the day and winning a place in tomorrows final.

The evening slides into world cup football I confess that I am suspecting that I am already beginning to get tired of it, even at this early stage. The patterns of play are all very similar and the creativity on display is low. Occasionally someone scores a really good individual goal or there is sufficient needle in the game to provide level of entertaining brutality. I watch the late game, take my meds and go to bed in anticipation of tomorrows visitors.

Sunday and I wake up to the news that Scotland have won there over night game at the world cup, which has pleased a friend of mine who stayed up in the small hours of the morning to watch the game. The next message was less happy, my youngest daughters family continue to be ill so will not be coming to visit at all this weekend. I am disappointed but it is for the best, you cannot be traveling around ill with two small children. There is a mountain of food to reorganise so there will be some freezer activity and reorganisation of the “stores” to be done. I get up and have breakfast and fill in my world cup wall chart with the overnight results. then catch up on drafting the blog.

When I come to take my morning meds I realise that I have run out of the twice daily steroid that I take. Because I delayed Cycle 8 by a week it means I am five days short of the daily steroid. I am not bothered really, five days without them is not going to do me any harm and if I am deemed unfit for Cycle 9 or I decide to discontinue to stop the chemo rechallenge I will be stopping them anyway from Wednesday when my next oncology review takes place. It neatly brings me back to the decision I have to make about continuing with the Chemo rechallenge. At the moment I do not know as I have pinned my logic on the out come of tomorrows blood results. If the PSA level is reduced (by how much is another question that I need to think about) then I have to seriously consider continuing as it means the chemo is actively working and it seems illogical to me to stop a treatment that is demonstrably affective. Driving the PSA level to as low as I can get it seems to me be the aim of this treatment. If the PSA level has decreased by a significant amount in tomorrows bloods then Cycle 9 looks like the reasonable choice. What is a significant amount? To be honest I do not know, but I do know that when I see the results I will either get a feeling of “that’s good or not bad” or an instant heart drop moment of disappointment. If it is the latter then its probably time to stop. The drop in the PSA will have to have been worth the post chemo crap that I went through on this cycle, some of which I am still experiencing. It is a fine balance but I am craving a period of rest and a chance for me to recover some of my energy and a chance to build up some strength.

So for today I prepare for tomorrows bloods by drinking lots of water, to boost my platelet reading, and to potter in the garden till my energy runs out and I retreat to tennis and football on TV. Tomorrow is a crucial day, it is also the day the BT engineer turns up to put us on the fibre network. I have no idea how that works, I am hoping it is a straight forward process where he plugs things in and then buggers off and the world continues as before, given that my current broadband works perfectly well. In the meantime I will see if Radacanu can win a tennis tournament and whether Germany can beat Curacao football minnows.

While watching the British tennis player loose the championship final my new poetry collection is delivered. It is Idanre and other Poems by Wolfe Soyinka, which I discovered, or at least the poet, while watching a programme about Mahomed Ali. Wolfe Soyinka read a poem about Ali at the end of the programme. I only found out that he is a Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1986 when the book arrives. I try to read some of the poems and realise that these poems are going to need some time devoted to them.

I spend the evening watching football and checking my emails. I find that there is a draft edit of my next poem collection from the person who is editing them for me. So over the next few days I will be going over the edit to see how much needs changing. For now its time for bed.