Wednesday and I wake early knowing I have to move the car from the drive as today the tree and hedge folk are coming to give our hedges their annual trim. So by 8 o’clock I am dressed and heading for the car. With the car (Elsie) safely parked up across the road I make breakfast and take my morning meds. My next task is to prepare for my oncology review this afternoon. I have decided that I will go for my 9th cycle, the blood result figures are too good to pass up. The arguments are always about benefit versus Quality of Life and I have reached the conclusion that Quality of Life is a too mercurial notion to base a medical intervention decision on. The trick has been to find a balance between chemo and the fatigue it causes. By reducing the dosage, which appears not to impede its effect on my PSA levels, and adding an additional rest week it appears that the chemo is manageable. So I shall wait for my phone call and plead my case with the oncology team.

So while I wait for the tree and hedge folk to finish with the next door neighbours garden and get to mine I draft the start of todays blog and read more of my newly acquired poetry books. All of this with one eye on the clock as tonight at 5 o’clock England take on the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the world cup. No idea how that will turn out. Inevitably I jot a poem.

544
July starts with a review,
Do I or don’t I
go for cycle nine?
The bloody arithmetic 
is good and with it
the logic of continuation.
I wonder if I have forgotten
the pain that comes 
with the toxic poison,
but the thought of 
longer life is primal 
in its pull.
Inexplicably the having more 
appears to be irresistible,
except for those in extremis,
but I do not know if my head	
could ever be there.
Time will tell,
I suspect there are tests 
to come.
Then I will see.

							544 01-07-2026

As the tree and hedge folk bring order to my hedges the oncologist rings to do my review. His recommendation is to quit and have a nice summer, but I would regret not knowing if further improvement was possible. Post chemo falls into three groups. firstly the group whose PSA rises almost as soon as they stop chemo, the second group have a gap of four to six months before their PSA rises again, and finally group three whose PSA may not move for a year. I have no way of knowing which group I am in but as I understand it the lower I can drive my PSA down and the higher the percentage reduction from my baseline PSA measure the better are my survival chances. So it is a gamble. The oncologist says he has one more rabbit to play, a sister drug to my current chemo, his concern is that my neuropathy does not receded it might interfere with more chemo. The sister drug has similar side effects to my current chemo, so I am sticking with the devil I know and trusting it will reduce my PSA a bit more. My decision is made and the oncologist agrees to let me go for it. So I am now expecting a message from the chemo suite to tell me when to turn up on Friday.

All I have to do now is grit my teeth and watch England play DR Congo and probably Belgium at nine o’clock. I must remember to load my chemo steroids into my dosettes to start taking tomorrow as pre and post protection from the poison. The tree and hedge folk leave and our hedges are for a while well manicured. So far today has been a productive one and set the household fair for a while. There are now other things to get done around the house, which I will set my mind to in due course. For now that is enough for me for one day.