Wednesday and I wake after a reasonable nights sleep having watched the History Boys before going to bed late. My injection site from Monday is still swollen and sore so I am in discomfort when I move around. My partner brings me a hot water and I finally get up, having sent several emails. I am pleased to say that the person who wrote the Forward to the last poetry anthology has agreed to write one for the new poetry collection, which is very pleasing. I try and tidy up the growing pile of “stuff” on the lounge coffee table but I get interrupted by a phone call from the oncology team. My expected time is in the afternoon but the woman explains she is starting the phone calls early. Well that’s alright then, clearly the nhs does not expect its cancer patients to be doing anything other than hanging around waiting for the team to call. Clearly any appointment time that is sent out is now variable by at least five hours.
The conversation was quite odd. It seemed that the expectation was that I was going to go for cycle 10 and she seemed taken aback when I said that as the intervention had stopped working that I was not going to do Cycle 10. I pointed out there was no point in doing cycle 10 if the intervention had stopped working. So we talked about PSA levels and the progress that I had made but that for me the logic was in the arithmetic. She eventually agreed with me and said that she would send me blood forms and a new date for four weeks time. I raised the issue of tapering off the steroids. Her first response was to cut down to one a day for a week and then end them. when I pointed out how long I had been on them she changed it to two weeks and then stop. I have no faith whatsoever that she knew what she was talking about. I shall read more and research the tapering process and see what the literature says before I do anything else. Then it was over. So tomorrow is the last of the 21 days of the cycle 9 and will be the end of my chemo rechallenge. It will have lasted 220 days plus a 14 day holiday between cycles 7 and 8. Over that time I have reduced my PSA by 69.9%. All that matters now is the rate of rise in my PSA from here on in.
My partner makes me a fried egg sandwich to go with my orange juice and morning meds after which I start to draft the blog for the day. While doing this my eldest daughter returns home from the physio asking how many graduation day tickets we want. So if all goes well I will be seeing my eldest daughter be presented with her doctorate in early September.
The rest of my day is spent lunching with my partner and planting newly acquired plants into the garden before spending the evening watching the most appalling juvenile film until my partner retuned from the theatre. I take my night meds and go to bed. Tomorrow is officially the last day of my chemo rechallenge.
