CYCLE 6 DAY 7

Today should be a celebration, it is the last day I get to stab myself as part of my chemo. It would be worth the effort if I could celebrate with champagne, prosecco or a beer, but I’m a boring bastard who grits his teeth and does the right thing to protect the kidneys that are still fighting to work to full capacity.

 So now I have a full sharps box that can be returned for disposal and I can focus on doing the rest of the fourteen days left in the cycle. I am hoping I can get stronger or at least strong enough to train off the extra weight the steroids have packed onto me. Of course there are the post-chemo hopes that things will normalise. Perhaps my fingertips will not be as numb, perhaps my beard will grow, the hair on my head return, my steroid football head return to a more rugby ball shape, lean and wolfish, (truly deluded there). Perhaps my finger nails will return to being finger nails rather than the claws that I have grown over the weeks. I have acquired growth ridges on my nails as each cycle has laid down a new layer of nail. I feel like a tree whose rings can be counted and my age determined. My chemo history is written in my nails, Is there a PhD in this I wonder? Is there a predictive marker in this as to the good or bad prognosis for chemo? Could I get a studentship to do this? What is clear is that for a while I will struggle to pull ring pull cans. The thick nails are a definite unhelpful addition to this activity. I live with a dull ache at the end of my fingertips all the time. It also slows down my typing as it feels as if I suffer from fat finger syndrome all the time.

I wonder if I will lose the breathlessness that the additional weight gives me. Everything is an additional effort as I heave around the additional 10 kilos that I have put on. It is a “me” that I hate as it undermines all the time I spent in the gym trying to keep fit and able bodied as I headed into older age. It seems cruel that all that effort can be wiped away in such a small time. I know what lies ahead. Hours in the gym doing small sessions to keep everything working and to drive off the accumulated layers of fat. This of course goes hand in hand with eating a diet of protein, fruit and plants. No sweets of course once Christmas is over. Why do I bother, I’m not sure but at root I want more time with my family and more time to complete one or two projects.

So if that is going to happen then I need to keep fighting, but its tiring when the simplest things tire me so much at the moment. It makes me short tempered and irritable at times, I know that, but the effort it takes to keep my direction, to keep focused and to keep making sense of my situation leaves little energy for anything else at times.

At the moment all I need to do is reach the 7^th of January and get out of the cycles end. It stops being chemo at that point and becomes another stage, the cross your fingers stage. For three months I shall cross my fingers and hope that all I do keeps my PSA level from rising, that my platelet count stays in the normal range, that my kidneys keep working at the same rate or better and that the lesions in my back do not spread and my lymph system holds its own for as long as possible. The big one is hoping my body is stupid and does not figure out a way around the hormone depletion therapy. When that happens the cancer feeds and progresses. Up will go the PSA and time will speed up as the small systems of my body begin to fail. In the three months of crossed fingers I will of course become civilly partnered and the final arrangement of the real and secular world will be in place. Then perhaps I can rest a little and build a life style that reflects my interests.

I notice that recently I have not read much even though I have a growing pile of books that I suspect may grow over Christmas. Neither have I written the letters that I have in my head. I always feel rude when I do not reply to a letter. I hope to be able to resume my correspondence with those people who have generously continued to write to me during my chemo. I look out to the garden shed writing room and hanker after sitting in there writing and reading, at the moment it feels unsociable to abandon the family to do this given the Christmas season. It needs to be one step at a time I guess.

As for today, its one that I can do without, started well, got better and then went downhill, probably my fault. More to do with the effort of fighting than anything else. I haven’t got time for the fannying, farting and fucking about that goes on when I am waging war against what’s trying to kill me. 

P.S. Should the christmas experience prove too much you can choose which pit of hell it matches according to the classical model, obviously not PC but of its bigoted times:

Limbo looks okay, nice people already there. I will book the Dawkins suite. Also apt given the nature of time I’m my situation, yes Limbo is for me.