Saturday I wake up after a disturbed night. I took paracetamol at 4:30 in the night as I had chronic pain in my back. I try to revive myself with a shower before breakfast but to no avail. in the end I go with my partner to buy food for weekend from our local garden centre. With provisions secured we stop off at a second garden centre for a bacon sandwich an americano. My back pain is no different so I down more paracetamol. I am assuming this is all relate to the effect of chemo.
Once home I settle down to soem basic chores and admin. I also order the kit that is needed to put up the new small greenhouse that has been delivered. I get to the middle of the afternoon and find I am passing blood again. Haematuria is the name for it and it is becoming a source of anxiety. It is manageable but it is never a great experience. I now have management strategy for it which involves monitoring it. I have found that to date my urine clears over the ensuing hours and I am returned to the state of clear urine. There appears to be no reason or pattern to this at the moment and so I continue to monitor and record the haematuria in case I need to provide information to the medics at any point. Of course the last thing I want to do is go on collecting urine samples so now once a haematuria episode is over I take photos of the samples and throw the real ones away. It means I keep the data. Here is an example.
So far my monitoring seems to work to show that my Haematuria is transient. I think my backache preceding the latest episode maybe an indicator of an impending episode. This is something I shall continue to monitor. It is not a fun thing to have to do but this is all part of the battle against my prostate cancer.
It is exhausting coping with this, so I spend most of the rest of the day resting and trying to stay calm and collected. I read and reread a letter from a friend and diary in my next face to face session with the oncologist prior to the start date of the second cycle of chemo. The evening passes with a binge watch of Red Eye before I finally take my night meds and go to bed hoping for a long nights sleep.
Sunday and I got my wish for a long lay in. I check my vitals and note that my blood pressure seems to be creeping up, this could be the chemo and meds or just my anxiety about how I am at the moment. After bacon sandwich I start to draft the blog against the background of a TV midday football match. My intention is to meander through the rest of the day, performing minor tasks and preparing myself for tomorrows 28 day injection. Its that time of month again, so I shall take pre-emptive paracetamol this evening and get an early night. It is the first 28 day injection while being on chemo, so it could be an interesting time. At the moment it seems I am in the wars but this was to be expected, so I may not be as communicative as usual as I hunker down and go into a kind of semi hibernation in order to preserve my energy.
