Thursday, a work free day so I can pick up some of the chores I need to do. So on to an egg sandwich breakfast and then into the garden for a few hours. I toiled away trying to tidy up the shrubs and bring order to the borders. A friend calls briefly, which provides a very welcome drinks break, good to be able to chat even for a short time. A few haircuts here and there on the ground cover plants and some radical pruning helped. There was a lot of dead heading to be done and it did not take long to fill the garden bin even when compacted down. It went reasonably well and as I cleared away some spaces I discovered the odd small jewel that had gone unnoticed.

By two o’clock I was done and needed a rest not to mention lunch. While I lunched I ordered some books written by the tutors who are going to be on the writing course that is booked for November. It seems a good way to find new material to read and new authors. I’m pleased that two of them are poets. It starts to rain so I look to my inside chores list. I take pity of the fish whose glass has turned green. Before I can get started I get a call from a friend who is catching up and tells me about her adventures learning how to play golf. Its quite a performance to clean all the filters, clean the pumps and outlets and clean the glass. Of course once that has been done a percentage of the water has to be changed. This particular overhaul meant finding and changing one of the bulbs in the lighting hood. Eventually it gets done and I begin a treatment cycle for the tank which means I put 44 drops of magic chemical stuff in the tank to begin to counter algae growth and feed the fish a second meal of the day to help them recover.

Clearing away the fish equipment I get my self sorted and take on EON. I try to send them my meter readings as they requested. They decide that the gas reading is right but they will not accept the electricity reading. Part of me is not surprised as it is lower then the last one they estimated, which cost me a fortune. What followed was an elongated wrestling match, me versus IT, Apps and auto bot answering machines. I will not bore you with the details however the outcome was me finding an email address to communicate with EON and sending them pictures of the meters. I am left with a sense of helplessness and a decidedly homicidal urge. Thankfully its Thursday and that means tuna pasta, a favourite, it distracts me. My partner goes off to have her first singing lessons in several weeks due to her teacher having taken a month off, I write the blog and settle into an evening of uncertain activity. I still haven’t trained yet today and I wonder if I can summon the energy to.

Tuesday and another early start as we get my partners car to the garage for it’s MOT. There is just time for a fried egg sandwich breakfast and a quick call with a friend before I am in front of the laptop for a 9 o’clock meeting. Its a long meeting that goes through till 12:30. Nice to be working on something I like and with some familiar faces that I like. There is time for a coffee and pastry before I start to do admin work and some thinking from the morning meeting. I book myself and partner onto a residential writing course in November. Rather than go beach walking and watching TV in the Great British climate we are hunkering down in the depths of Devon to learn how to write for the first time. Totleigh Barton to be precise.

I also managed to book a table in a brasserie in St Pancras station for a farewell lunch next Thursday. So the afternoon passed until the garage rang to say the car was ready . We duly collected the car and returned to find the garden guy trimming our front hedges. Taking inspiration from him I went in search of what was new in the garden and found some really lovely surprises. It never ceases to amaze me how my garden keeps producing gems beyond belief both large and tiny.

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The evening arrives as the garden guy leaves and I settle down to write the blog and while the evening away as I get tired. I’ve not trained yet today and wonder if I can raise the energy for a short burst of activity.

It’s Tuesday and apart from my last one to one with my boss at Enabling Environments I also have an oncology call to take. So its a speedy breakfast and I am in front of the screen doing my last one to one. It goes okay and then I am waiting for my oncology call.

While I wait I arrange for the heating system to be serviced in September and order four new tyres for the car to be fitted on Saturday. The nice bit is that they are going to fit them on the drive so there is no boring hanging around at a fitters. So I continue to wait for the phone call.

The phone rang and we are into the oncologist call. Good news, neither the bone scan or the soft tissue scan is showing any new cancer. My existing tumors in my hips have not grown and are the same as they were on the last scan. The cancer in my back has not spread. Generally my blood test results are okay except the rise in my PSA level. For the second time in succession it has risen by 0.5, which is not good. It is this that is concerning so the plan is that I am to be reviewed in three months with new blood tests including testosterone. If my PSA has spiked again I will be scanned again and if they are clear two possible new drugs will be considered. The first is Abiraterone (Zytiga), the second is Ipiamumab (Yervay). Zytiga is a secondary treatment for advanced prostate cancer when the first wave of chemo or hormone restricting treatment begins to fail. Zytiga is administered with steroids and that makes me not keen. If I can I want to avoid steroids. The down side of the use of Yervay is that it is not usually used for prostate cancer and would be part of a clinical trail. Am I Guinea pig fodder I ask myself? That’s a question that will have to wait for an answer and may never need to be answered. So there it is, three more months of monitoring and then we might be doing something new. In essence its still as good as it gets.

I breathe a sigh of relief and grab some lunch before changing into my training gear. Now that I know that I have a three month window I feel more motivated to get myself properly fit. I get in to the garage and set off for an hours row at an average resistance. Its harder than it should be but I complete it.

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My jab from yesterday is still sore so I head for a post training bath to ease my body. I finally get to using my bubble bath bar. Its a real pleasure to ease myself into the bubbles and to relax for an hour.

There is tea to eat and then a blog to write, of course NCIS is on in the background. Tomorrow I’ve a review of TC specialist training preceded by a dash to the garage to get my partners car MOT’d. So life goes on in “as good as it gets mode”.

Monday. Jab Monday. I wake, get up to a quick shower and a dash to the GP surgery having downed my meds and prophylactic paracetamol. I make it with two minutes to go clutching the jab box. I get sat down to be immediately called by the nurse. The nice nurse who takes her time and tries not to leave a lump. Today it stings like hell and feels sore straight away. I go home and eat a muesli breakfast and a coffee. I get to the Shed as quickly as possible and load up a new nib in a new holder and start to write letters. I find that my beautiful writing paper and envelopes came in a strange ratio. 2 sheets of paper to each envelope! Who writes a four side letter, and if you use proper ink two sheets. The result is that I have written lots of pretty letters and now have a surplus of pretty envelopes. Lunch arrives and I snack before doing a zoom meeting for work. Its relatively short but there is knock on work to do after it. Taking a break I go to the post office to post my letters and buy a fresh supply of stamps. I catch up with some recording and then set about cooking a curry for this evenings tea. I like the preparation and the creation. The final concoction is left to bubble for an hour. We eat tea and settle for the evening. My friend calls and we have a brief chat about the rigours of child raising and how some days can be more demanding than others. I am reminded to write a question list for the oncologist tomorrow in order to avoid them hitting and running in the shortest possible time. I start to write the blog against the background of new season NCIS until the Tesco delivery arrives. A flurry of activity ad then its back to the blog. Tomorrow I get my scan results, I will have data on which to decide how things are and what my options might be. Tomorrow may go from “Its as good as it gets” to “This could be the last time”.

Its Sunday, I never returned to yesterdays blog, I guess I was too preoccupied with my results to bother, so here I am today. First thing to do is to weigh in. 93.8 kilos, that’s 0.7 kilos down on last week. Not bad given the week I’ve had, so there are reasons to be cheerful. So while my partner cooks breakfast I drive down to the garage to sort the car, petrol and tyres. I collect the Sunday newspapers and return to breakfast when I take my meds plus the first dose of prophylactic paracetamol prior to tomorrows 28 day jab. The family amuses itself until we all panic at 1:30pm because we should be at the alpaca walk. They specifically said be there half an hour before you are due to go on your walk and we are not. I usher the family into the car and then demonstrate what a 2 litre sports car can do. We arrive 5 minutes before our session is due to begin. Hero. We get labelled and buy bags of alpaca food.

So a very chirpy woman introduced herself and gave us the prelim chat about bonding with an alpaca and the does and don’ts of alpaca etiquette. Basically it boiled down to “do what your alpaca tells you” or you end up, and I quote, “alpaca skiing”. Apparently they can get up to speeds of 30 miles an hour, hence the need to let go of the rope. We get introduced to our alpacas, mine is Illy, my partners was Bolt and my daughter’s was called Knowledge. Illy was sweet natured and sweet toothed as witnessed by his love of clover.

Illy is the only one of his type on the walk today. His coat is the major difference in that its hair is curl and falls like ringlets unlike the other type whose hair is more short and compact like a sheep. So I feel in tune with Illy as my hair also falls in ringlets. I found a brother. We walk our alpacas and of course there is a feeding stop when we try to take selfies and group photos.

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Its a bit scary that my teeth are so Alpacaish except they only have teeth in their lower jaw at the front. Having walked our alpacas we took them to their field, took off their leads and turned them free into their home.

We return to the farm cafe and have a drink and a flapjack before heading off home, at a slower speed that we arrived at. On getting home its time for a drink and then I get on with making a pie for our tea.

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We eat pie for teas and we settle down to a programme about hippos and a travelogue of Ethiopia. Tomorrow I have my 28 day jab and a work meeting to keep me busy but with luck I will get time in my Shed with my newly arrived pen nib holders and I might get some gardening done.

Midnight Friday and my blood test results get posted on the Patient View app. I read them and note the rise in PSA, I go to bed perturbed. Saturday morning I rise early and process my blood results in my usual way. I’m trying not to panic and to remain calm, there are more scan results to come. I need to wait and see what it all means when put together. When all is said and done my blood results are okay, in fact moving in the right direction or not changing from the normal range, it is the PSA which is the crucial one. A rise of 0.35 is used as the cut off criteria for oncologists to take note (NB), this is the second set of tests over two months that have shown a rise of 0.5, hence my perturbation.

As you can see the out of range scores are moving in the right direction towards the normal range. Urea is dropping to wards normal, eGFR is just one point from normal and is stable and my Platelets count is moving up towards the normal range. The fly in the ointment is the rise in PSA. Although in the normal range for my age the rise is significant because of what it potentially signals and that is, that my body has found a way round the effect of the hormone therapy and/or the chemotherapy I had. It is a common process for this condition but one that is negative in terms of holding off the disease. As I say I’m trying not to panic, to wait for the rest of my scan results and to hear what the oncologist has to say on Tuesday.

The rest of my day is going to be filled with gardening, cleaning out the fish tank and doing the generative everyday things that constitute a life. I might also find time to celebrate that Brentford for a number of hours sit at the top of the premier division after beating Arsenal 2-0 last night in their first top league game since 1947. Perhaps I will come back to this page to edit it later in the evening.

Friday, its blood sample day so its up early and down to the GP surgery. Its a familiar routine now so I am in and out in double quick time. I return home via the co-op to get a paper and some Alpro for breakfast before my first meeting of the day at 9 o’clock. The meeting is interesting in that the understandings of each of us was clearly different and needed to be clarifies before we could move on. Meeting over and I have new meetings in the diary and I retreat to the Shed to write letters. By lunchtime I am ready for a walk and then a snack. A friend calls and we chat for a while before I give my eldest daughter a lift to her circus hoop session and to post my letters. Back home I take a deep breath and get ready to garden, when I get another call and we chat for a while. I prune one of the fir trees in the back garden and then cut the hedges on the drive so its possible to park the car on the drive properly. It does not take too long but it takes it out of me and I flop on the swing seat with a 0% beer. My partner and I chat for a while and plan the immediate future before I ring my sister and my partner rings her brother and then makes dinner. We eat while NCIS plays out in the background and we sink into evening.

It will be long evening as I wait to see if Brentford can hold onto their 1-0 lead at half time over Arsenal. Their first goal in the top division since 1947, a year before I was born, so a truly “in my life time experience”. I will not go to bed until gone midnight as that is when my blood results will get posted on the patient view app and I get to know some of my results. Its one of those weekends when everything comes together, blood results and the taking of prophylactic paracetamol before my 28 day injection on Monday. In theory this will make sense on Tuesday when the oncologist calls to tell me the outcome. It feels like a crucial moment this time but I am not hopeful of anything useful from the oncologist apart him/her trying to get off the phone as quickly as possible.

Thursday and I wake again in my single MB3 bed. The sun is shining but I feel tired as my night was the now usual two hour sleep cycle. I pack my stuff and stick it in the back of the car and walk up to the main building to find it is closed. I chat to the two others who had stayed over night as we wait for some one to arrive and open up. Of course someone arrives and lets us in so that we can grab coffee and toast before driving home. I have a chat with our host of the last two days and then head for home. It’s been a really good two days of getting back to being with people again and discovering that I’ve the potential to be a relational warrior.

Once home I unpack and get the washing under way. I find an intriguing parcel waiting for me and I recognise the handwriting as being my sisters so this is going to be interesting, and I am right. A cracking T shirt.

I start to get my blog up to date. I cut and paste in the entries that I wrote over the last two days and get the blog into some sort of order. As I thought yesterday it was MB3’s fire wall that was locking my out of my site. I walk down to the chemist and gather up my drugs for the month. Its that time again, bloods taking tomorrow and then my 28 day jab on Monday followed by an oncology appointment on Tuesday to get the scan and blood results. As this two month review was the result of an increased PSA level last time I am eager to know what this latest round of tests is going to show. I know that I am quite anxious about the results as I have been experiencing “this could be the last time” moments. It started with the Olympics and has been reinforced by meeting with colleagues face to face over the past couple of days. This combined with the latest round of tests feels tricky. So its all about holding my direction, keeping training, staying off the sugar, keeping rational and taking it a step at a time.

I wander into the garden to see what had happened to it since being away and I am immediately surprised by the huge lillys that have come into bloom. Staggering.

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I take to the rower in the garage for an half hour and find it is hard work. One thing about age is that I lose fitness quicker than I used to. Given that I’ve been away on holiday and then again this week its not surprising that this session feels hard work. I get through it and go for a shower.

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Post shower I sort my washing and settle down to update the blog for the day. We eat dinner and I continue the blog till a friend calls for a catch up and I take the opportunity to seek her advice about Occupational Therapist assessments. I return to the blog to finish my day.

Its Tuesday and today I travel to MB3 to meet up with other members of the group. I start the day with my favourite bacon bagel and then take the car to the garage to fill and to check the tyres. I make a dash to the supermarket and buy food to take with me. Probably contentious but I can’t not take anything, it’s not something I can do. Back home there is some clearing up to do and bins to be put out. There is of course the last-minute packing to do and mentally run through my check list. Come lunch time I’ve done todays crosswords and I am ready to leave. A friend calls and we chat for a while and then I am ready for the off. It’s a very straight forward drive, M69 and then A46 for an hour and forty minutes until I arrive at the venue for the meeting. I park up and put food in the fridge and dump my stuff in my room in the residential building. Soon others arrive and so begins the experience. My evening is filled with barbequed food and conversation as we get settled in. I am pleased to be here but alongside this is the slight anxieties of doing the face-to-face stuff with real people and people I like and respect. I cannot write here in the blog what we spoke about as I think it would be disrespectful to my friends and damaging to the trust between us. In the Therapeutic Community fraternity there is an expectation that confidentiality exists automatically, so I shall abide by it. The environment here at MB3 is lovely and I am excited by the view from my bedroom window, it looks out over the yurt, which I we get to use tomorrow, but we will see.

We have agreed breakfast at 9am tomorrow. Having collectively washed up and cleared away people drift off to their rooms but I remain in the main building as this is where the Wi-Fi is and I have the blog to write. I try to get access to my website but for some reason I cannot get in so have resorted to writing this in Word in the hope that I will be able to cut and paste it across when I can get access. Its only 10:30 and feels awfully early to me as I rarely go to bed before midnight. I shall attempt to get into my website again but if not I shall retreat like the others to my bedroom and read or write letters.

Wednesday, the day of the Elders meeting, and still, I cannot get into my website, apparently it may have something to do with MB3’s fire wall. I have breakfast and repair with the rest to the yurt. And so, the day begins as we talk and think our way through the day. It seems a struggle at times but it feels productive as we gradually whittle away to the critical issues. There is a space in which we are shown the archives at MB3 and I note that there are things I can donate to the archives related to prison therapeutic communities. We also find time to talk to a colleague in India which puts some things into context. As the day breaks up and people leave those remaining for the night cook, eat and chat before clearing away and retiring early to bed. I pack for my return journey and write a draft of the blog for when I can get into the site again. During the last couple of days people have enquired how I am and how I am coping with my cancer. It has been strangely reassuring to be able to tell people how I am and share some of my thoughts about the process of trying to manage the cancer and the interventions that are a consequence of the illness. People are kind and explore some of the experiences with me and make connections with others experiences. These conversations lay alongside other conversations about entanglement theory, altered states of mind, the unconscious and the other ideas that occupy us as we try to make sense of things.

Monday and its CT scan day later so I need to get going in the morning. I get coffee and cook an omelette. Of course the TV is full of returning Olympians espousing their philosophy of life, success and achievement. I go for an early morning training session. I get to the garage and strap into to the rower. This was going to be an average level 5 half hour. I get going and realise its harder going than I expected. I put it down to yesterdays hour but then realised that I had accidentally put the level at 6, not what I intended. I persist and get through a reasonable session.

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Well that went better than I expected to so its off to a refreshing shower and a smoothie to recover. I am enjoying the smoothie looking out of the kitchen window into the garden and I notice that the the roofing felt on the apex my beloved Shed had come away. Nothing for it but to get the ladder out and a few tools and get up on the roof. For some reason the felt had come away along one edge adn folded over on itself, which means it was getting close to peeling off altogether. So I get my freshly showered arse up on the roof and re tack the edges on the exposed felt. It goes reasonably well but will need watching in case I need to re felt the roof as a whole.

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By the time I am finished putting the mornings tools away its time to head to the hospital for the CT scan. Its a relatively short drive so I get to the hospital in good time and mask up to get to radiology. I check in and get given two labels and directed to waiting section C where I find some more people in various stages of the process. A nurse takes my labels and disappears. A few minutes later I get called out to a smaller room where a nurse asks me all the questions I answered on the health form they sent me. I am told to take my necklace off and my jacket. I am taken into a clinical room and the nurse fits me with a catheter and explains what they are going to pump into me and how it will make me feel. They lead me into the scan room and I jump up onto the couch hoping for a brief nap while they get on with it. Unfortunately I have to breath and hold it when they tell me so the nap is out the window. The scan is quick adn I am sent to a room to wait for them to check the scan. It turns out okay and I am led back to the clinical room ad my catheter is taken out and told to sit for five minutes to make sure I did not bleed through the dressing on my arm. I wait for 5 minutes and then leave.

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Mechanically this CT scan lark is pretty straight forward, its the head stuff that sneaks up on me. There are moments were its strikes home that I am on my own with this and there are moments when I feel suddenly very tired of all this being jabbed, scanned and processed. It passes, it always does but I think it is a response to the sense of powerlessness that the medical profession, hospitals and the industrialisation of illness induces in me. It is in distinct opposition to how I try to live my normal life and to take control of the things I can control. I drive home and find my Lateral Flow Tests that my partner has collected from the chemist for me today. I read the instructions and realise I will have to wait half an hour due to the half a bag of wine gums I consumed on the way home. Time comes around and I undertake my very first LFT.

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I am relieved and send my results to the people I am meeting tomorrow. One of them replies with their results. What a strange world we live in, reassuring each other that we are not the leper in the social milieu. While I waited for the LFT to do its magic over the required half an hour I took to the garden and looked for all the things that had blossomed while we were away last week. Here are a few of the gems that I found in the garden.

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My LFT is of course clear so I can pack my overnight bag and replace the extension lead that feeds my sofa end office. Its time to eat tea. A friend rings and we talk families, holidays, birthdays, swimming and CQC. It reminds me that I need to check my CQC status and registration. Returning to the lounge I start to write the blog until our Tesco delivery arrives. I plug on with the blog against the background of the TV news. Tomorrow I travel and meet a group of peers to think and share our views, a rare opportunity in these days of COVID.