Sunday, and my partner and her brother go to see their mother in hospital. I lay in and take my vitals before getting up to make breakfast and take my morning meds. I am not feeling as chipper as I could bit I shower and pull on real clothes as I prepare to meet friends for lunch. It should be doable and I am about to leave when I check my messages to find that one of the group has had to go to A&E to sort out a hearing implant that has become detached. As result the lunch gets cancelled. It is a real shame but cannot be helped. It means that I have missed both the poetry stanza and the friends lunch, which is dissappointing.
My partner and I drive to a garden centre and have a meal before we buy some garden boxes and fibre pots to move some of the seedlings on. On return home I get out of me real clothes and revert back to trainers and T shirt. I do nothing, literally nothing. Eventually I watch more of a current drama, which carries on into the evening until the days football highlights are on TV. Then its meds and bed. A day that started with lots of promise that turned into ash.
Monday, I wake to an empty house. Eldest daughter at work and partner once again visiting her mother in hospital. I take my vitals, change into my training gear and make breakfast. I was looking forward to toast but as there was no bread I satisfied my hunger with a scone. I took my morning meds and then made my way to the garage and strapped myself into the rower. Its three days since I last trained so I was expecting a tough twenty minutes. As it happens it turned out alright.
The furthest so far and the most calories.
The session is okay, I go further than I have before since restarting and I burn a few more calories. I rest on the sofa for a while until I go out into the garden and sit on the swing seat listening to old radio comedy programmes. Its actually quite cold so eventually I return inside and make myself soup. The post brings me two and one half litres of wood oil and a big bag of peppermint creams, which I stash away. My partner returns from the hospital where it appears that the ward team are not sure what they are doing with my partners mother. It is a source of great frustration. I begin to draft the blog for the last couple of days while waiting for the Tesco delivery and thinking about what processes there might be to apply to my partner’s mother’s situation.
My evening sees a meal and the final episodes of Strangers. A straightforward TV fest although I did scribble the bones of a poem, but I think this one will remain with me. I take my meds and get to bed, tomorrow is a training day again.
Friday, a rest from training day. I am hoping to be fit enough to do things at the weekend. The reality is that I get up late, eat pizza for brunch and take my meds feeling pretty crap. I write a poem, which is not blogable and then spend my time trying to keep myself organised. In the afternoon my partner and her brother go to visit their mother in hospital who continues to try and recover from a stroke.
The garden guy turns up and I get him to start digging out some of the bamboo in the to end of the garden. I make him coffee and we chat for a while about his food bank work. While he is hacking and digging I fill the bird feeders and the squirrel feeder before retreating to the sofa to rest. I feel very tired. The garden guy fills the garden waste bin and donates a couple of loafs of bread to the household before leaving. My partner returns and reports on how her mother is. The stroke has been confirmed and there is now a period of monitoring before she returns to her previous hospital placement for recovery. We eat tea and settle down to watch some TV, Grace and Beyond Paradise before I take my meds and go off to bed feeling decidedly off it. It does not feel as if my rest day has had much effect on me.
Saturday and I wake to a partner struggling with the shower. The water pressure is low and the downstairs shower needs to be cleaned. I get up and adjust our heating system and the shower then works. I’ve had a poor night, needing to get up several times as my gut is off colour. So back in bed I take my vitals, which given the circumstances are okay except the high heart rate. My partner brings me a hot water and I scribble a poem.
519
There is a void,
a deep vacuum
where who I was
sits empty.
Not lost,
but inert.
This poison
disables me
robs my taste,
speeds my heart
and fatigues me
beyond my limits.
The flow has stopped,
Everything is a distraction
and I am bushwhacked
from all sides
through every sense.
The smelling salts
of optimism
are denied me.
I am slumped in my corner
with four more rounds
to go.
Across the ring
the opponent grins.
519 18-04-2026
I get up and make myself breakfast and take my morning meds. I then start to draft the blog for the last couple of days. I have still yet to shower and reset the heating system and have a shower. I still do not know if I am going to go to the poetry today or the lunchtime meal tomorrow. Its all about effort and whether realistically I have the energy or that my disturbed gut will allow me to travel.
At the end of the day I did not make it to the poetry Stanza. I watched a lot of football and rugby. I ate pasta and spent my evening watching The Murder Line, a very improbable Canadian drama series. eventually I take my night meds and go off to bed hoping to sleep. Tomorrow I shall see if I am well enough to meet with friends for lunch.
Thursday, this is going to be short. I wake late and do my vitals and then get up and put on my training gear. I make brunch and take my meds and then get myself up for training. I strap myself onto the rower and get going very slowly.
A tough session, but I manage 3+K.
My afternoon is once more spent working on the laptop and phone to once again re-establish my emails from BT. Its a nightmare journey of BOTS and real remote people. I do learn along the way how to surf the internet incognito. Yes there is an incognito mode. It turns out that my browsers had become over cookied and bunged up with history. So clearing all my caches and histories has helped. By the evening I am just about sorted in time to eat pie and chips and watch the last episodes of Slow Horses. I draft a quick version of the blog, take my meds and go to bed. Tomorrow must be a rest day, no training, just ordinary activity. Tomorrow everything hinges on how my partner’s mother responds to her night in hospital after her latest malaise.
Wednesday and I seem to have slept alright again, thankfully. I am slow to come round but once I do I take my vitals. I seem to be getting back into the habit. A necessary one if I am going to monitor my numbers as I continue to train and take new supplements. My blood pressure remains above what it was before I stopped training on the 1sr of December 2025 but my SATS has risen to 98%, always the first thing to show when I go back to training. So I check my messages and news feeds and then get up. I dress in my training gear not knowing if I am going to make it as I feel fatigued already.
I make breakfast of toast and take my meds before tidying the porch. The snow shovel goes back in the garage along with the compactor tool but I keep the rock salt in the porch. As I pull out weeds from the block paving I pour in some salt to the crack and it stops anything else growing in it. It really works. My tip for the day. I notice the food refuse bin handle is detached from the bin and been left by the waste collectors on the ground. So I set about mending the locking handle. With that done I move my new delivery of compost to where it can be moved to the garden. I think I am about clear of my morning chores when my new delivery of training underwear arrives. So I rearrange my underwear draw and then begin to think about training. My partner goes off to see her mother in hospital with her brother and son after my eldest daughter brings me a paper. I do the first crossword and then get myself ready to train, but a poem interrupts me as a result of the horrible taste in my mouth left over from breakfast.
517 Degarelix kills the taste buds, so the world of food becomes flannel and lint. Oh peppermint, Oh peppermint You are my oral stimulint! Like Lydia, Oh Lydia You are my encyclopidia of taste. Chew or sip once between the lip there is no flavour, no smack, no tang, no zing to relish every morsel hellish. Oh peppermint, Oh peppermint You are my only Oral stimulint. 517 15-04-2026
Its a stark choice, train and miss the theatre tonight or not train and go to the theatre. I do not have the energy to do both. In my head there is no real decision to be made. If I do not train my vitals will not improve, I’ll not be able to fight the fatigue as well and I will not make any improvement in the toxicity. So its training for me. I go to the garage, get on the rower, plug Iggy Pop into the ear buds and set myself up for a twenty minute row again. I set off with good sounds in my ears. By the end of the twenty minutes I have improved on yesterday’s figures. Not a lot but enough to be encouraging.
I get out of my kit and down some Lucozade and some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. I take up my place on the sofa and start to draft the blog for the day. There are more crosswords to do. My afternoon is a fucking nightmare. I cannot get into my emails on my laptop or my phone. I spend hours on line to the BT guides. It’s a long afternoon and in the middle of it there is a hail storm that sets my partners car alarm off. She rings me to tell me her car app has told her the alarm is going. This is at the point I am trying to download an install the Chrome browser as suggested by the GP Guide on line. Its just a croc of crap all at the same time. I’ve eaten the tea time pizza and opened the chocolate mini eggs but still no emails. I uninstall everything and then start over trying to use Chrome. Eventually I get to my inbox on the laptop and the phone using Chrome on both. I have no confidence that things will work in the future. I settle down and watch TV until the football comes on. My partner and eldest daughter have gone to the theatre, me not having the energy to make the theatre. I sip cold Coke, take my meds and slide towards bedtime just wanting the day to be over and for sleep to engulf me.
Tomorrow must be a day of rest with at least a small training time.
Tuesday and after a reasonable nights sleep I wake up and do my vitals. For soem reason they are better than the last three days. My partner brings me hot water and then goes the gym. I get up and dress in some training gear before making a toast breakfast and taking my morning meds. The window cleaner turns up and is in and out in no time, its a rip off. I order some new training underwear and then I go to the garage to find the rower.
To be frank I am scared of starting training again and I am hopeless at judging what is sensible so I am unsure what I am going to do. Reason or cowardice wins out and I decide to do twenty minutes on level 3. That’s less resistance then ever before and the shortest time, but I figure I have to start somewhere. The first few pulls are tentative and slowly I try to get into a rhythm. All I can do is grind my way through the time and see how it goes. So I grind away and get to the end of the time. My old routine drops in and I take a picture of the monitor. For a first session since the 1st of December it seems to be okay.
The first step to training again. 20 minutes and 3K+
I retreat to the sofa to rest and recover as I start the draft of the blog. All I need to do now is clean the shower head and see what I can manage to do this afternoon. Unfortunately the showerhead is not an easy job and needs more attention. Having got into non training clothes my partner returns and we go off for lunch at a local garden centre.
My lunch selection is chilli con carne in the hope that I can taste something. I am deeply into the stage where my taste buds are wiped out so anything spicy is my choice. I am not disappointed by the chilli that at least provided a tang and a dash of cold sour cream. My body begins to complain about the earlier rowing so once I’ve eaten I just need to rest and my partner drives me home so I can flop on the sofa and listen to I’m Sorry I Haven’t Got a Clue, until I am recovered enough to draft more blog and get ready for the evening. It is a world cup qualifier for the English women’s team against Spain. So my evening will be a mixture of sport and Slow Horses. The crunch will come tomorrow when I assess whether I can train again. Of course there will be night meds to take and with luck I will get an early night as tomorrow evening I’m at the theatre.
Monday, I wake late feeling crap, the chemo is giving me a tough time this cycle. I do my vitals, they are okay but need to be re-trained. I make a brunch and then just set about a list of things to do, life admin mostly. I book my next 28 day injection, my next set of hospital review bloods, I sort out an ISA and then order oil for the wooden gates. I move on to fill the bird feeders and the squirrel feeder before Amazon deliver my new sock collection. I immediately re organise my sock draw and throw out all the old ones, I am now summer sock ready. My eldest daughter has re-organised the garage gym so that I can use the rower, so tomorrow I can begin to get fit again. Following up my research on toxicity I order Resveratrol and copper supplements to take to counter some of the toxicity. Its an experiment, so I will see how it goes. I also ordered my regular monthly drugs haul.
In all this busy activity I forgot to take my morning meds, which I discovered in the evening. My evening was all Slow Horses followed by drafting this short blog and then bed. I did scribble a poem at some point which kind of summed up the day and my fatigue.
516 It’s Cycle 6 and I am tired. My taste has gone, fatigue high and I’m irritable. I research toxicity and discover Resveratrol and copper can lower the poisonous effects. No oncologist told me this, it was my nosing around that found a research review. I order the supplements, no idea what dosage to use but I guess that’s experimentation for you. The rower is back in the garage and I have thirteen days to get my blood pressure down. This is a crucial time, a time to find new ways to fight and to survive. All the while the drugs get ordered, the bloods and injections booked, the ISAs managed, new socks installed, gate oil ordered, the bird feeders filled, the garden organised, shingle ordered, and I still hanker after a linen suit. All the things normal people do still need doing, I just need to nap a little more often and stay alert to what might be my last straw to grab at.
Friday was a chemo day. My latest bloods done on Wednesday after my oncology review also arrived. Unfortunately my PSA score was not included as the oncologist did not ask for it on my bloods form. He clearly was not interested in it for the purposes of okaying the start of Cycle 6, todays Cycle. My partner went out and I got myself breakfast, meds and a shower before sorting out my mail and getting what I was going to wear for chemo sorted out. when my partner returned we had pizza for lunch and I changed into my chemo three piece suit and ordered up an Uber.
Before I could get in the Uber the neighbour waylaid us and said our bamboo is invading her fence in the back garden. Its a clumping type so I am suspicious but will plan an intervention to be appropriate at some point. We arrive at the hospital and before we go into the cancer unit we buy strawberries from the hospital fruit and veg stall as we know it will be closed by the time I come out of chemo. I hand in my “dance card” and get provisions from the sweet machine. I am expecting a long wait as they are usually running behind time but in the dot of 3 o’clock I am called in.
The nurse starts by putting in the cannula in my left hand and then starts the pre session stats on me. My heart rate is up and my blood pressure just about acceptable. I am so unfit. The heart rate wont come down so she decides to do an ECG on me and to let the doctor see the results. SO I get carted off to a side room and wired up. All of this taking up time, necessary time, but still prolonging the session. With the ECG done I return to my poison station and try to relax until the word from the doctor comes. In the end my heart is fine, no arrhythmia, just beating fast, so on we go. First the pre chemo anti allergy stuff, then a saline flush and then onto the poison bag. I check the numbers to ensure it is my regular dose, and it is. So finally I get to have my poison. They ask me if I have it over one or to hours, of course I tell then its one and we get on with it. I try to relax and read for a bit whilst sipping water and nibbling Twix. After a while I chat to the woman next to me, who I have chatted about travel insurance to before. We chat about families and travel before she finishes her session and goes on her way. I have my final saline rinse shortly after and then I am on my way.
My partner and I walk to the hotel across the road and get the fastest Uber we have ever had, just a 1 minute wait for it to arrive. I am feeling wiped out, and my partner feeds me mascarpone pasta, which was delicious. We settled down to watch more episodes of Slow Horses, to which I am now addicted. In a moment pf decadence and not giving a crap I open some strawberries and a bottle of champagne and sit sipping the cold champers and nibbling strawberries. Which seemed to to be a good way to round off the evening and to drop my night meds on and go to bed.
Saturday and I wake up feeling okay and reinstitute doing my daily Sats. I bring my record book up to date and plug myself into the measuring devices. My temperature is good however my heart rate is up ( unfitness is my hope) and my blood pressure is up around 139/83, which is well above my fit levels. My oxygen saturation is around 96, which is at least 2 to 3 points below my normal average, (once again my explanation is lack of exercise.) I am not happy with this so action needs to be taken.
I get up and make myself breakfast and take my meds while my partner goes off to see her mother in hospital with her brother. I then begin to watch the women’s six nations rugby on TV. Three games in a row is a bit excessive but it provides me with a backdrop against which to answer messages and to sort out my post. It also gives me an excuse to rest and let the chemo do its work. I am already losing the ability to taste anything leaving me to resort to Red Bull and peppermint creams. In this state I try to keep things organised and tidy but it is an effort. I have ISAs that need dealing with and a tax code to attend to. I’ve ordered more compost, which is now being delayed and I have a pressing need for more ordinary socks now that I am upping my clothes game for the summer and for chemo. All of this gets done alongside a Tesco order. By the time the evening meal of crockpot comes around I am tired again and gratefully sink into an evening of more Slow Horses and football highlights. I finally get my night meds down me go off to bed past midnight.
Sunday arrives and it is clear that the chemo has bitten in. I slept heavily last night and this morning I am tired. I take my vitals again trying to get back into my routine. They are much the same as yesterdays and all the time I tell myself its to do with not training. I like this explanation as it means I can empirically test it. I have 14 training days to go before my next set of pre chemo bloods, I expect to train on 50% of those days. I am not hoping for a spectacular movement in the Sats but at least a small indication of shift. It will take at least two to three months consistent training to make a difference.
I get up, make breakfast and take my meds. The garden guy arrives and I make him coffee and explain what I want doing in the garden. As I am explaining it starts to rain and so I leave him talking to my partner while I return to my sofa end and start to draft the blog. I catch up with more messages and order more summer socks. Just as the sun came out the garden guy leaves to return another day to do the job required. My plan today is to research chemo toxicity questionaniares now that I know for sure that it is just an assessment made by oncologists by a combo of blood tests, clinical observation and mostly self report data. The self report data seems to be the crucial bit assuming the bloods are okay. As my WBC and platelets counts are good and my eGFR is 40% + my bloods are okay. So it seems to be that my self report data is the key issue. So if I can provide something that sounds thoughtful as a score then I can probably keep my chemo dosage up for the rest of the ten sessions. This afternoon there is rugby to watch and questionaniares to find.
I watch the rugby and find some toxicity assessments but they are not useful as they are either a prediction of the likelihood of toxicity, which is like stating the obvious. Or they are for primary level medics which sign post them to advisory bodies. So they are not a lot of use to me as a patient really. My partner returns from visiting her mother in hospital and we eat an evening meal before a quiet evening watching more Slow Horses and The Capture. I watch the the football highlights having taken my night meds and finishing off the blog draft. I am hoping that tomorrow I can get training again but I also have to ensure I have my medication orders and GP visits booked.
Thursday, pre chemo day which means more steroids. Yesterdays blood results did not come through last night and they have not appeared this morning. I shall wait and see what happens but it maybe that the bloods done at the hospital do not get posted. Its a bummer if this is the case. I wake quite early and my partner brings me a hot water. We chat for a while about yesterdays chemo review session and other bits of business. My partner goes to see her mother with her brother, today they meet with physiotherapists to discuss future options and risk assessments. I write a couple of poems trying to process yesterdays chemotherapy review and the feelings it left me with. It’s all still very much a process in the digesting and I am not sure where it will lead, I just have to think and feel my way through it.
514 Having found my voice is it right I should sing all sorts of songs? Just as a singer sings songs of all types, should my voice not speak poetry of all kinds? I open my throat pen but what flows is the same tune. One of cancerous rhetoric, like a mourner at his own funereal the lament is for himself. Is this the way to use my voice? Such a limited repertoire that soon no one hears any more. There is a voice but silent and soon I become mute and indifferent.
514 09-04-2026
515 I’m fed up being seen as some weak wanker, someone incapable, infirmed and crippled of judgement and ability. Everyone quick to point out my short comings, my breathlessness and fatigue. I look around and find a sea of eyes filled with faults and shortcomings. Where is the gold star for effort, or the Happy Elephant for a good try? Where is the encouragement without the “shoulds” and “oughts” and “for your own goods”? I’m fighting hard, perhaps I could do more but where is the incentive? The data says “Your holding your own” “today is good”. That doesn’t happen by accident, I work fucking hard for that. Everyday my body goes to war, my mind wrestles with the world to stay engaged, to stay alive, to stay giving a fuck, so either support me or fuck off. I’m in a fight with enough opponents as it is. In this bout I need people in my corner.
515 09-04-2026
As I say its a process of making meaning of it all and finding a way forward that gets me to where I want to be. I guess there is going to be flack along the way. I get up and cook pasta for breakfast, which I down with my morning meds, enhanced with protective steroids. I check my emails, messages and news feeds, nothing of import there. I set my self the task of making a Shepherds pie for tea this evening knowing that my partner will have a demanding day. By the time I am done and the kitchen cleared it is early afternoon and my partner returns.
My partner and I chat about the mornings hospital visit and talk over the situation and the options and the rationale for each them . It is not an easy time for anyone at the moment. We drive to the nearest garden centre and indulge in hot chocolate and jam scones and continue our conversation from earlier. On a lighter note we recap where we have got to with Slow Horses. Feeling treated we return home via a petrol station and fill up my partners car. We should now have enough mileage between us to manage any crisis that might come up.
Once home we check the garden and close it up for the night and I retreat to the sofa and begin to draft the blog. The evening will see the demise of the Shepherds pie, some relaxing over Slow Horses and ultimately my enhanced night meds before I take myself to bed to rest as much as possible before chemo day and the start of Cycle 6. No doubt I shall label up a new children’s toothbrush with Cycle 6 before I tuck myself in for the night. I’ll also have one more check to see if my blood results have come through, then onwards.
Wednesday and its oncology review day and its face to face. So I get up slowly and have a shower before having toast, orange juice and morning meds. I choose to wear a light weight suit given this is the warmest day of the year so far. To my surprise it fits well so I feel okay and ready to front the oncologist and what he might have to say or show me. This session is face to face so that he can share my recent scan results so I feel the need to be respectable and not a trainers and T shirt overwhelmed patient. I think it turns out quite well.
Battle suit on, now for the consultant.
My partner and I get an Uber to the hospital and settle in at the waiting room. A couple who we meet on chemo Fridays. We chat for a while and eat a quick cheese sandwich before I get called in. The consultant explains that he has a new techno gizzmo thing that writes his letters for him. He tees it up and we are off. He asks how I am and I tell him I am tired/fatigued. He suggests that he reduces the dose of my chemo, tells me I won’t make ten cycles and that he might discontinue the chemo rechallenge. I’m not impressed, I do understand that dosage is based on toxicity not amount. In my head its no different from Keith Richards only taking medical grad heroine and not increasing the amount as he understood that taking more heroine would not change the effect.
We move onto the scan results. The oncologist shows me the scan and explains the orientation. Apparently there has been no change, no spread, and I am told its al good. All good that is apart from still having cancer in my prostate and the back wall of my bladder at the base. So its all the same, I’m holding my own, my PSA is going down. So here I am where I was seven years ago, in the same battle with less strength and stamina. The session comes to an end with me insisting on Cycle 6 being the same dosage. The oncologist says accept a lower dosage next time. He then says I have to have a set of bloods today as my last lot were too far back, a week. So I take the blood form to the bloods room and wave it at the blood sucker. He takes my blood and I note that PSA is not on the bloods form. It makes me wonder if PSA is that important, the oncologist clearly isn’t that interested.
Blood taking over my partner and I leave. There is a good fruit stall outside the oncology unit and we buy two large packs of strawberries for a fiver. We order an Uber from the hotel and travel quietly home.
Once home I am out of the suit and into something casual and into the garden to decompress. After a drink I set about sowing the purple sunflower seeds I’ve been waiting to get going. After some time I have a tray of individual fibre pots each bearing a single sunflower seed. I pop them into one of the covered raised beds and retreat to the sofa t start drafting the blog. Tea follows accompanied by some of the hospital strawberries. And with that I sink into the evening watching the Slow Horses series. I now have a new set of bloods to wait for, so the evening will draw to an end later on.
Tuesday and I am awake at a reasonable time as my partner goes off to the physio to be followed by her aqua class at the gym. I get up and cook myself a three egg herb and cheese omelette and take my morning meds. I then spend time filling my meds dossettes for the next two weeks. I add the additional steroids for the end of the week when Cycle 6 starts. Its a fiddly job but pays dividends in terms of keeping me organised and on track. With that done I type up the poem I wrote before getting up.
513 A friend suggested a spring poem, one of hope and renewal. A few verses to lift my gloom, shake off the grim and shed some light. The problem is it’s not there. I can’t write what isn’t in me, so I hack ahead and see where this leads. It appears the seasons are unpredictable. 513 07-04-2026
Typing it up reminds me that I have not posted anything on my poetry website for a few days and should think about putting some new poems up and also making new videos to post as well. But not today. I gather my things together and go out to the Shed. Its an age since I inhabited my Shed and wrote any letters. My head has been so lax recently that I have not written to friends for a very long time and that won’t do at all. So I spend time in the Shed writing a couple of letters. It is hard work but made easier by my new Mont Blanc pen that was a Christmas present. Extravagant but lovely, it is so smooth to write with. I use all my old rituals, sealing the letters with my seal ring and adding the odd sticker or two. y the time I have finished two letters I am tired and take a break to spend time on the swing seat. I notice how good the magnolia tree is looking.
Magnolia coming into its own.
I close the Shed up and then take a walk over to the post box and send my letters on their way. Back home I settle down to begin to draft the blog until its time for the evening meal. Once food is over my partner and I begin to watch a new drama series Slow Horses, which turns out to be good. I return to the blog and then take my night meds before turning in for the night. Tomorrow is oncology review day so there is a bit of prep to do in the morning, I need to be clear about what I want to know about my latest scan.
