Tuesday and I wake up after a terrible post injection night. I feel like I have been wrung out all night, basically knackered. I was just coming round after my partner brought me hot water and some toast when the oncologist rings me to do my review. Unheard of, a call at just gone 8:30am! He is business like as usual. He is not surprised by my reduced PSA and says he will review me in the new year, so I am done till 2027 apart from a couple of monitoring blood tests, one in November and one just before the next review. The oncologist was unmoved by my plea to taper off my steroids and told me to go to my GP if I wanted to taper them. His view was that I should stop them and that all that would happen would be a week of feeling rough. I can’t be arsed to take him on via a safeguarding complaint or by talking to the CQC, I’ll see my GP and take it from there. After the call I rested and to my surprise the oncologists letter to the GP landed in my in box on the phone so I was able to print it off immediately. That’s an impressive use of technology. Given the outcome of the review I am left with the assumption that my current condition constitutes a partial remission. My first in seven years. I have had periods of containment but this is the first time the metastatic element of my cancer has been seen as not contributing to my condition and that the basic prostate cancer has been seen to reduce. Although I feel crap at the moment due to yesterdays injection I am fundamentally skipping around like a spring lamb inside. The onus is on me now to get as fit as I can and to lose weight. I need to be body fit for the new year.

My partner goes to the gym once I have moved my car and I start a new journal. I spend a bit of time ordering flowers for an old colleagues birthday and checking where my new biker jacket is. Apparently the Post Office has it at Heathrow Distribution centre and are claiming that they will deliver it tomorrow morning. I am not holding my breath. I have severe reservations about how good a quality it is going to be given the price I paid for it but it should at least fit. While I was at checking things I check to see when my author’s copies of the new poetry collection would arrive, apparently I have to be patient until the 25th of this month. I’m assuming that the delay is due to the fact that they have to be printed first.

I finally get round to drafting the blog with its new tittle. I am considering writing a brief piece for LinkedIn and letting the world know there is another collection to be read. Its a while since I added to my poetry blog or posted anything on my YouTube channel, all of these things I can be getting on with while I recover.

Before the evening comes around I post a piece for LinkedIn and then watch a gardening programme hoping to pick up ideas for my own garden. A friend of my partner arrives and spends time chatting with her before they go off to a restaurant for an evening meal. I cook my tea and settle down to watch a football match and then the final of the Great British Sewing Bee when my partner and friend return. All I need to do is take my night meds and hope I get a good nights sleep. If I am lucky my new jacket will arrive tomorrow and I will feel well enough to wear it out for the first time.