Tuesday and I wake up late, 9:45 late and I have an oncology review in two hours. My partner brings me coffee and I come round a bit. I have breakfast, more coffee and my meds. My partner braids my hair and the post man delivers two letters. I am fortunate in my friends, they have written me thoughtful and supportive letters since my sisters death. I drive to the hospital with my partner, where we both sit and read until I am called.
I am shown my PETT-CT scan results. My cancer is obviously in my prostate but apart from that I have small amounts in a gland in my left side and one other spot. It would appear that I have not been invaded too radically. Given this the team think that giving me a shot at radiotherapy is a good call. I ask about a change in the drugs that they talked about. The discussion centres around why we would use two things at the same time and risk burning out all the options. Using one at a time is a better bet at preserving me in the long run apparently. Steroids get mentioned but I am not keen, very not keen on going down that route at all. So the bottom line is I will do radio therapy and stick with the meds as they are at present. I will have s blood test before I see the radiotherapy team in May to establish a baseline PSA level and I will have another CT scan before the radiotherapy. The expectation is that while I wait my PSA will rise. The expectation is also that my PSA may rise in response to radiotherapy and only then decline. The whole tone to me was about buying time and going step by step through the options. My part in all this? To stay as fit as possible and control my diet. My partner askes about my pissing blood if I train too hard, the oncologist shrugs it off and says its just the prostate. He did not seem concerned at all. So all I can do is train, train hard and try to stay off the sweet stuff. So now I am in the run up to radio therapy and Rocket will have to keep fighting for me. I was intrigued by the oncologists comments about the fact that two years ago they would not consider me for radiotherapy and that the thinking around it has changed. I guess its a matter of degree, but as I said to he has made a pact with the devil, I’m all for cutting the head of the snake and I would have attacked my prostate long ago. So I am to be spot welded.
I drive us into town where we go to a restaurant for lunch. Its an Italian place called the Merchant of Venice. I am disappointed to see that “a pound of flesh” was not on the menu. I settled for Arancini followed by creamy chicken penne. The final glory was a light chocolate cake called Salvini washed down with coffee. My eldest daughter met us at the restaurant and we brought her home with us.
As soon as I get home I set about sending out the death notices. I and my eldest daughter sort out addresses and I write the envelopes and put the cards in. It takes a while but we get there when we run out of cards. I fil in the mail redirection form and my eldest daughter and I go to the post office for stamps and to process the redirection form. That done I return home and make up a list of all the addresses we have sent cards to and I download a couple of pictures my son has sent me of him and my sister. Finally the admin is done and I start to draft the blog. While all this has been going on there has been the worry of my partners brother being admitted to hospital yesterday. He remains there at the moment and so it is a household full of concerns and no little anxiety. To crown it all Tesco suddenly out of the blue cancel our delivery with no explanation. We will not starve but we could have done with out the additional aggravation at this time. I guess a trip to Sainsburys is on the cards. I drift into the evening with no ambition beyond feeding the hedgehog and reading my latest book, Perfume by Patrick Suskind. It is a reread, but an excellent one. I feel I need a time of reflection and processing, my pixies are feeling over worked but I cannot slack off, I need to be as fit as possible to meet the challenges of radiotherapy. Onward.
