It’s Jab Monday, not my favourite day. I am up early for me, before 8 o’clock and having breakfast. It takes me longer to get going in the mornings these days so I plod through my getting up rituals until its time to juggle the cars on the drive and get myself to the GP surgery. I drive down in Elsie (the car) to the surgery and park in the car park, a risky choice as Elsie is quite big and the car park small. I check in and in no time at all the nurse calls me in. I tell her how my latest bloods have turned out while she mixes my injection, there is a lot of it, 80mg. So she finds a suitably flabby bit in my gut and injects me. In no time at all I am manoeuvring Elsie out of the car park and getting myself home to start drafting the blog.

In a flurry of energy I take my partner to Sutton Cheyney Wharf where there is a café by the Ashby De La Zouch canal. We order lunch and watch people feed the ducks and swans as canal boats chug slowly past us. Its the first time we have been here and it looks likely that we will return as the food is good and the service good and friendly. They also have huge sunflowers in their garden. After a very pleasant meal I drive us home as I am beginning to feel more sore and the symptoms of post injection reaction are starting. As a brief activity I plant the small olive tree that arrived yesterday into a large pot at the front door. Another small step along the path of making the garden draught resistant and based on perennial plants

The injection catches up with me and by early evening I am very sore and I have started the “cold turkey junkie” effect. I am cold and shivery and getting more and more sore at the injection site. By six thirty I am in bed having had a sandwich and taken my meds along with more paracetamol. Its going to be a long night.

It is my oncology review tomorrow and I think my lowered PSA blood result is a game changer. I think the team will decide that they do not need to see or review me again until December before the end of the year. If that is the case then I shall have the answer to “What is this?”. The answer will be “Remission”. After seven years of treatment I finally look like I have a attained remission, albeit for a possibly short period of time. Now there is a thing! So tomorrows blog, post review may well have a new title.