Two weeks since my last consultation and I now have my next consultation booked in for two weeks from now. So, I’m in a ‘no man's land’ between ending chemo and moving onto ‘watchful waiting’. It’s a little frustrating, but I understand the process. I’m holding back on planning too many activities until after the consultation, but I have committed to running my ukulele workshops for the Autumn – with the help of my dear friend Jeremy. Hopefully, in two weeks time, my numbers will still be good – and dropping – and then I’ll be moving on to a review every three months with ‘watchful waiting’ in the interim.
‘Watchful waiting’ seems to be fairly typical for non-curable prostate cancer that is under control and not generating any symptoms. I’ll need to be aware of any reoccurrence of the symptoms I had prior to my treatment – deep bone pain, unexplained weight loss - and the three-month blood tests will check my numbers – PSA, ALP, etc. So that will be my future, getting tested every three months and then, assuming I'm good to go, committing to activities over the next three months. I’m comfortable with that, I guess I can still consider longer term plans, but with the caveat of not committing until I’m tested. The likelihood is that when the cancer progresses, I’m likely to be recommended more chemotherapy, unless my genetic testing reveals other options, so that will put a halt to any plans I may have made.
With this in mind, I am starting to get back into a somewhat normal ‘non-chemo-cycle’ way of life and, now my infection risk is dropping, I can see a few more people. The weekend before last we had our very good friends Liliana and Dani along with their son Gael over for Sunday lunch. What a delightful day, good conversation, excellent food – thank you Shirley – and engaging company. This weekend coming, we have other dear friends Aaron and Angela over for dinner on Saturday evening, which happily coincides with another performance from our nephew Ronan at the White Hart – should be a fun evening. Last weekend, we had the pleasure of seeing Grace Petrie at the Holy Trinity Church in Guildford. A fabulous evening, Grace entertained us with a solo set before the interval and then the full band afterwards; she really is worth listening too – protest folk! So, life's pretty good at the moment.
Finally, as I’m not in treatment at the moment I’ll be posting every two to four weeks as things unfold.
