Post 257: Happy New Year, we all have positive possibilities in 2026.
January 1st and I’ve gone to bed early, with another three bottles of water and tired eyelids.
Gone are the days of parties in the house till mid-morning, and right now, it’s not the New Year for ages yet.
Technically it’s not the brand New Year yet. But I want to move on from 2025 ASAP, I’ve got high hopes for 2026. I hope you have too.
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Real time, 9pm GMT… a text has just come through from a mate of mine. He’s in Australia for the whole Test Cricket Series and has landed up in Sydney for the celebrations. He’s texted me the Harbour Bridge ablaze with pyrotechnics, and someone has taken a fab photo of him and the bridge together.
Amazing.
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2025 started with great possibilities for the future for me, except that the old PSA thing worrying my oncologist — my old oncologist. It was rising, and nothing would stop it.
I wasn’t worried because the treatments I’d had for the last two PSA rises in the previous 26 months were brilliant.
So why would I worry — worrying is their job.
After a few more months of nightmare PSA checks, I found myself being told by Easter that the best option now was chemo. After a few weeks of testing I was good to go. What could possibly go wrong?
A week after starting chemo, that question was answered — in A&E, on a cool but frightening night.
Re-read Post 17: “Go straight to A&E” if you like.
From then on it’s been an inglorious experience. My failure to fully understand the guidance from oncology meant I had to seek a second opinion.
No hard feelings, but when guidance lands you with lung clots and a near-death experience, it’s no wonder trust wobbles.
And so it went on.
Our summer holidays in 2025 were cancelled and given away where possible.
At least someone got a freebie.
The chemo didn’t really help much and the early high hopes waned. By the fifth session (delayed for a blood infusion) I was struggling. The sixth was cancelled because I simply wasn’t fit enough.
The next six or seven weeks were spent waiting — five weeks before the scans could be done, then another two weeks for a face-to-face oncology appointment finally arrived.
There was no good news: I didn’t expect any.
A couple of mediocre treatment possibilities were offered and we were given time to think. By then it was mid-December. The year gone, and precious little to show for it since February. PSA was 133 in March and now 360. Eleven months of misery.
Time to think became time to question. The final face-to-face after another two weeks leading into December, brought a prognosis of eighteen months plus, and my decision was to take three months’ rest — time to reflect and step away from the vice-like jaws of clinical medicine.
So it’s a New Year, and I’m saying goodbye to the worst of 2025 and welcoming 2026 with cautious but genuine hope.
I don’t know what life has in store for any of us, but I hope to still be writing this blog a year from now.
Even without treatment just now, nothing has truly changed.
I still live with PC.
I’ll still help on the forum when I can — and accept help too. (Thank you soooooooo much)
So all the best. I hope you wake with your 2026 eyes and mind switched on to the possibilities. Forget what you can from what came before, and hope for better things ahead.
Good night all.
