The week began with an appointment at Canterbury hospital, to have the initial blood tests, ahead of the chemo treatments starting. As part of that, I received the appointments list to cover March, April and May. That covers the majority of the blood tests, targeted treatment (additional hormone tablets?) and the first 4 chemo sessions.

That has pretty much set the scene and dominated my thoughts since, as it is an inescapable reality of this next key phase beginning.

Since being informed of the risk of cancer, then the subsequent confirmed prognosis, I have been getting on with the existing day to day things, including the major aspects of the new book being released and the marketing and sales of those. Alongside that is the auction company marketing and all other associated tasks. Add to that, the day job and family life, plenty of distractions.

I am now moving very much into the unknown. An unknown impact from the chemo, how inhibitive will it be? What will the knock on impact be of being able to do the day job? What impact will it have on day to day energy and ability to do the most basic things? Having queried that with the medical professionals, the reality is, it is a very individualistic aspect. It is impossible to pre-determine what the physical (and connected mental) impact will be. This is a very challenging aspect of having to deal with cancer, but one that cannot be controlled; it is now a case of wait and see!

One key aspect of the preparation for the actual chemo treatment, is the necessity to take soluble steroids one day before, on the day and one day after; this update ends on the day of the ‘before’ ingestion of that very first visually unappealing drink (as per the attached photo). May look like a nice whiskey to some, but certainly does not taste good! After the first day, I reduced the water content to make it more concentrated / have less liquid to drink, which certainly helped.

Thanks for continuing to read and I hope this is helpful to some of you readers.

Regards, Peter