Week 4: w/e 1st November 2026

Hello to you all and thanks for tuning in once again. The past week was a partial continuation of the previous week, dealing with the residual side effects, but just to a lesser degree - thankfully. The main impact remained the ‘swimming head’ and the tongue ‘burning’, alongside increasing finger and toe sensitivity. The dry throat remains too and I have having to counter that with various boiled sweets, as drinking more water does not really change things. My left lower back pain came to the fore, but we had physio on Thursday, which helped a little, although over the weekend, that pain moved into the lower mid-part of my back. By Thursday morning, I was still not feeling great, but we had a half day of tasks lined up. I did get into the car, but almost immediately was going to go back into the house. I did however, travel with Sandra to make a start on our tasks. The head is without a doubt, the ‘constant’ and even by the weekend, it was still not settled 100%. 

Against that backdrop, it was another ‘stay at home’ week, bar Thursday. On Friday night, Sandra and Alanna had a concert to attend and the only way for Sandra to relax and enjoy that, was for Alanna to come and pick me up, then Dan took on the mantle of ‘baby-sitter’ for the evening. The mental stress on Sandra, watching me constantly, manifests into physical tiredness and that was evident throughout the week. Due to that very notable impact, we both decided to have a very quiet ‘battery charging’ weekend, which was needed by both of us. I now have a date for my scan, to see if the chemo has made any difference, but it is after the planned chemo no. 4 session. I contacted the cancer unit, but so far, no-one has confirmed if that session 4 will go ahead, or if it will be delayed until the scan results are known; a tad frustrating, and I am ‘hoping” (not the right word) that it does, as I would like the chemo wrapped up at the earliest possible date, so we can maybe have a less impactful Xmas season. 

Due to Dan developing a cold, we all decided to avoid meeting one another this weekend, as normal. Karl popped in Saturday morning, as he was doing some change over on Sandra's car, which was appreciated. That amounted to the height of seeing our family this weekend, which again, added to the subdued feel for the past week.

The easy to do book work continues and Hazel’s manuscript was completed ahead of my self-imposed deadline, the next phase is to scan some images and add them in. Regarding the ‘117’ project, I have now completed 91 biographies, or 78% of the total. The majority of the remaining biographies are the more indepth ones and one of the people tackled during the past week had 400+ documents for me to trawl through. The Münkemer manuscript is with the printers and we are discussing the pre-print fine tuning of that. 

In summary, a quiet / subdued week, but one that was less impactful than ‘chemo-week’. We will see if the coming week gives me a smidge of normality, prior to session No. 4 (if that goes ahead). 

Thank you for our time on this and the frequent and supportive comments, they are helpful. Regards, Peter