We saw Dr P last Wednesday for some fairly sobering news. I had had my regular three monthly CT head and neck scan and the whole body CT scan the preceding week. These, thankfully, did not show any cancerous activity in the viscera such as liver or lungs. They did, however, show generalised small stress fractures in various areas of the skeleton. Dr P said the back soreness I had been experiencing was caused by these fractures. Their presence indicated the enzalutamide (hormone) treatment which I had been taking for the past two plus years had run its course. This was not unexpected — Dr P has been foreshadowing for some time that another course of chemotherapy was now the way to go.

I had the first of these yesterday morning, at the day oncology centre, Epworth Eastern. I will only have to go in there every three weeks. This treatment centres around a drug called cabazitaxel. This is well tolerated by most patients, some of whom can clock up to around 50 cycles: nearly three years. After each infusion I will be seeing Dr P, who will look at the blood cell counts and how I am responding to the treatment generally. I certainly feel pretty good the morning after the first infusion. The lower back was a bit painful, but an Endone (of which I have been supplied with a good number) is taking care of that. I am on a different medication schedule with various anti-inflammatories, morning and evening, with the Endone for breakout pain. I certainly feel much more comfortable (apart from some breakouts) now that the cabazitaxel is beating back the cancer.

Of course this is not my first rodeo with chemotherapy, so it is all pretty familiar. (From memory, on the previous round I had to go in several times a week for a few months, so this one is definitely easier.) I took in a book: Proust — what else? It is very soothing to be able to immerse myself in the doings of the as yet anonymous narrator, Albertine, Madame de Cambremer, the Duke and Duchess of Guermantes, the Baron de Charlus, and all the comings and goings of the huge dramatis personae. A shoutout also to the attentive and wonderfully professional nursing staff administering the treatment, and the volunteers dishing out coffees, sandwiches, cake and other comestibles. There are many worse places to be.