Chemo-2, Control, and Knife Crime

2025 January 21st

So yesterday ended my first cycle of chemo, and started my second. It hasn’t been plain sailing, but on net, I think I’ve survived it quite well.

Week 1 of chemo I was tired, coughing and sneezing a lot, had a lot of spots of blood in my phlegm, and feeling incredibly fragile. I managed to run one 5¼ mile run at the end of the week, quite slowly.

Week 2, still tired and fragile but recovering up until about day 11, when I just woke up one morning and felt almost normal. Managed 7½ miles running.

Week 3, almost back to normal, although a general sense of running “at capacity” all the time. I could live normal life, get a reasonable amount of work done, and exercise - but don’t push it. I did manage to run 20½ miles on it and the transformation from New Year felt amazing.

Life adjustments? Minimal commuting, acupuncture does seem to be benefiting me, higher protein diet and priorities. My priorities have been…

(1) Medical Treatment

(2) Sleep

(3) As much exercise as I can manage sensibly

(4) Everything else: work, writing projects, limited socialising, etc.

It is working out. I do wonder if I got some kind of cold/chest-infection from Mrs G just after chemo-1 started which may not have helped during chemo-1, so we’ll see how this second cycle goes.

This is all a very overt personal mission to be as in control of my life as possible. Yes, absolutely I am trusting the medical profession, taking their advice, attending every appointment, taking the treatment (after doing my own diligence to confirm they are giving me the best possible advice, which so far as I can tell, they all are). But if I just hand myself over to that, and the rest to work demands, my morale and more general health will suffer awfully. I have to control as much of my life as possible - and this last couple of weeks has been all about finding out how best to do that.

Talking of which, how did my second chemo go? Honestly, almost totally painlessly - okay blood pressure of 130/90 just as I walked in the door so a little high from walking around the hospital corridors trying to find the badly signposted chemo centre. The staff at Mount Vernon were yet again, delightful, chatty and supportive. I asked for, and got, half flow rate from the start after the chest pains last time - I did get the odd very slight twinge of discomfort in my chest, but nothing that escalated. A tiny bit of leakage of the Docetaxel which I reported immediately and fortunately turned out to be just from a valve not quite tight enough, and not from me. So the valve was tightened, I was wiped, and no harm was done.

So all done in about 2:20. Ten minutes saline flush each end, and 2 hours to pump the 266ml of drug slowly through my system. All very good, accompanied by a flask of my favourite coconut green tea and half a pack of malted milk biscuits. I wore a loud batik shirt I bought in Penang to brighten the place up, but none of my fellow patients were very chatty, only the staff.

Next chair to me though was a tall, fit looking gent around 70 plugged in and being treated. Around half an hour before my treatment finished, his did, and after being unplugged and declared fit to leave, he stood up, shook the nurse by the hand with the words “thank you so much, but in the nicest possible way, I hope that I never see you again”, smiled at the ward in general and left. Fair sentiments I thought.

As I typed this last night I swore I can feel a new ache around my groin again - I think that the Docetaxel is attacking the cancer cells again. Go kill the bastards, you have my blessing. That ache got worse overnight and probably combined with the steroids in my system there to stop me rejecting the Docetaxel, I didn’t sleep all that well, but I slept eventually.

Oh yes, the photo reminds me - as I’ve been trying to be a bit less of a hermit, I bought some decent quality FFP3 masks - I went for these German Vevox ones, not cheap at £38 for 20, but so far as I can tell they’re as good a spec as I can find for keeping me safe from everybody else’s bugs, and having bought them not only do they adjust well enough to (mostly) keep my glasses from steaming up, but are infinitely more comfortable than the cloth or paper masks we were all wearing during Covid.

And I did give one of the masks a really decent workout at the weekend when I screwed my courage to the sticking place, and drove up to Martley in Worcestershire for a day of absolutely brilliant martial arts training.

I’ve mentioned it before, I’m a martial artist - a 4th dan in Aiki Kempo Jiu Jitsu, a 1st Kyu in WingTsun Kung Fu, and a few lower grades in other stuff like Aikido and Ringeck European Longsword. One of the most interesting instructors on the seminar circuit right now is Tommy Joe Moore, a boxer, researcher and martial arts historian. His work on Bartitsu and WW2 combatives is brilliant, but he was teaching here about knife crime.

The mask was great - I felt comfortable training in it, even some reasonably strenuous defences against my friends attacking me with (very blunt!) knives, and I had a fantastic day out. I did take the opportunity as well to lecture a few people about the importance of getting a PSA test, which Tommy was good enough to amplify later.

I had a great time. Wore the mask throughout, avoided going to the pub with them afterwards as clearly that is not a place to let your respiratory guard down. But had an easy pleasant drive back.

A few interesting statistics by the way - knife crime across the UK has increased about 80% in the last decade, and also the average knife used by criminals has increased in size from around 4” to around 7” in that time, with even an increasing number of shortswords being used on the streets. Pretty horrible, and a clear failure of something somewhere. We talked a lot about prevention and avoidance, the personalities of the knife criminals, and the strategies for avoiding attacks, and defusing them if you’ve no choice. Then finally we did the fun bit, picked up training weapons and had a load of fun attacking and disarming each other. The training was slanted more towards concealed weapons, and larger higher inertia weapons than threats with little craft and kitchen knives I’m more used to, and really really worthwhile. I can seriously recommend any of Tommy’s seminars if you get the chance to attend one, or his book on Bartitsu.

A handful of links for you by the way.

Kajuen Ryu - the club who hosted us in Martley, run by my very good friend and superb martial artist, Peter Jones. https://www.kajuenryu.com/

Tommy Joe Moore - https://tommyjoemoore.com/

And another cancer substack, from Mark Stevenson, a chap who is a little further down the journey than me, and had different but equally major treatment. We’ve been chatting a little and may do something together in due course. Well worth reading if you want to understand especially what treatment through prostatectomy is all about. https://prostatecancer.substack.com/

Oh yes, and all you middle aged blokes out there. GET A PSA TEST.