Not long after writing my last missive, I started taking Enzalutamide and Sarah and I set off for Pembrokeshire for a week's break with some very good friends staying at a cousin's house that I have been going to for 55 years, a little slice of heaven that has hardly changed in that time. I took the bike and managed to crunch a 20 mile very hilly ride with Nick Williams, a legend who has always been my best buddy, was my best man and who is ridiculously fit, tackling the Pembrokeshire coast hills with no electricity!
The training regime went onto the back burner for the rest of the week and we concentrated on enjoying what the area had to offer, delicious local ales, fresh lobster from the bay and some sunning surroundings.
Sarah even managed to get me on a coast path walk, walking is something I don't really get, but when 'she that must be obeyed' gets us both dropped over to Monk Haven (The top photo) in Sean's little boat, the only way back to the house (via the pub) was to Walk, and it was a really beautiful hour or two........but I still prefer two wheels to two feet!
All the while I was taking my new drug Enzalutamide, which comprises of 4 unusually large tablets to be taken at the same time every day. Now all these wonder drugs come with a tranche of side effects, one of which is fatigue.
Fatigue is a side effect I thought I had mastered from being injected with 3 monthly capsules of Zoladex over the last 18 months or more, but how wrong was I?
Since we returned home I have been bowled over by an insidious and all consuming tiredness, sleeping for 12 hours a night and probably 4 hours a day! Having done a bit of Google research I have changed my time of dosage from 9.00am to 6.00pm, and this has helped, but I have hardly been out training since our return.
I am very aware that, counter intuitively, more exercise definitely gives one more energy, something to do with the endorphins that I have mentioned in previous posts. So now it's just a mental struggle to ignore the all encompassing tiredness and to just get back in the saddle! A few 30 - 40 mile rides planned this week including a ride with some local gentlemen who are riding to Paris for Prostate Cancer UK in a few weeks time, looking forward to Saturday Kevin Beale, you hero!
To every cloud there is a silver lining! Yesterday I discovered, whilst up at Maidstone Hospital for a monthly check up, that my PSA score has been smashed down to a measly 1.64, which shows that the Enzalutamide is really working very well, the tiredness suddenly becomes a mere bagatelle, the stuff is definitely working and is really clobbering the cancer, long may this last!
Great news about the PSA Simon - hope the energy returns soon!