Reserved

The 1st of May?! Why didn't anybody tell the weather? What a rotten, miserable, dreary day.

Being a Tuesday, my treatment session was later than usual to allow me to see the doctor afterwards at his clinic in St Luke's. Rather than have a nurse ask the questions from the regulation checklist, he did it himself today. He prescribed tablets to tackle the side-effects, and then it was my turn to ask questions. Since I'm approaching the end of radiation treatment, I wanted to know if he has any idea how successful it's been. Surprisingly, he said there's no way to know, and it will be another two and a half years before there's any clear indication. This is because the hormone injections (which will continue once a month until May 2014) are suppressing the normal indicators. Not until four months or so after the injections come to an end will a blood test show how things have gone -- it's all to do with how the PSA number reacts when the hormone treatment is out of the picture, apparently.

While this was rather disappointing news, the doc stressed yet again that all the indicators up to start of radiation were excellent, and that he would be optimistic about blood results towards the end of 2014. He drew up a quick graph while he was explaining all this. I asked if I could keep it, and he handed it over (jokingly saying that he would have been neater if he'd known I'd ask for it). While I was waiting in the Clinic's reception area a female patient was going on non-stop in highly critical fashion about my doctor. I have to say that I have nothing but good things to say about him, but I didn't have the nerve to mention this to the complainer -- she didn't seem the type to deal well with disagreement.

Anyway, after St Luke's I had to stop off in town, first at the National Concert Hall to book tickets for a couple of upcoming concerts, and then at the bank to lodge a refund cheque from Eircom for 500-odd euro which I'd mistakenly paid to them rather to my credit card way back at the beginning of April. When I finally got through to the proper department leading up to Easter I was told it would be two weeks before I got my refund (when I showed my surprise I was told that 'five to ten working days' is standard, and that this would obviously be affected by the upcoming Easter weekend. A further protest about the inequity of their benefiting from my money produced the response that 'that's the procedure'). So, the cheque finally arrived yesterday, not two, but four weeks later. Gggggrrrrr.

The blip? Just a reserved space for ambulances beside the main door at St Luke's.