Cancer Journal

I go to Mayo Clinic’s Patient Portal, I can read my doctor’s notes of the appointment I just had with him. I don’t know that I should be able to do that.  It tangles the lines of our relationship, making me somehow the one assessing his work product.  I suppose that’s in line with the current way of viewing the relationship. I’m the consumer of services he provides and should make a consumer’s evaluation of those services.. I’m not really on board with that kind of thing.  I’m more for having mysterious medical arts practiced on me that I lack the capacity to evaluate.  I don’t know that I fully believe that but it’s a model I feel more comfortable with.     Anyway, for all that, I’ve read my doctor’s notes.  He finds me “pleasant” which I would ordinarily be pleased to know.  However, in my job, I saw a lot of doctor’s notes and as I recall, they invariably found the patient “pleasant.”  Must be a term of art with a low threshold....

  I’ve finished up the first week of a scheduled four weeks of radiation treatment of my pelvis (what that means is the prostate).   I go Monday through Friday so have 15 more sessions.   I feel nothing, either while I am be zapped or afterward.   I’m warned that there could be fatigue the last couple of weeks.   We’ll see.   I go in gowned up, my pants off.   Tie strings are at the neck which take skills I don’t have to get tied.   Awkward foolish effort to cover up my underweared bottom.   It would be cute in a four year old.   Heck, maybe it’s cute in me too but not in any way that I’m interested in being cute.     I catch glimpses of other radiation patients in their gowns and the thing I’m immediately reminded of is angels in a Christmas pageant.   Full length, commodious, bleached to nearly white, floating toward their dressing room, it’s occurred to me each time I’ve seen one.   There’s a fell...

  Today, I had another PSA test and meeting with my oncologist.   The PSA is continuing to go down!   .34 down from the previous low number of 1.8.   I didn’t know that the numbers went that low.   I ask what that means:   is the cancer dead or is it just dormant.   He said it was both.   I ask whether there will be any change in treatment if the numbers stay low.   His answer was that the only things that would change my treatment would be my developing some adverse reaction to the meds, the cancer finds some way around the current treatment and starts to grow again or if I just want to stop doing this stuff.   Anyway, more good news.   Don’t want to be unduly optimistic after just a couple of good numbers but the name of this blog may become obsolete.   Apropos of which, my wife and I saw “News of the World” last night and Oh my, I absolutely loved it!   The little girl was so so good and Tom Hanks was what...

            Whenever I shower, I finish up by turning the hot off and the cold up as far as it will go.   It’s just awful!   Most days, it’s the worst thing that happens to my body all day.   Takes your breath away just starts to describe the way it is bad.   Torture for about five seconds but then the water runs for a while and the body adjusts.   You hit the front , the back, the legs, the chest; stay with it for a few minutes and I won’t say it feels good but it’s tolerable. Google “Benefits of a cold shower” and you will get a list.   One I can think of now is a boost to the immunity system.   I get that.   The system is lounging around on the sofa taking it easy;   hit it with cold water and it bounces off the sofa into a wrestler’s crouch, eyes going this way and that for whatever is causing this crisis.   No camouflaged bacteria is getting by it now.   Another benefit is a bo...

            In Blog #10, I expressed the idea that this is not the place where things are right.   That may have left some readers with the question, “What, are we just supposed to accept things remaining bad—not seeking to end war, tolerating poverty and childhood hunger, shrugging our shoulders as greenhouse gases and world-wide temperatures rise?   That doesn't seem right.”   Jan Carroll would say that I’m processing my diagnosis.   Other less charitable readers might wonder if the cancer has reached my brain.   Perhaps a refinement is in order.             We fix things.   A picture frame is crocked, we straighten it.   People want to get across a river,  a ferry service is started, then a bridge is built.   The great movement of humanity is in the direction of improvement,  not fatalistic acceptance of what needs improvement.   Maybe our fixing ...

          I had an appointment with the radiology oncologist today who intends to start me on a course of radiation therapy next week, Monday through Friday for four weeks. That had been the original plan. Although he was pleased with my low PSA number, he wasn’t so astonished that he’s reevaluating the plan. 20 zaps to the pelvic region. He explained that this should delay the day that things turn bad.            I’ve been doing some other things to delay that day—or keep it from ever coming. No red meat, no sugar, a lot of broccoli and cauliflower. I am getting intravenous Vitamin C at the Spero Wellness Clinic in Chippewa Falls. It’s supposed to blow up cancer cells and leave good cells intact which seems like a good idea to me. More generally, it is to provide an overall boost to well-being. Each individual’s biochemistry responds differently to treatments of course so all that really happens is that chance...

        Steaming Into Port   I see the ship up over the horizon  Its presence and position not obscured by fog.  Its progress imperceptible except that   After not watching, it’s bigger when I look back.   Not much question where it’s heading   It’s coming, straight line, right here.   The Good Ship Mortality.   It concentrates the mind  As Samuel Johnson said.   Things lose their triviality  As they become finite.  An edge of sadness   But only an edge.   If it’s what’s to be,   It’s what’s to be.           This is a poem I wrote for a writing group I participate in.  Generally I write a prose essay but most of the others write poetry so now and then, I take a shot at doing that too.             Some could find a tension between this and my just prio...

I haven’t said much about the Lord in these blogs. I will change that.              I suppose there are those who, upon getting a diagnosis of aggressive stage four cancer, would be disappointed and indignant. “How could He let this happen? Does He care? Is He even there?” I have not reacted that way, especially not since my recent good numbers but before that too. Let me explain. This is not the place where things are right. I’m expecting such a place but not yet. The rules of the game, so to speak, are that things go wrong. There are disappointments, unfulfilled hopes, wounds to our body and psyche. To complain about that is like complaining that there are 24, not 20, hours in a day.             Terrible things happen to people. In war zones, babies are killed in mother’s arms, parents are killed in front of five year old’s eyes. Terrible things happen in this country now, not so dramatic pe...