Cancer Journal

 I have more to say about what I do for cancer treatment.  Some of this will be repetitious.  But, does no great harm to repeat.  We forget and it's nice to be reminded.  I have lost 30lbs since my diagnosis.  My meat consumption is scant, red meat especially.  I also am intermittent with intermittent fasting.  The goal is 16 hours, no food, 8 hour window for eating.  I am better than intermittent with it.  I'm most of the time intermittent with my eating.  And they say if you go 13-14 hours, that's OK.  The theory is that your body, your digestive tract needs time when it's not working on digesting food for plant maintenance, so to speak.  Also during times of fasting, the body shucks off senescent cells which cause inflammation which you really don't want.   I eat oatmeal most every morning and add a bunch of stuff to it.  Green powder and green goopy stuff that my daughter has access to and has passed on ...

 Nothing much has happened with my cancer (so far as I know) and so I haven't done an entry for a while.  Next week (I say that with the Wisconsin understanding of that term; not the upcoming week but the week after that.  It's confusing and my least favorite Wisconsinism.) I will have my PSA measured.  It's my hope and semi-expectation that it will remain too low to be detectable. The long haul can be hard to keep good habits going in though.  I eat cheese curls at 9:30PM and my best rationalization is that cancer is entitled to get back in the game.  Back when I played ping pong and was up 13 to 3, I might let my opponent win 3 or 4 volleys just to keep it interesting.  Higher stakes with cancer and foolish to not continue to do all I can to win but there it is. I don't think I have done an inventory of what all I do to beat this thing.  I read a good article in the New Yorker a while back by that Siddhartha Mukherjee of Emperor of All Mad...

  Clicking on the Obits I believe in an afterlife. Although fuzzy on some particulars.  I believe it will be right In the ways that are not right now. Profoundly good and yet profoundly Other. An intervening wall, translucent at best. Any transparency, momentary and surprising, But enough to plant a permanent appetite for more. Until then, we have This Place And a longing This Place will not satisfy. Still, This Place is what we got, what we know. Looking at the photos on the obit page, there’s a sense of loss. Believing in an afterlife does not affect that loss. Fact is, these folks are gone.  Those personalities extinguished. If behind a wall in a better place, still gone from here. Some faces suffused with kindness, others full of chipper goodwill, Some sober, a hint of self-importance we might find unappealing. Still, what was, when the picture was taken, is not here now. This Place is less without them. Here is a poem I wrote for my writing class. I think it was wel...