Cancer Journal

Perhaps I have a resistance to breaking into three figures on my blog entries. I don't think it is that. Just more on the subject of #99a. I was at a poetry reading affair over the weekend. I visited with a lady there who was born in the same year as I, 1949. She has a few months on me but we had parallel young baby boomer experiences. I was not drafted because of a high draft number. Her husband at the time was 6'5", too tall to be in the service. We agreed those times were tumultuous in a way something like today.   We talked about careers. I told her a slopped into a job as Administrative Law Judge that suited my aptitudes and personality strengths just by dumb luck. She said that her daughter was a judge. I asked her name and learned that she was the same judge that had had the trouble with the Amish not standing when she entered the courtroom. I did not expostulate about the coincidence of my having just done a blog entry about her daughter. Didn't say anything at...

 I thought of simply adding some comments to entry #99 to cover what I have to say.  However, right now I am thinking the comments will be long enough to warrant a new entry. 1.  Use of the word gentile to refer to myself in relationship to the Amish in the infusion room.  I just made that up.  Although it does get at the wide gap between the Amish and those outside that world, it is not a term that they use, so far as I know.  The question came up during the writing group when the piece was discussed.  It was first noted that I correctly did not capitalize "gentile" and I did make a conscious decision regarding that.  I was a gentile in a more generic sense.  Someone in the group noted that Mormons refer to non-Mormons as Gentiles.  Someone else said that the Amish refer to non-Amish as "English".  Their origin was German so I suppose they saw the dominant ethnic group as being the Other. 2.  I offhandedly refer to the materia...

 My PSA was checked this last week and again, it was too low to be detectable.  I also had an appointment with my Oncologist.  I had not seen him in well over a year.  It has been an Oncology PA that I have seen.  He has lost some freshness of face since the last time I say him.  Too bad.  I suppose seeing cancer patients all day long will do that to you.    I saw him rather than the PA, I believe, because I had raised the issue of going off my testosterone blocker and they brought in the big gun to respond to that.  He said that a study published in 2021 showed that intermittent use of the drug resulted in less successful (as in death) results than continuous use.  I will stay on it.  Although my hot flashes are more frequent and more severe and testosterone is otherwise better than no testosterone, still, the quality of my life remains good.  No reason to boost the risk. I ask him how I am doing compared with others simi...