Cancer/writing Journal #110

 It's been a while since the last entry.  If I am calculating correctly, I have missed three reports of my PSA remaining at a level too low to be detectable.  It has indeed been regularly too low to be detectable and yesterday I again had the PSA checked and again it remains too low to be detectable.  This is a cancer blog with no cancer to talk about.  I was first diagnosed, I was told I had three to five years to live.  I am now in that window of death as I like to call it.  Come November, I will be over the five years mar

 I continue to be treated for cancer, receiving a shot every three months that turns off my testosterone and a daily oral medication that is to serve as a backup for the shot (the shot is called Lupron).  The most noteworthy feature of the daily medication is that it costs $17,000 something per month.  I have made uneasy peace with that exorbitance, which I worked through in some earlier blogs.  I still believe the resources should be devoted to enhancing the lives of children rather than keeping septuagenarians alive but oh well.  If they have developed the drug, it is best to use it.  They should not have developed it but that is upstream from where I am.

I still get Vitamin C infusions on about a monthly basis which might be the big reason for my cancer success.  That, along with spending an hour twice a week with a fitness coach where I work my body about as hard as it can be worked.  I go through three rounds of workout events, one of which is planks.  I do three one minute planks during the course of the hour (except on rare occasions when I just don't have  gas in the tank for a whole minute).  The oncology lady I see marvels at my handling the turnoff of testosterone with so little effect.  She thinks it must be the working out.  Apparently the standard effect is fatigue that overwhelms the activities of daily life.  She reports that she uses me as an example of what is possible.

  I don't rule out the blessing of the Lord.  I am earnest in my desire to be more what he wants me to be and it is my great hope that he will use me to accomplish his purposes.  I really don't want limitations on my part to be impediments to the work he would have for me to do.

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Cancer/writing Journal #111

 I again had my PSA checked yesterday and again it is too low to be detectable.  My diagnosis of  an aggressive form of Stage 4 Prostate cancer is coming up on five years.  November 2020, I believe.  I'm not much for noting anniversaries but this is a big one since my Oncologist told me I had 3-5 years to live.  No qualifiers or expressions of uncertainty.  It prompted a poem about death coming for me as a ship coming into port. "The Good Ship Mortality".  I expressed a grim acceptance.  Perhaps once I have passed the 5 year mark I will find it and reprint it.  I will call myself a "Dead man walking."   Don't know that that is an appropriate use of the phrase (It's for someone headed toward the electric chair, isn't it?) but I'll do it anyway.  Has a nice ring. My Oncology PA expressed astonishment that my energy level and mood remain good.  I think it helped that I didn't know that that was what I could expect as a s...
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