Cancer Journal #114

 My three month cancer checkup was this week and again, my PSA was too low to be detectable.  Monotonously good news which certainly beats interesting bad news.  I quizzed the oncology lady about a couple of things.  One is that numbers associated with red blood cell count have been consistently low over the years.  She has characterized them as "stable".  I asked her if stable might also be "chronic" as in something permanently bad.  A blood disease like leukemia I suppose.  She assured me that if something like that were going on, other numbers would give an indication that something was wrong and that that was not happening.  She said that the low red blood count numbers were not surprising, given the fact that my testosterone has been turned off.  And besides, they weren't that low.

I also asked what would happen if I were to go off the treatment program.  After all, I have had nary a whiff of active prostate cancer for a number of years.  How was I different from any man on the street.  She said that cancer is now being effectively suppressed.  Lift the suppression and whatever had caused the aggressive cancer in the first place would kick back in and things would go south real quick.  Convinced me enough to forget about that little plan--even if it is not true and my Vitamin C infusion and everything else I do has killed and will continue to kill the cancer.  No point in experimenting.  My treatment is very tolerable. 

Here is a short thing I wrote for my writers group for January:


                                                       Dream Love


I had a troubling dream in which I have unaccountably been cloned 15-20 times. 

The problem was what to do about such a big batch of infant me’s. 

I tell my daughter about the dream in a text.  She responds, “Sign me up for three. 

I have a lot of good mom friends.  We’d find them homes.”   


I am oddly affected by this.  Strange way of expressing love but it works.


I sent this to my niece Amanda who said she would take a couple too.  Since she is pushing 60 years old, I see that as improvident but it's nice to think of people wanting multiple me's.  Hannah taking three would really be pushing it.  Of course, she could offer to take eight and it would change her life not one whit but still, it affects me.

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