Finally an approximate return to my normal life.

Tags

Bend Bulletin, Diet and BMI, Inguinal hernia, My normal life returns, Prostate cancer, Returning to Seneca, Snow and ice removal, Snowpocalypse

A year ago I had just reached my year-long diet goal for attaining my perfect Body Mass Index (BMI) and was feeling really healthy. I could climb the four levels of our local parking structure to the rooftop two steps at a time and then walk across the top level to my parked car in comfort. Breathing hard of course, but comfortable. Then came a diagnosis of prostate cancer and I participated in forty-four radiation treatments. Here is an article in the Bend Bulletin, with photos, about the very device I laid in and the nurse that controlled my treatments. It was actually a pleasant experience and while in the waiting room I had many wonderful conversations with people experiencing similar life-threatening situations. I survived very well, some didn’t!

In my follow-up visit with my radiation doctor a month later I mentioned a new lump in my lower right abdomen. He checked it and declared I had an advanced inguinal hernia. I then visited my VA personal doctor within the week, and he began the paperwork for me to get the appropriate operation. That was completed eight days ago, and I am on the mend and feeling good and doing heavy-duty things like shoveling a lot of snow off my house roof, and chopping with a pick-ax through six-inch thick ice to clear things like street drains with huge water puddles around them.

I make a point of doing those things in such a way that there isn’t the slightest strain on my hernia stitches. With the forty degrees weather, the snow is melting and the main streets are dry, and our residential street is clearing up nicely, but there are many eight-foot high piles of snow about the city, and lots of puddles. My house has five-foot piles of snow continuously around all four sides. That snow is mixed with slabs of inch-thick ice that I pried off the roof. That is necessary to prevent ice dams that force water through the roof into the house. There are many cases of that problem with people I know. I wouldn’t be surprised if as many as ten percent of homes here in Bend had water intrusions and roof collapses. But who’s counting? The insurance companies I suspect are being hit hard.

I have never missed any of my daily social meetings during these months of “trials and tribulations,” and if I hadn’t mentioned them I suspect that no one would have guessed I had the slightest problem. Hopefully, these potentially horrible things are in abeyance for a while and I can spend more time with my philosophers.

My problems are trivial compared to Seneca‘s and the more carefully I read his writings the more orderly and quiet my life becomes.

I’m tired of radiation treatments.

Tags

Prostate cancer, Prostate cancer is tiring, Radiation treatments

Last Friday I finished with my forty-fourth radiation treatment for prostate cancer. At my age of eighty-three, there is an eighty percent chance of having prostate cancer, so I’m nothing special. I was informed, even before starting the treatments, that I would probably feel fatigued for about six weeks after finishing, as my body clears out the dead cancer cells and flushes them away. It was also mentioned that I would probably feel depressed for a few weeks. Both of those turned out to be accurate.

It was mentioned that I would have trouble controlling peeing, pooing and tooting, (words for things I learned to control as a child), which has been true also, but those things seem to be easing up. I no longer have the intense and spontaneous urgency events whenever I approach the front door of my house, or the bathroom, or the toilet. It is apparent that my bladder has eyes and can spot those things from far away, and furthermore, it has the ability to look at my thoughts, and if there is even a hint of any of those actions being possible it creates an urgency event. Pee NOW! Yes, I am wearing those special diapers right now and they really do work much better than a folded towel or scrunching your face.

I discovered by talking about these problems openly with my older buddies that many, perhaps most, of them have already gone through these struggles. They have given me a few valuable tips and have offered encouragement to struggle on. This whole experience hasn’t been painful, and it hasn’t interfered much with my daily routines, but I have been noticeably more irritable. The daily frustrations of life have been more annoying but with my newer take on life when I see problems coming, I just quietly walk away. Avoiding even slight confrontations makes life easier.

When it comes to life (the unavoidable things), just do what you have to do, and pay close attention to the pleasures.

 

How can I identify and eliminate my false beliefs? 25

Tags

Prostate cancer, Prostate cancer is tiring, X-ray treatments for prostate cancer.

One of my worldview false beliefs has been exposed by my prostate gland going cancerous. I’m eighty-three years old and it is reported that eighty percent of men age eighty have prostate cancer. Fortunately for me, it is not a short-term death sentence because mine was identified early enough to begin radiation treatment. I have now completed thirty-four of a scheduled forty-four treatments, and I have been told that everything is looking okay. That’s the good news.

One would expect that thinking philosophical thoughts, writing a thoughtful blog, and being scientifically informed would help one endure insults to one’s body. Viktor Frankl discusses at length in his book Man’s Search for Meaning how he endured years in a WW 2 German concentration camp. He had a life-saving attitude that pulled him through extremely difficult situations. I thought I could endure as he had done.

My situation is easy compared to Frankl’s and yet my former thoughts that I can endure difficulties without affecting my personal behavior isn’t working out as expected. I have been feeling physically tired, emotionally irritable, and more annoyed by other people’s antisocial behavior than ever before.

With all of my education, etc., I have all the frailties that are to be expected of someone in my situation.

Finally my prostate radiation treatments are going.

Tags

My X-ray routine., Prostate cancer, X-ray treatments, X-ray treatments for prostate cancer.

Today I completed my third radiation treatment for prostate cancer and it was easy and not unpleasant. Of course, I have been apprehensive about this procedure even though I have friends who have gone before me on this very same trip, on this same machine, with these same people. They told me the biggest problem was the sameness of the routine.

Part of the problem for me has been getting my bladder totally full so that it is stretched to its limits and makes it possible to aim the pencil-lead thin x-ray beam precisely and consistently hit tiny bits of cancer accurately. I drank a carefully measured 32 ounces of water, as instructed, the first day, and didn’t get enough stretching. I use a plastic drinking glass with volume markings on it so the quantity is accurately known. The second day I drank 36 ounces, and it was considered okay. Today I drank 36 ounces, and the stretching was marginal and the doctor almost had me come back later in the day.

What did I do differently? I had to pee and did so 75 minutes before my procedure and immediately drank 20 ounces. That’s quite a lot of water at one time, but doable. Then 45 minutes before my procedure I drank another 20 ounces for a total of 40 ounces. I thought that it would be plenty of time for my kidneys to process the water over to my bladder, but it wasn’t. I did have a moderate urge to pee, but not urgent.

My time in the waiting room was only five minutes, and the time in the x-ray room was about fifteen minutes. The nurses were pleasant and business-like and everything with this huge piece of moving equipment was handled efficiently. It is necessary to lay on my back absolutely still, which is aided by some preformed stiff pillows made for me last week. This machine, the size of a small car, moves slowly around me, making various noises. There is nothing to do after watching a few times, so I have been counting heartbeats to pass the time away. Today it was 756 beats from the moment the nurse said “starting now” until, “okay, Charles, that’s it.” They helped me off the table. I put on my jacket and shoes and was out the door in a minute.

I was back home about 45 minutes after I departed for the clinic, as it is only a mile away with one traffic light. I made a point of not peeing because I wanted to know how long before the procedure began that I should drink the water needed to fill up my bladder. It was no problem waiting an hour before peeing, therefore tomorrow I will drink the 40 ounces of water two hours before the procedure begins.

It is important to me to get this prostate cancer taken care of so I can get on with my projects, like helping the Universe to Self-actualize. 

My visit to the VA for an injection

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Eligard, Leuprolide, Prostate cancer, Self-actualizing the Universe, Thriving Universe, VA medical treatment

I got up early enough to go to the UU service and then go for the five-hour drive over to the Portland VA hospital for a shot of some strange hormone which is a preparatory treatment for my coming radiation treatments for prostate cancer. This shot was somehow programmed to release this good stuff named Eligard, the brand name of the generic drug leuprolide, into my bodily system for six months.

Ah yes, the opportunity to participate in the wonders and beauty of living to be an eighty-two-and-three-quarters-year-old American male here in twenty-first century America.

I neither fear to be dead nor continuing to live, but I do have some things I can do that may help the Universe thrive.

Biopsy time for prostate cancer

Tags

How to cure prostate cancer, Prostate cancer

Today was mostly spent driving on the beautiful highway US 20 through the Santiam Pass. First going west from Bend, Oregon, to Salem and then north to the VA hospital in Portland, Oregon. Then a few hours later going back to Bend. We stopped in Sisters at the Open Door restaurant to get coffee, a salad, and a flourless chocolate cake. We had those same things a couple of weeks ago and just had to do it again. They are so good I just can’t drive through Sisters without getting them. I even insisted we get an extra slice to take home. Ya, I’m still on my diet and have lost almost 25 pounds, but this is an indulgence, just a little, itty bitty, once-in-a-lifetime indulgence. I know that’s a killer for a dieter and let’s see if I survive. 

On the issue of survival, the whole reason for the trip four hours each way was a prostate biopsy. This problem is almost universal in men my age, 82½, and the usual procedure is to tell the victim (patient) don’t worry about it, something will kill you before this slow-growing cancer will. My problem, and my doctor agreed, is that I am in such good health that I might live to be 105 years old, like a rather distant cousin did, and so I should get the biopsy exam and see how aggressive my particular cancer is going to be.