General

Two Days for One

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Bone scan day. First, radioactive tracer. Wait one hour. Place me on a metal slab. Whir a tracer sensitive plate around my body. Check for doneness.

Marilyn Saltzman today. 9 am pickup. Down to Swedish. Kate stayed in it many times including her last. Not my favorite place.

Tomorrow, Petscan.

Nights here continue cool. Several Mule Deer yearlings visit. It’s summertime in the mountains.

I notice a distinct decline in mental clarity as evening approaches. Pretty certain it’s the abiraterone. A nasty drug. Except, of course, for its cancer suppression.

Our guy, Dopy, and his little friend, Sleazy, have tried many times to tell us what Iran has agreed to. Only the Iranians contradict them. Team America.

 

Wednesday. 6/24/2026

Bone scan yesterday. 3 hour wait after injection of tracer. Marilyn took us all the way back to Conifer while we waited. Above and beyond.

Bone scan tech one of the kindest folks I’ve encountered on this road. Makes a big difference.

Weary. Again. All these appointments. Asking for rides. Always high stakes. Takes the stuffing right out of me. Today. Petscan. Littleton. Again. Third this year.

Ruth’s coming up today with David. She’s two weeks out from her ulna shortening surgery. First a splint, now four weeks in a cast. Will be good to see her.

Weather beautiful. Colorado blue skies. Temps in low 70’s. Rocky Mountain high.

 

Family, Great Work, Health, Shadow Mountain

One More Reason to Dance

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The Summer Solstice. Sol Invictus, the all-conquering sun. Put Sweden and the Solstice in your browser to see naked blond people dancing around huge bonfires. The growing season, whose beginning we celebrated at Beltane, has come to its midway point. The energy giving power of the sun available during longer days. Corn in Iowa well beyond knee high even in June.

We need this maximum sun for agricultural crops, flower gardens, trees and grasses. Photosynthesis is Sol loving us as only a nuclear fusion reaction can. Vividly. With all its fullness.

Yet. All these positives granted and celebrated, I find one more cause to dance. The Summer Solstice marks the end of the triumph of the light begun on the longest night, last Winter’s Solstice. From this point forward darkness will grow, the nights will become longer until at the Vernal Equinox, the nights will be longer than the days. This is the beginning of the triumph of darkness. I love those cold, dark nights of Midwinter. I look forward to a blazing fire, snow falling, Black Mountain turning white.

Mary has a mission. Using her librarian’s fundamental need to impose order, she’s going through each room, sector, and cabinet rearranging, culling, making sure each item has a place. Expiration dates runout? Toss. Smell rancid. Trash it. She’s filled bag after bag, all headed to the landfill in Park County, This work energizes her, makes her smile.

I’m going through anoter of trial related imaging this week and next. Feeling stronger, stamina an issue. Better than before!

Family, Health

Ouch

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Oh what a day! About ten-thirty I began to feel a familiar pain my groin. This was after Mary and I completed our first round of leg exercise. The pain got worse, I laid down. Yup, my hernia making sure I didn’t forget it.

Waited an hour. Still hurt. Called triage nurse at my clinic. “Sit tight. I’ll call the doctors. You might have to go to the emergency room, then have urgent surgery.” Oh, boy. How I wanted to spend Thursday.

No surgery. Go to Evergreen. Randy Sklar will see you. OK. Decided to drive myself. First time behind the wheel in two months. I remembered. Another bit of confidence restored.

Randy had lost a lot of weight. You’ve lost weight, Randy. So have you! Yep, I have.

Drove back home up Brook Forest/Black Mountain. With all the walking, I was tuckered out but happy.  Glad I didn’t need surgery.

Mary has become my companion. So nice. Family, yes!

 

Health

Shortie

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Up and ready to go at 7:30. Thought I’d get my second infusion. Nope. Red blood cell count too low. Both actinium and abiraterone depress red blood cells. So a low score going in? Not good.

Turned around and came back home. Anti-climactic.

Tired from the anemia. Feel like I been rode hard and put up wet.

 

 

Health, Politics

Plans

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Mary and I have a plan. When I’m able to get back to my exercise routine, cardio and resistance, and when that shows I can drive, be independent again (keeping Melissa), it will be time for her to head south. Way south. Melbourne.

How long will that take? Unclear right now. We’re going to talk with Carol, physical therapist, this morning, see what she thinks.

I have improved, gotten better. I can walk, unaided. I feel stronger, more able. Still a long way to go, but the trajectory is up. More food. M & M. Mary and Melissa. Regular walks. A changed inner weather.

Tomorrow. Actinium 225. Coursing through my veins. Delivering alpha radiation to my tumor cells. One of the nurses will open a lead lined box. The thimbleful of liquid contained there delivers enough radiation to kill or shrink many tumors.

Wait an hour as a precaution, then head back into the Front Range. Up to Shadow Mountain Home. Stay two feet away from other mammals. Police anything that might be radioactive. One week. Powerful stuff.

Continuing to treat my stage 4 cancer.

 

The cage match has finished. Something got signed by the U.S. and Iran. Dopy turned 80. 250 years of the U.S.A. A big Washington week. The ironies and paradoxes have come too fast. Improbable. Inconceivable as Wallace Shaw once said.

Meanwhile oil has many pressure points. Opening the Straits. Shuttered refineries going through the expensive process of restarting. Ships confined to ports. Oil in long transit. Various reserves need refilling. Unfulfilled contracts. Jet fuel use high in busy summer travel season. It’ll be a while before prices return to pre-war levels. Maybe late in 2027.

This war has staying power.

Fourth Phase, Health, Politics

Peace?

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BJ looked at a lot of houses yesterday. She and Pammy working through the web of matters that create an interstate move. Good luck to them. Not easy.

Feeling better each day. Still need the improvement that comes only with regular exercise. My walking ability, sharpened on our driveway, proves I have the capacity. Mary, I think, may be the key here.

Cool again this morning. Slept very well.

A peace framework which puts the Straits of Hormuz back to the status they held pre-war. So, no gain there. Nuclear program of Iran to be considered in future talks. So, no gain there. A 60 day cease fire. We already had one. So, no gain there.

With these kind of victories we’ll soon be a colony of Great Britain again.

Did you watch the cage match?  No, not the mighty Dopy against the Iranian crusher. I mean the literal cage match that will be better remembered as a footnote to a ruinous administration. Nope? I didn’t either.

Shadow Mountain out.

 

Family, Health, Politics, US History

MMA

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Low 40’s last night. I slept well. Sunny and cool this am when BJ, who came last night, set out to look at 6 more houses.

Mary has had an allergy flare-up. No fun. A cough, too.

I’m feeling incrementally better. I’m told I look better which makes me wonder how I looked before. PSA still high. Guess the petscan two weeks from now will tell the tale.

Still very weak, but a bit of improvement from more moving around.

On June 14th, 1777 the second Continental Congress passed a resolution defining a national flag. The design has lasted.

I can’t even. I mean, come on. Where’s Jackie and her rose garden? Or, Lady Bird Johnson beautifying America? In their place: boorish thuggery. MMA=Miss My America.

Cooking, Health, Politics

Ready to rumble. On the White House lawn?

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Two days post-4 hour infusion. Tara thought I looked better. Didn’t feel much different. After a call to have my potassium chloride prescription sent, Melissa retrieved it. Any horse would choke on them. I mean, big.

Melissa made chili. Real good chili. Made me feel like it was fall. Pom-poms. Tail gating. Cornbread muffins, too.

Next week Wednesday my second infusion. I’m in much better shape this time around. Not looking forward to the post-infusion protocols. Who wants to be an agent of potential harm to loved ones?

This is the J. Alfred Prufrock way of life. Instead of coffee spoons, my life measures itself through infusions, scans while nurses come and go, haunted by Michelangelo.

Flag day tomorrow. The Toad Prince’s birth celebrated by violence and mayhem. I’d go with prison orange and chains, but that’s me.

A peace treaty or a ceasefire or an agreement on the steps necessary to get or renew either of them. Yes, says mayhem man. Maybe says agent of Iran.

Weather delightful on Shadow Mountain.

Family, Health

Infused

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A very odd day. Although I’ve had cancer a long time, until yesterday I’d never been in an infusion center. Chemotherapy comes last in prostate cancer protocols.

Yesterday I stepped into a large room filled with large, lounging type chairs. Chairs had an i.v. pole next to them if a patient occupied it. Glass windows showed a blue sunny Colorado sky. A few folks sat next to the occupied chairs, holding a hand, knitting.

“I’m Melissa and I’ll be your nurse today.” Melissa was young, blonde, with an air of experience. “Pick any open chair you like.”

I chose a chair against the far wall. Isolated. Melissa inserted a butterfly i.v. in my left arm and connected me to a bag of saline solution preloaded with four aliquots of potassium. One aliquot requires an hour to deliver, drip by drip. Four aliquots, four hours. At 11:40 am the dripping began. It would not end until just past 4 pm.

Most of the chemo and other infusion patients stayed no longer than forty-five minutes, some far shorter than that. The infusion room filled and emptied several times over my four hours. Potassium has to be given slowly or it can affect your heart. Potassium chloride has a spot in many lethal injections. It stops the heart.

As the minutes and hours dripped away, I witnessed the treatment of so many cancer patients. Each patient embedded in a family, in a friendship network, their journey affecting others. The infusion signifies one step in the struggle to overcome, outwit an inner assassin.

When the saline bag finally emptied and my electronic controller gave its finished bleat, I raised my arm, “Winner, winner, chick dinner.” Happy to have finished the four hours and twenty minutes

Melissa unhooked me and wished Mary and me well. A sweet lady.

Health, Politics

Need Potassium

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So. Oncology visit. Blood draw. Later in the day. Calling with test results. I thought: PSA. Testosterone. Nope. Potassium level. Critically low. 2.9.  An emergency. I sat up at that word.

You have to come in tomorrow for a four hour infusion of potassium. 11:40 appointment. Oh. First thought. How am I gonna get there? Still. Emergency. Heart related. OK. Call Tara first.

She said yes. Bless her. Probably Uber home. Mary will go with me.

Move forward. Head down. Stay calm. Working so far.

Didn’t sleep well. Up several times for the bathroom. A bit foggy this am.

Fun talking to Mary. She knows so much about Asia after 39 years in Malaysia and Singapore.

Closing in on Flag Day. The Toad Prince will have sat on 80 mushrooms. His big day will occur in “The Claw,” a cage match stadium built on the front lawn of our house. How low can we go?