Yule and the Quarter Century Moon
Tuesday gratefuls: Kristie. Prostate Cancer. Erleada. Orgovyx. Life with cancer. Marilyn and Irv. Cold. 6 last night. Polar Vortex. Samsara. Monkey mind. Inner peace and wholeness. Shleimut. Water. Heat pumps. Keyboards. Microphones. Life. Death. The most ancientrails. Great Sol.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Living
Kavannah 2025: Creativity
Kavannah this week: Wholeness and Peace
One bright shining: Wanting to reveal a part of my cancer journey, not that I’ve kept it secret, rather that I have let it travel along largely unremarked, yet the truth may be important for you or someone you love.
Diagnosed in May 2015. Prostatectomy that July. Radiation 2019. Gold standard treatments. For the cure. Didn’t happen for me. 99% of men diagnosed are alive 5 years later. As I was. In May I pass the ten year post diagnosis trail marker. In 2021 a p.e.t. scan showed metastases, cancer spread into my bones and lymph nodes. At that point I became stage 4. In many cancers stage 4 is an imminent death sentence. Not so in prostate cancer. 34% of men live 5 years past that change. One man lived 22 years with stage 4 prostate cancer.
This is not about prognosis, which I’ve decided is a red herring. At least for me. The variables are too complex and whenever I’ve had an answer it has pressed down on me. Most important? Gonna die from something anyhow. And nobody can prognose that.
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Rather this is about what I call the overburden of prostate cancer. Any cancer, really, that hasn’t killed you. The difference with prostate cancer lies in the capacity to live 10, 15, even 20 years after diagnosis.
That means waking up each day of those 10 years with the knowledge that I have cancer. No, I don’t turn to that each morning, not even every day, yet the reality of having a part of my body actively trying to kill me never leaves me. I might encounter the thought, as I did yesterday, on learning a friend who also has prostate cancer may be nearing death. Or, on those every three month visits to the phlebotomist, waiting for the results. Then, soon after, a visit to the oncologist. Maybe an article in the newspaper. Or, another friend, like one of the three members of my Thursday mussar group, who have different forms of cancer, speaks up.
To not let this send me down, down into the darkness of self-pity or melancholy or depression I have taught myself ways of addressing these moments:
Sometimes. I’m living one life at a time. Today I’m living my January 14th, 2025 life. I only have today, this life, anyhow.
Other times the tried and often effective, well, you’re gonna die anyhow. Always true and usually reassuring in its own, odd way.
Another method relies on a mantra: live until I die. That reminds me to focus on living rather than dying.
Yet another approach. Lean into the thought of death. View my own corpse. Accept death’s reality as an ever abiding constant over the whole of my life. This can be surprisingly effective.
Here, though, is the point of all this. Every time I have to use one of these strategies takes mental and emotional energy. Depending on other circumstances in my life either more or less energy. And, there is a certain accumulative effect. Which means I have less resilience for other aspects of my life. Like doing my taxes. (ha)
This is the overburden. And it never disappears.