Beltane Beltane Moon
Tomorrow the biopsy. I feel fine, relaxed. Except. For those 12 tiny needles which will get their section’s worth of cells to analyze.
Just had a nice meal out, now for a quiet evening. Then…
Category Archives: Health
death cannot defeat life, only end it
Beltane Beltane Moon
The hits just keep on comin’. Now, in addition to the biopsy this Thursday I have lowering oxygen saturation. This is not good. It can and does destroy brain cells and my brain is my favorite organ. So, I have an appointment with Lisa Gidday sometime in the next three weeks. Geez. This all converges with long standing, but well-managed issues (right now) like high blood pressure, cholesterol levels too high or too low, stage 3 kidney disease and others like left ventricular hypertrophy.
Now, I choose to see this all in a positive light. I have some chronic conditions that are common to many people and the dietary and pharmaceutical solutions to them have been successful so far. The kidney disease and left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) are not good, but they both seem stable.
Unless. The LVH ends up reinforcing the lowering oxygen saturation. That’s for the follow-up to my appointment with Lisa.
My sense of myself, in spite of all this, is that I’m healthy and strong. Doesn’t feel like denial. I know about each item here and its implications. My choice is to take positive and aggressive action where I can and to accept the limitations or ultimate consequences in those instance where no action can be taken.
Two different streams of thought have lead me to a calm place. The first, experienced immediately after the beginning of the prostate journey, involved facing my actual mortality. We maintain throughout most of our life a subtle innocence about the probability and even the possibility of our own death. In my opinion this attitude is the reverse of unrealistic. In fact it is protective of our need to get on with living in the face of an inevitability about which we can do nothing.
The prostate findings lifted that protective innocence from me. There was death peeking over my shoulder, the agency of its coming perhaps revealed. This shook me. Hard. Finding my way into it, not running away, took the better part of a week and a half. Then, I realized that, if not this, something. If not now, sometime. With that frame and the palliative effect of taking the actions I could take, I became peaceful again.
The second thought involves living until I die. This has always been intention, not to run away from life or problems but to embrace them. Make choices. Take action. If I see a problem that affects me deeply, my tendency is to move toward it, see if I can do something. The realization here is that no disease, no condition can stop me from living until I die. I will, in other words, continue doing those things that matter to me. As I have done. Death cannot defeat my life, just end it.
So far these two thoughts: something, sometime will kill me and death cannot defeat my life, have helped me see that I am in no different situation now that at any other time in my life. Nor will I ever be.
Fog Will Lift
Beltane Beltane Moon
Dewpoint and temperature hovering together. Smoke in the mountains. Ponderosa pines covered in low hanging clouds. The air is, uncharacteristically for most of the year, humid. The green revolution has moved up Shadow Mountain to Black Mountain and Black Mountain Drive. No flowers yet, but lots of grass, ground cover, dogwoods and willows.
We’re down to the final movement in the Real Estate Symphony. The pace picks up as it does in the music hall. The inspection report is done. A few items to attend to, but not many though managing their completion from 900 miles will present some challenge. Not insuperable. Closing by May 29 if not before.
With the Andover house rocketing toward new (and appreciative) ownership and my biopsy scheduled for next Monday resolution of difficult issues could be close. When the closing is over, the house sale will be over. And none too soon. When a diagnosis is on the table, then next steps can be considered, action taken, not just waiting.
It’s possible, even likely, that we’ll hit June with the energy from resolution spurring us into the summer.
The Time of Not-Knowing
Spring Beltane Moon
Maybe it’s anxiety, but I don’t think so. My sleep habits have changed over the last couple of weeks. Where I used to get up once or twice, then return to sleep, now if I get up around 3:30 or 4:00, I’m awake! Oh, boy. Also, my naps in the afternoon have been briefer to non-existent.
If I were looking in on me from the outside, I’d say it’s anxiety. It makes sense given this time of not-knowing. Yet I don’t have that jittery, over caffeinated feeling. Distraction still marks some of my day, so maybe I’m not reading myself quite right. Repressing. Could be.
Anyhow I decided that sleep hygiene is not the most important facet of my life right now. It can wait until I’ve had my biopsy. If it stays like this, I’ll seek some help.
A Significant Week
Spring Beltane Moon
This is shaping up to be the most significant week since our move-in week in December. We have a firm, funded offer on the house. Contingent on an inspection only and there won’t be much found. Closing date, May 29!
The urologist visit yesterday. Action, not anxiety. Always better.
The first of several plant identification classes tonight. This one is basic botany, mostly taxonomy, how to use identification manuals.
And, on Thursday, the Woolly retreat in Ely. In addition to the physical reconnection with friends–at an important juncture for me (prostate)–it will also give me a chance to reconnect with the Ely/Boundary Waters area. Superior Wolf will be richer for this trip and my motivation for working on it will go up, too.
The Path
Spring Beltane Moon
Back from the urologist. The waiting room was like a gynecologist’s only reversed. Lots of old men, some sitting down in a tender way. None looking too happy.
Dr. Ted Eigner is a good find. He’s pleasant, clear, straightforward. After reviewing my psa, up to 6.2 since December’s 4.4, his physical finding which confirmed Dr. Gidday’s and my family history, he said, “It’s a no-brainer. We’ll do an ultrasound and get cells from 12 different sites.” That’s scheduled for May 14.
Today I got two things: a doctor in whom I have confidence and the next step on the path, a biopsy. After that? Won’t know until the biopsy results are in.
Kate asked me if I felt better. My first response was no. I had no new information. Then, a bit later. Well, yes, I feel better. I have a path and a good doctor.
This is not the only thing going on in my life. But it sure muscles out a lot of stuff. It does not push away the fact, the very good fact, that we’re expecting an offer on our house tomorrow evening. Selling Andover would move us squarely and completely to Colorado. We’re both more than ready for that.
Sun Breaking Through The Clouds
Spring Beltane Moon
When I woke up this morning, I felt terrific. The haze, the gloom had lifted. Why? Have no idea except time and honesty. Honesty made sure the feelings were not trapped in a poisonous cluster reinforcing themselves; and, time has let the shock factor diminish.
Here’s a for instance. I looked up ghost towns in Colorado this morning. There are a lot of them and many not too far from here in South Park. The desire to get up, get out and go see things has begun to kick in, to put the Andover house and the prostate in the rearview for a day or so.
And I’m glad for it. I don’t like the down, distracted, glum feeling even though I know in this instance it’s referented and therapeutic.
So, I’m going to dig out the camera, the tripod, the binoculars and go on a road trip after the Woolly Retreat.
Spirit in the Sky
Spring Beltane Moon
On Monday (yesterday) my spirits lifted. The beginning of the work week moves my needle in a positive direction. Kate came up with some distractions. Yesterday we finally liberated all the art with the exception of our really big paintings from their containers and stored them in the guest room. This meant another slice and compress hour or so with the discarded cardboard, then stuffing it into the recycle bin. Mostly though I think I’ve integrated the possible futures and can live with any of them. (well, maybe not live with one really bad one.)
My distraction level is down. I’ve given myself (contraindicated over time) a break from exercising. An occasional vacation is good for the bones and blood vessels. I’m being gentle and compassionate with myself.
I got back my lab test results for other parts of my body. I am more than my prostate! An odd finding was that my total cholesterol at 127 is too low. Those atorvastatin pills go under the knife, cut in half to slim them down to the 10 mg dose. It’s weird considering the need to raise my cholesterol.
My kidney disease is stable and may well remain so for the rest of my life. The numbers were good for the most part with the exception of that damned PSA and the cholesterol.
Under any future I plan to live and live well until I die. That has always been my plan, my intention and I refuse to let anything, anything, interfere with it.
The Kindness of Strangers
Spring New (Beltane) Moon
So. There is background noise, the hard-drive chitters quietly, like a squirrel hunting for a nut. Now, where did I put that damned thing? I say I’m calm, not afraid, not anxious but I think that puts my persona out there, where I want me to be. Underneath the persona where we all live our most private of lives a gyroscope of concern works away, wobbling, righting itself, but never able to spin down completely.
How do I know? Example. On my way in to the Rodeo All Stars I went to the post office to drop off some bills. I did that. Then, as I got down the slope to Highway 285 North I checked for the envelope that had my tickets and parking passes. Uh oh. Not there. Wait a minute. Slap forehead. Yes, I had “mailed” my tickets and parking passes in the driveby mailbox.
At first I thought, well, that’s done. I’ve got to go home. Then, no, what would you say? Go back and ask. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. So I drove back to the post office. Closed. Well, damn. Then a gray haired lady opened the door. She had hear me rattling the door, looking forlorn. “Can I help you?”
Moments later we were out at the mailbox. She turned a key, got out a white plastic bin and sure enough, under the bills was my envelope from the Rodeo All Stars. I thanked her and drove into Denver.
Notes From Another Liminal Space
Spring Mountain Spring Moon
Kate reassures me. Old age prostate cancer is slow, non-aggressive. The treatments work. And, it’s true that Mark and Dick and my Dad, the three men I know personally who’ve had it, were all successfully treated.
I am not afraid. Yet I have returned to a liminal space, no longer healthy, yet not in immediate danger. This is life with a possible dangerous disease. Once I know for certain, even then, I will still be in a liminal space between either disease and death or disease and health. The move prepared me, taught me how to live between worlds and it will serve me well now.
This is life with a difference, life when the end is no longer abstract, but lurking in a known spot.
I’ve thought about the human as apex predator. We take from the animal world and only in the rarest of circumstances does it take from us. Now the predators who hunt us often come from within: cells of our own body, virus replicating, bacteria with a warm, rich host. Or, externally, motor vehicles and other humans.
Ours is a privileged eco-system, that of the apex of the apex predators. Most things feed upward toward our open mouths.
The tiny and the cunning pose our greatest risk, attacking us at a scale so small that we have difficulty imagining it. Cells multiplying are a danger to me. And my own cells? How ironic.