Debra came by yesterday with chicken, couscous, cucumber, and a swiss chard topping. We ate the meal with her. I’ve not seen Debra in some time, wanted to catch up. The mitzvah committee at CBE has gotten traction with the meals. Gratitude.
In other news. Trump still occupies the Whitehouse. I think occupies is a good word here, since it feels like an unfriendly invasion. With Boris Johnson becoming Britain’s Prime Minister, Trump will have competition for xenophobic, racist, generally clueless utterances. Must be that special relationship?
On the downward slope with the radiation. Twenty-four fractions given, eleven more to go. Since the bed bug incident moved my finish date to August seventh, I will now complete my treatment between the anniversaries of the atomic bombs: Hiroshima on August sixth and Nagasaki on August 9th.
Consider atomic bombs, nuclear tipped missiles, the “club” of nations with nuclear weapons, nuclear power plants generating electricity, axumin and other radio isotope scans, radiation treatments for cancer. Nuclear engineering has had a big impact on the world though its negatives often (usually?) overshadow its positives.
Malignant uses multiplied after WWII. Most nations tacitly agreed nuclear weapons should never be used again after the horrors of Japan, yet nuclear weapons themselves became the apex of military power. There are uneasy, even dangerous situations right now that involve nuclear weapons: North Korea, Iran, India/Pakistan. Those old enough to remember the Cold War know, too, that whenever relations with Russia sour, the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals have humanity ending power.
The peaceful uses of nuclear power seemed to hold a lot of promise. Nuclear power plants generate electricity without the burden of adding carbon emissions to the sky. Yet Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima proved that potential problems with nuclear power can become awful reality.
In my own opinion nuclear power should still be a part of the transition to renewable sources of energy. Nuclear power plants built with adequate safeguards can help move us beyond fossil fuels. Yes, there’s the question of nuclear waste, but it’s a solvable problem, at least in the short term. Nuclear power and renewables can be a bridge to a world where nuclear fusion is our dominant energy source.
The medical and industrial uses of nuclear engineering have proven themselves over the decades since WWII. I’m glowing proof of that.
22 fractions absorbed. 13 to go. Bed bug means I won’t be ending on August 6th. August 7th. Two weeks plus three days and I’ll have the full 7000 cGy of photons.
This week’s been difficult. I’ve tried various strategies for managing my ouchy gut. Anti-nausea meds. Zofran. Miralax. Immodium. Results mixed. A general sense of gut not feeling right has pervaded my days and nights. Add to that fatigue from the radiation itself and the couple of hours in traffic. Result: low energy, unsettled, spotty eating. Glad I’m over halfway done.
Could have been worse. Could get worse. Seems like a fair price to pay for the possibility of a cure.
The fans up here are cooling the loft. A breeze is coming down from Black Mountain. The sun is up. The sky is blue. Another beautiful Colorado Rocky Mountain day.
2014
Kate went to mussar on Thursday while I was in Lone Tree. Yesterday she went to a memorial service for Vanessa, a long time member of the Thursday afternoon mussar group. I mentioned her a while ago. She had a degenerative disease that slowly shut down her organs.
Vanessa’s mind remained strong, supple but eating, chewing, swallowing was very difficult. Over the last week or so she had had trouble breathing. Her spirit remained good.
We had a neighbor in Minnesota, Greg, who developed MLS. He also deteriorated over time, but his spirit turned sour. Why him? Why this disease? Why didn’t people treat him better? He died last year.
We’re not promised a smooth ride. And, most of us don’t get one. Gratitude is one antidote. Vanessa remained grateful for life, for friends, for family, for her faith. She lived fully even as her body betrayed her. Greg was not grateful. He lived miserably, then died.
Kate and I have plenty of opportunity to express our gratitude. From distant friends who stay in touch to family, grandkids, CBE folk. Lots of help, encouragement and love. Thank you all, again. Still.
Let’s see. Heat waves. Bad ones. The moon landing at 50. 50? And, of course, Send them back! Send them back! I really tried to stop it in the biggest way. Nobody could have tried to stop it harder. Nobody.
Consequential. Each of them. I still remember the first time I was in Phoenix. 107. Might have been August or September. Walking from the motel a few blocks to experience the heat I could feel the sidewalk through the soles of my shoes. The air was still.
Downtown Phoenix had several places that had misters, spraying a sheen of water out and over sidewalks, open air cafes. Fans aided the cooling effect. It was delicious. A revelation. But. It was still hot.
On a CME venture with Kate early in our marriage we went to Mexico City where Kate saw Rigoberta Menchu. Afterward we went to Oaxaca and Merida. We stayed at Casa de Balam, the House of the Leopard, in Merida. Our bodies have conditionings of which we are unaware until they are challenged.
Merida
It was hot. And, humid, unlike Phoenix. In the afternoon rain clouds gathered over Merida. Rain fell. And the heat and humidity got worse. It was like an open air steam bath. Rain washes away heat. After the rain comes a cool breeze, a sigh of relief. Nope. Not in Merida. Not that day. It shocked my body before I even realized what was odd.
Both of those times stick in my mind (plus that trek across Singapore’s Botanical Garden in 2016) as outliers, extreme situations occurring in places I visited infrequently. Now, Merida is coming to a city near you.
The moon landing. July 20, 1969. College was done. Judy and I had a small apartment in Muncie. It was hot. No AC. No misting water. Just sweat. I put aluminum foil on the rabbit ears of our tiny television, waved them through the air to find our best reception. The most complicated electric appliance in our apartment was my Selectric typewriter, the one with the ball.
We wore as little as possible. The moon was new that night, so the sky was starry. I remember the scratchy voice of Walter Cronkite saying something. The scene, like a set from a 1950’s sci fi movie, had a strange desolation, Buzz Aldrin would the call the moonscape, “Magnificent desolation.”
NASA
Cold beer. A joint. As night fell, we began to wonder if the astronauts would ever come out. The Eagle had landed at 3:17 pm and now it was nearing ten. Then, the hatch opened, a bulky white suit emerged and went slowly down the metal ladder. A human about to touch a surface other than earth’s. “One small step for a man, one giant step for mankind.” (btw: correct quote according to NASA and Armstrong.)
Our chests flew open, all of us, that night. We saw the unimaginable. We were alive when the first human walked on the moon. I was 22, drunk and stoned. But high, too. Up there. With Buzz and Neil.
No visa required. No passport control. No detention centers in the Sea of Tranquility.
the apple, the tree
Our current sadness. The smallness of the fearful white person. Fed by the orange would be Julius. On July 20, 1969, the federal government gave us a moment of wonder, of awe, a moment shared with the world. On the 50th anniversary of this remarkable human accomplishment this once great country now separates families at detention centers. Its President tells four U.S. citizens to go home. He encourages the cries of his base base, Send them back. Send them back.
And that heat. Study shows opening up Federal lands to oil and gas exploitation will increase climate change. Huh? Really? The administration has silenced scientific analysis, by government scientists, on the risks posed by climate change. Including the military, which sees climate change as a national security issue.
NASA
Oh to slide back into the wonder of the moon landing. To imagine a world where feats of human innovation still wow us. Where government fights racism instead of propogating it. That’s a backward look though. Let’s look forward instead. To a new, cooler time with awesome moments still ahead.
New workout with Deb. A lighter pace on cardio, less reps. Still challenging. Dave, Deb’s husband and partner at OMTF, had a recurrence of his brain cancer not long after my psa began to rise. He’s had brain surgery already to remove the tumor. Chemo for a year.
But, and here’s the world I inhabit now, they chose against radiation. Why? First, it’s radiation to the head. The brain. Yikes. Second, Dave’s neurosurgeon told them cognitive decline was a possible side effect. Can you imagine having to choose between a future recurrence after a recent return of the cancer, and less mental acuity? Dave’s probably late 50’s.
Poster designed by JUMP
These are real life conundrums, made when disease creeps across the nuisance threshold into the realm of life or death. Underlined one of the weird good fortunes I have. The prostate is next to the bladder and the lower bowels, but the cyberknife accounts for that because there’s so much space.
In radiation for breast cancer the heart and the lungs are in potential danger. In brain cancer, well… My cancer has a physical location that doesn’t present those sorts of obstacles for radiation.
Cancer and other potentially fatal diseases focus the mind. This is the top priority for now. I chose to bracket summer this year in favor of repeated trips to Lone Tree, about an hour away. I chose to further bracket the next 6 to 12 months by saying yes to Lupron therapy. The daily radiation regimen will fall away on August 6th when I will have assembled all the fractions into one, delivered in 35 bits. But Lupron will continue.
Listened to Carol King yesterday. Too thin. Back to the more substantial gruel of Renaissance Music.
My friend Rich sees mussar as a metaphysical, not a psychological discipline. It’s soul work, deeper and more consequential than therapy.
Over the last year and a half my skeptical view of soul has begun to break up, fade away. First, from the Cosmos and Psyche (thanks, Tom) insight: Skepticism is a tool, not a lifestyle. Second, from a spiritual realization that despite its implication in the arguments over, say, original sin, soul nonetheless points to a felt reality for me, a phenomenological knowing. Not a dogmatic or doctrinal one.
Big deal, right? You always knew this? Or, no way, dude. Either way, so what?
And, of course, you’re right if you follow this often used, little understood idea back to its sources in Judaeo-Christian thought. Its use either assumed-you always knew this, or, so mean and inhuman, eternal hell for a few years on earth-no way, dude.
The Judaeo-Christian understanding incorporated the Greek notion of psyche, “…the mental abilities of a living being: reason, character, feeling, consciousness, memory, perception, thinking” with a notion of immortality connected to behavior in this life.
I want to push back, back beyond this narrow conception of soul. There was an assumption among the ancient Greeks that soul had to have a logical faculty, and, that it was the most divine attribute of a human soul. ( The current scientific consensus across all fields is that there is no evidence for the existence of any kind of soul in the traditional sense. Wiki.)
First I want to speak for the trees. Let’s call it the Loraxian understanding of the soul. The lodgepoles in our yard, crawling up Black Mountain, growing along Brook Forest Drive as it winds down the mountain. They have souls. They are both alive and animate, creatures with a telos, or end goal. They interact with their environment and grow strong or weak, tall or short, but they remain lodgpole pines, trees with a particular role in a montane ecosystem, a role which they give all they have to fulfill.
The same is true for the mule deer, the mountain lion, the marsh marigold, the elk, the bear, the fox, the squirrel, the dandelion, the cheatgrass, the Indian paintbrush, the mountain trout, the raven and the magpie. Are their souls more or less than ours? Wrong question. Are their souls more like ours or more unlike? Don’t know. I just know that living things on the planet share the wonder of life, an independent spark. That spark gives us organic matter that moves and does so with intention.
Holy Well, Wales, St Dynfog
I’ve felt this way about the world for a long, long time. Taoism, Emerson, the Romantics, gardening, the Celtic Great Wheel. The mystical moment on the quad at Ball State. Oneness. With it all. I’m even willing to entertain faeries, elves, duendes, daiads, Gods and Goddesses. OK, I know I lost a lot of you with that one, but I’m going with my gut, my revelation to me rather than the dry dusty bones of theirs.
But. I want to push one step further. I believe in the spirits of the mountains. They have visited me here on Shadow Mountain, the mule deer on Samain, 2014, and the elk on my first day of radiation. The mule deer and the elk were angels, that is, messengers of the mountain gods, dispatched by the careful, slow, deliberate entities that are the Rocky Mountains.
I believe in the vitality of rushing water in Maxwell Creek, Cub Creek, Blue Creek, Bear Creek, the North Fork of the South Platte. I believe in the entity that is Lake Superior, that is the great deposit of ores on the Minnesota Iron Range, the ebb and flow of the Oglalla Aquifer.
I believe in Mother Earth, the great Gaia, a living system of ecosystems, biomes watered by rains and the snows, irrigated by streams and rivers, planted by Boreas and Zephryus, and given power to change by the true god, Sol.
Neither animals nor plants can grow without the sun’s energy or the food locked in minerals and vitamin: “Our soils support 95 percent of all food production, and by 2060, our soils will be asked to give us as much food as we have consumed in the last 500 years. They filter our water. They are one of our most cost-effective reservoirs for sequestering carbon. They are our foundation for biodiversity. And they are vibrantly alive, teeming with 10,000 pounds of biological life in every acre. Yet in the last 150 years, we’ve lost half of the basic building block that makes soil productive.” Living Soil film
As it appears, I am an animist, a pagan, a person who has found his spot in the great scheme. I’m a moving instance of matter formed in the great fusion furnaces of stars. I’m a temporary instance, holding together a few atoms for a human lifetime. I’m a significant instance of meaning created by the universe observing itself, throughout my short path, as the dynamic, interlocked, soulful reality that it is.
I need no human word to guide me. I need no idea, no rule. I am and I am within all this. The Arapaho National Forest. The Rocky Mountains. Our nuclear family. Our extended family. The community of folks at CBE. The United States. The Mind of God.
My soul and that of Kepler, Rigel, and Gertie dance with each other. In Andover Kate and I danced with bees, fruit trees, perennial flowers, vegetables, raspberry canes. Here we dance with the mountain spirits.
Long ago I set out on a spiritual journey that went down and in rather than up and out. That is, I would not find validation somewhere outside of myself whether Torah, Gospel, Constitution, or political ideology. I would not privilege the idea of transcendence, or a three-story universe. No god is in heaven, and yet all’s right with the world. My ancient spiritual trail has been to turn within for the source of my revelation. And, I have not turned back.
18 fractions absorbed. 180 minutes, exactly three hours under the watchful iris of the Cyber Knife. Roughly 3500 cGys of the total 7000 cGy* prescription. This is over half-way. 18/35ths.
Hard to separate out causality. Does my occasional fatigue come from the radiation? The Lupron? Indolence? What’s causing my crampy stomach, over eager bowels? Are those prickly hot feelings transient hot flashes trying to break through? Or, are all of these some crummy bug that came along at a time when there were multiple possible causes? Not sure.
This weekend respite is very, very welcome. I need some time to relax. Decompress. Gather myself again. Three weeks plus a couple of days before all 7000 cGys are in place. A marathon, not a sprint.
Ruth and Gabe are here. Ruth mowed the fuel yesterday. Gabe picked up the detritus of Rigel’s bunny lust fueled attack on our back deck. They picked flowers for us among them Columbines and Daisies. Kate cut two of our blooming iris. Maroon bearded. Have not bloomed the last couple of years.
Another Great Wheel consolation. The iris will bloom. The daisy’s, too. Lodgepole pines will release their pollen in June. The mountain streams will race as soon as the snowpack melts. The elk rut will send the strangled bugling of the bull’s out into the fall air. Snow will fall in December. Rain will come on July afternoons. The altitude on Shadow Mountain will keep a cool gap open between temperatures down the hill and those up here. Long after we’re all dead. Oh, yes, over a long time even these things will change in some way, but the cycle of the natural world to which death belongs will continue.
* ( a unit of absorbed radiation dose equal to one hundredth (10−2) of a gray, or 1 radFreeDictionary)
Looks like the ride’s going to have turbulence. I feel much better than I did Sunday and Monday, but I still have a jangly feeling, my stomach has become unpredictable, and my bowels want complete and rapid elimination of any thing I throw down there. Also, fatigue. I feel tired, the muscles of my legs communicating exhaustion, with no noticeable activity to explain it.
There is good news. Ignoring the fatigue I got on the treadmill yesterday, did fifteen minutes instead of twenty, but moved right on through my whole workout. Slighter lower weights at some points, but mostly right where I’ve been. Felt fine afterwards. The fatigue is, to some extent then, a mirage. At least now.
Plucked my radiation hazard tee out of the dryer, put it on with my new Amazon basic’s gray sweats, tossed the electronic key in my pocket, pressed the button on Ruby (as Kate calls our red Rav4) to start her up. Two bottles of water by my side I headed down Shadow Mountain Drive to 285.
The drive remains the most challenging part. Due to the heavy construction not only are there lane shifts, concrete barriers, and oddly placed entrance lanes, but dump trucks, trucks for carrying loads of soil, the occasional piece of heavy equipment. The car and SUV crowd, like me, seems divided between those who follow the 55 mph speed limit and those who can’t be bothered. The result is lane weaving, brakes, slow downs, speed ups. About 14 miles worth.
With the fatigue my only real desire when I’m done is to drive the gauntlet going the other way, get home, and go to bed. Not sure whether this will be the new normal, whether it will get worse, or better. Better in the distant future, I think.
Cancer’s negative affects on me have all, so far, come from treatment. The surgery and post-op recovery. The Lupron. Weekday radiation treatments. Which is weird if you consider it. Cancer. But, no symptoms I can feel. Treatment and side effects that I can.
Zoom, zoom. Zoom. From the land of First Light to the top of Shadow Mountain, two in the land of sky blue waters. Friends. Bytes and pixels. Sight and sound. Remember when video phones were still a thing of the future, the distant future? We knew somebody from Bell Labs would create them, but when?
Still no flying cars, but there are multiple instances of the video phone. Zoom and Skype, for sure. Kakao, which allows full on video calling. I know there are others I haven’t used.
These forms resolve one of my problems with the old, voice only phone. No facial expressions. No interaction of a bodily nature except for vocal cords and the ear. Too thin for me.
We spoke of gum and sealing wax and other fancy things. Laughed. Nodded when we gave our ideas about patriotism. Complicated, as Mark said. Mostly we reaffirmed our friendship, saw each other in body and soul. A fine thing to do on a Sunday morning. The church of friendship.
In trying to get back to full bowel readiness for the 4th chapter of the Radiation Tales I went too far. Body rebelled. Nausea. (OMG! Is this a side effect? God I hope not.) Finding the balance for preparations is not easy. Pretty sure I brought this one on myself. In bed early with no supper. Stomach still ouchy this morning. Insulted.
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Expect to hear Mr. Roger’s, “Won’t you be my neighbor!” Toot, toot of the train.
Back to the beano. Radiation vacation is over. Put away the seltzer water. Chapter four of the photon chronicles starts tomorrow. Now it’s every day till the finish.
Still in the tunnel. Moving deliberately, neither slow nor fast. Holding in my heart this saying. My commitment is to the process. Yes, I hope it’s curative; but, it’s the route I’ve chosen and that is enough.
I’m grateful to the whole chain of folks involved in my care. Eigner and Willis for getting me quickly to Anova. Gilroy for a treatment plan. Nicky, Kim, and Patty for their kindness and care. Carmela for her brightness. Amanda for taking my need to make progress seriously. Kate for listening as I offer some new fact I’ve learned or a skewed feeling, for her own recovery. Alan and his steadiness. CBE for multiple mitzvahs. Shelley for the Lupron. Even Nari for his help with the new car.
And of course there are the folks I’ll never see. Fermi. Einstein. Nuclear engineers. Medical engineers. The dosist. The medical physicist. Inventor of the Cyber Knife. That train of thinkers and tinkerers who developed this particular instrument.
Yes, under the radiation moon, I will almost complete my treatments. They will end on August 6th and the new moon is August 1st. By then I’ll have an idea of what, if any, side effects radiation will bring. The new moon I’m going to call the Lupron moon because I should be well into the period when ADT might start causing side effects.
I had a brief scary moment while I did my workout this morning. Over the last couple of weeks two dementia related cautions have appeared in the press. The first, about anticholinergic drugs said users of these drugs faced a 5% increased risk of dementia. I’ve been on tizanidine for three years. It’s a muscle relaxant I used because my left shoulder had become painful. I stopped taking it.
The second caution was about ADT, androgen deprivation therapy. That’s the Lupron. I’ve focused, as I’m sure most do, on the side effects that can come with the drug right away: bone softening, mood changes, hot flashes among others. It’s a little confusing about the dementia/Alzheimer risk, but it seems 12 months of ADT can increase the risk of dementia by as much as 20%. That’s a lot.
The scary moment was: my god, what if I cure my prostate cancer and get Alzheimer’s? The good news, your cancer is gone. The bad news, you can’t remember you had it in the first place. My mood sank.
My mind went, unbidden, to a despairing thought. Is this all worth it? What if I do get a cure, but the treatment gives me dementia? Screw it. I’ll just give up. This is too much. Cancer and this risk? Too fucking much.
It was the sort of thing I’d usually suppress. Nope. Not gonna consider that. Enough already. Get back to the workout, let the exercise drive it away.
No. What? No, I said.
Oh, ok. What, then? Let’s look at it. Yes, dementia/Alzheimer’s scares me. But. The risk is an increase in the percentage likelihood of my becoming demented. No dementia or Alzheimer’s on either side of my family in my first level relationships. I exercise, which protects me to some degree. I challenge my intellect, learning new disciplines, painting, writing. Studying Latin, Judaism. If my risk is low, as I believe it is, then a 20% increase is probably negligible. Let’s say I have a risk level of 25%. A 20% increase in that would take me up to 30% overall. 2/3 of US Alzheimer sufferers are women, too.
Now the cancer risk. ADT increases my chances for a cure in the 5 to 10% range. Radiation puts me at 65 to 70% chance of a cure. With the two together my odds become 70% to 80%. And, I have the cancer. Right now. Conclusion for me? Follow the treatment. Take the risk.
Result? I don’t have a suppressed fear. I looked at it, recognizing anxiety that seems natural to me. That anxiety prompted me to look more deeply. I’m making an informed choice to stay with the treatment.
