Category Archives: Fourth Phase

Fourth Phase, Memories, Minnesota

Shining Through

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Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Shabbat gratefuls: Christina. Sam. Jamie. Luke. Two Wendys. Gary. Ayelet. Ode. Tom. Paul. Bill. Neck brace. Writing. Parsha.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Chesed

 

Kavannah: Areyvut. Mutual responsibility.  All humans are accountable to each other.

Tarot: Five of Bows, empowerment.  Returning to the homeland of your soul. I write.

 

One brief shining:  I have a coffee mug. A male moose stands in shallow water, looking away, toward the boreal forest. Below him is an inscription: The Gunflint Trail. I bought this mug over forty years ago. It has survived moves, constant handling. A Velveteen Rabbit.

 

Legacy cannot be purchased; but it is inescapable.

 

Ruth and Gabe will remember me.  Ancientrails, words and ideas over time.

Legacy arises from life. It cannot be created by a name on a building or a ghost-written biography.

My social worker, Rachel, believes in the ripple effect. She sees  our interactions with others expanding, rippling out. Rachel is a kind and sensitive woman. She treats me with kindness. Her soul expands further into the world when I unconsciously treat another with kindness.

That coffee mug. Has had a ripple effect. On me. Holding it I remember Raeone and a night on the Gunflint Trail when we heard a banging, clanging sound. Opened the door to a black bear, head in our garbage bin.

I remember M.J. We were close, then not.

Holding it I remember the boreal forest which fills the Arrowhead region of Minnesota. Wolves, bears, moose. Glacial lakes. A border with Canada. A long coastline on the Great Lake, Superior.

The ripple effect. Ceramics capture ripples. Over the years since that banging, clanging night I’ve often picked up this mug, filled it with cold coffee, and signed on zoom with my Ancient Brothers, three of whom still live in Minnesota.

The moose has a few spots where its glaze has worn off to reveal the white glaze of the mug’s first firing. Constant use has changed it from a souvenir to a vessel of memory, more filled with Grand Marais and the North Shore than the gallons of coffee I’ve drunk from it.

The mug’s legacy. An emptiness bounded by glazed clay. It’s that emptiness, the cylinder-shaped nothing. That makes it useful.

That’s legacy. Unintended. Yet inevitable. Our lives create an empty space which others can pour themselves into.  At my age much of my glazing has worn off from  constant handling. The self–my neshama–once glazed over by convention and routine, now casts a gentle glow through my long frayed exterior.

Pick up the mug.
Fill it.
Remember.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health

Not clear. Not now.

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Monday gratefuls: Health. Diet. Exercise. Weariness. Ruth and David. St. Patrick. Irish Wolfhounds. Shadow of the morning.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Taxes

 

Kavannah: Histapkot. Contentment.   Seek what you need, give up what you don’t need.

Tarot: #12, The Mirror.  My neshama lies in the boat, ready for another return (teshuvah) to the homeland of my soul

One brief shining: I missed the mark (hamartia) on Sunday’s Ancient Brothers discussion of health. I found myself confused and ashamed. What is health for me? Have I let myself down?

 

Protein targets. Eat real food.  Low sugar, low salt. Exercise: 150 minutes.

Friendships. Learn something new.

A handbook for living perfectly.

I listen. Have listened. Too many marks to hit. I accused the “culture” of blaming and shaming. Making me feel like a self-abuser unwilling to do what’s good for me.

Not true.

Look at the exercise I have done. Intense cardio. Diverse resistance. The labors of gardening. Wildfire mitigation. Caring for Kate.

Don’t I deserve a break, a time when I can focus what energy remains on what sustains me–reading, writing, time with friends and family?

So what if I’m not the poster boy for diet and exercise? So what if I lose six months, a year of life if I can increase the quality of my life now?

Yeah. OK. But.

What if I’m rationalizing?  What if the simple truth is that the alternative is hard work?

Am I blaming and shaming myself by internalizing our obsession with fitness and perfect diets?

Am I the one guy who can’t lash himself to the mast of the good ship health, wax in his ears when the sirens of red meat and downtime sing?

Over the last year and a half, I’ve found this dance between health and quality of life more and more difficult to navigate. Reminds me of our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow. I seem stuck between what I can do and what I should do.

Health matters. Ask any of us in our late seventies, early eighties.

My calendar fills with visits to specialists and imaging centers. Back pain. Head drop. A labrum tear. Managing the cancer part of me so it doesn’t destroy its host.

Perhaps that’s it.

So much of my time, energy, and money already goes into health. A lot. I work hard to maintain resilience, not let the little craft in which I live get swamped.

When I get home, I need to place cancer back in its place. Sit down to ease my back.

Exercise then? Nah.

Make something to eat? Yes, if it’s not too hard.

I’ve not yet learned how to square this circle.

I want to live. Live well.

How do I balance these competing, valid demands?

Not clear.

Not now.

 

Fourth Phase, Health, Shadow Mountain

Medworld

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Friday gratefuls: Scans. Their news. Wind, speaking. Tara. Jordan. Aorta. Prostate cancer. Trump. Iran. Mark. Mary.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Writing

 

Kavannah: Groundedness. Yesod.    Yesod is about establishing oneself in reality, refusing to rely on comfortable illusions.

Tarot: Four of Vessels, Boredom.  A current difficulty. Cancer thoughts+Fatigue+Back pain=low mental energy. Not boredom, but lassitude, a close relative.

One brief shining: Another whap across the forehead. Increased metastatic disease. Latest PET scan. So many tests. Medworld can consume life, spreading beyond its confines and colonizing the day-to-day. I don’t want that.

 

The steady, slow beat. Since last May.

With five diagnostic procedures in less than two weeks, their reports, it is as if I live in Medworld.

Medworld is not the day-to-day world. It’s a world of white coats, big parking lots, expensive machines. A world dominated by regimented time: show up a half-an-hour early.

Hallmarks of big science. Sophisticated, intricate machines.  Acolytes of the white coats to run them. Take off your shirt. Any metal in your pockets? Lift your legs.

Followed by the abstruse report: Widespread osseous metastatic disease is substantially worsened from 1/28/2026, with numerous new lesions identified. Means, uh-oh.

Turning, turning this new information. Wondering, again, about dying. About new treatments. How will I respond to them?  The critical factor at this point. Moments. Projections. Moving away from today toward a bed-ridden, supportive-oxygen dependent patient. Loss of agency. Who will be by my side?

Winching myself, one ratchet at a time, back. To the present. Where I have no bone pain. Where I am weak, yet mobile. Where I can still write. Where I live my non-Medworld life.

Stuck. Sometimes. Forgetting that Medworld supports, is only adjacent to: walks in my backyard. Making supper. Laughing with the Ancient Brothers.

I push it back. Not repressing. Rather. Putting those thoughts in Medworld where they belong. Why? Medworld can only slow the coming of the scythe, not prevent it. As a doctor on NPR said, “The death rate for each generation is still 100%.”

Writing. Friends and family. Marriage. Death. Episodes of a life. The final days for me are not yet.

Only one episode.

 

 

Cancer, Fourth Phase, Health

Machine Medicine

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Thursday gratefuls: Mariposa. Andres. Alan. Bubble study. A long walk. Morning darkness. Ruby. Gas prices. Iran.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Resilience

 

Kavannah: Groundedness. Yesod.    Yesod is about establishing oneself in reality, refusing to rely on comfortable illusions.

Tarot: Knight of Arrows, Hawk. I need to look at the big picture, see cancer as only a part of a long journey.

 

One brief shining: A cold gel. A sonar wand. Andres took the measure of my heart. Possible shunt. A walk, long, to the Evergreen Building for my PET scan. Pleased with how I held up. Once again radioactive tracers. Lounged in the recliner for an hour, reading a Joe Pickett novel. Kindle app on my phone. Lie down.

 

My body, investigated. Bone scan. Echo. PET scan. Baselines for the clinical trial. No more even mild claustrophobia. Too familiar.

Wearing the soft brace around my neck while out and about. My head drops. Not as far. Doesn’t strain my back. I don’t get as worn out. Though. Feels clunky. Odd.

Second Uber back from Sky Ridge. Mariposa, a squat Latina with six-inch all black nail extensions. Drove eighty m.p.h. Quiet. As I prefer due to my poor hearing.

Shadow greeted me with wiggles and kisses. I remind myself, don’t take this for granted. Remember how long it took. How much heartache.

Getting ready for this clinical trial is a trial of its own. Organize rides. Co-pay. Not cheap. A volunteer guided me each time, the hospital a maze. Sit. Again. Wait.

Charles? I’m Andres. Charles? I’m Andrew. Out of the waiting room. Lie on your side. Lie on your back. Do you want a warm blanket?

No results yet. The doctors sit in their offices far away. Reading scans. Looking at results. I sit at home, tired and lacking information.

The life. Chronic disease. Periods of being home, petting Shadow, reading. Periods of whirs, hums, the stick of a needle. Data. Learning what happens next.

Like that frog. Warming water. I grow accustomed to each test.  One of these tests. One of these days. There’s nothing more we can do. The cancer has gone too far. Earlier, that would have been unwelcome news. Now? One point on this path. I’ve had a long life, one not marred by disease or disability. Enriched.

Punctuation marks. My cancer diagnosis pushed me over the line into life’s last phase, the fourth phase. In the fourth phase I acknowledge my mortality. Not as distant. No longer with that slight hesitation. Maybe not me?

I lean on friends and family. Feel my body gradually giving way.  Everything is harder. Yet. I would not change this time. I’m writing my way into it.

I sit in my chair. Calm.

Fourth Phase, Friends

Elder

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Sunday gratefuls: A Saturday morning with Ruth. Bacon. Strawberries. Bananas. Shadow, who loves Ruth. Our poor, benighted nation.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Granddaughters

 

Kavannah: Groundedness. Yesod.    Yesod is about establishing oneself in reality, refusing to rely on comfortable illusions.

Tarot: King of Arrows, Kingfisher.   The Kingfisher dives with precision. Cut away what is unnecessary to find the truth. Edit. Revise. Edit. Revise

One brief shining: Young people in old men’s lives. Granddaughter Ruth. Mikveh buddy Veronica. Friend Luke. Links to a future I will not see. Connections to a contemporary world I do not know. As I link them to a past before their births.

 

Granddaughter Ruth in tears. “I didn’t do anything to deserve this!” She looked into her future: heated, politically unstable, education expenses stretching through medical school

“What would you do if they told you you had to come back in the office or else?” Veronica, “I’d quit.”

Luke. His art. His music. His conversion. An assistant professor of Chemistry. “Chemistry is about transformation.”

These three I know well. Ruth, my granddaughter. Veronica, with whom I converted. Later, we became b’nai mitzvahs together. Luke: art, love of the Beatles, his quick scientific mind.

All Jews. Two converts and Ruth, born to a Jewish mother.

Ruth turning 20 this April. Leaving childhood. I’ve known her longest. Since infancy. At 3 I took her to the National Western Stock Show. On the bus to get there, she turned to me, her eyes flooding with tears, “I want my mommie.” A reassuring call.

I took her to museums: Colorado History. Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Wings over the Rockies. To the planetarium in Boulder. To eat sushi.

Yesterday she came up here. To make me French toast and bacon with strawberries and bananas. To talk. To tell me the story of how she met David. How she took his hand. A sweet story. An old story. Yet always new.

No longer 3.

Veronica and I were going to have our conversion in Jerusalem. Submerge in an ancient mikveh.  However. October 7, 2023. Israel goes to war.

We had our immersions in a modern mikveh off Alameda in Denver. On Shavuoth of 2024 we read our torah portions, Veronica fluently, me not. Gave our d’var torahs. Led a small bit of the service. Bar mitzvah. Bat mitzvah.

Luke, for a time executive director of the synagogue. Not a great job for him. We became friends. A couple of difficult years after Beth Evergreen. He comes to Shadow Mountain to do laundry while Leo plays with Shadow.

Chemistry has transformed him. Confident, eager. Loved by his students. So happy to see this.

No Sun City. No adults only living situations. No going to the home. Staying in my home. Having a vital social life. Including these three.

This is how I remain alone, but not lonely.

How I can be a steady, stable point for these three. Young adults finding their spot. Living into themselves.

May it continue to be so.

 

Fourth Phase, Health, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Travel, Weather +Climate

My travel snowpack sits way below normal.

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Shabbat gratefuls: Snow! Vince. Shadow, dancer in the snow. Ruth. French toast and bacon. Lab results unread.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Snow

 

art@willworthington

Kavannah: Groundedness. Yesod.    Yesod is about establishing oneself in reality, refusing to rely on comfortable illusions

 

Tarot: Page of Vessels, Otter     I need more play, more  lightheartedness.

 

One brief shining: Snow fell. Mountain joy. Our drought parched Arapaho National Forest. The lodgepoles and aspen at Shadow Mountain home. Need moisture. Even more, a lot more. I hunkered down, besotted by the falling, falling snow.

 

Snow brings water to thirsty grasses, trees. Skiers to A-Basin, Vail, Steamboat. Silence. Muffles sound. Alters the landscape, smoothing out rock outcroppings, covering vegetation.

Snow matters.

This winter, until yesterday: forty-nine inches. 2016: two-hundred and twenty inches. Snowpack way below normal. Never thought about snowpack in Minnesota. Here it’s vital. Not only for Colorado, but for the Colorado River basin. Las Vegas. Phoenix. LA. All depend on Colorado’s snowpack. Releasing water over time. Snow melt.

Surrounded by a National Forest filled with second stand, close together lodgepoles and aspen. Drought=high fire risk. Lodgepoles close together burn by crown fire. Fire jumps from the top of one tree to the next. Hot and fast. One reason we all pay ridiculous premiums for home insurance.

As the drought here deepens, I’ve been thinking about other droughts in my life. I’m in an exercise desert. My travel snowpack sits way below normal. Otter reminded me. I’m in a play and lightheartedness drought.

Exercise. Since I turned forty, I exercised. Daily often. No less than 5 days in a week. Resistance and cardio. Worked with my hands and legs in the garden. I was in good, no, excellent shape.

Of late. Not so much. I find excuses not to exercise. A tough day yesterday. Workout room too cold. Like today.

Mood regulation. Guard against heart attacks. Retain muscle mass. Balance work. Fall prevention. All benefits of regular exercise. Fights cancer, too.

But. Finish Ancientrails. I’m comfortable sitting down. I’m going to die of something anyhow. Why make the effort.

I hate this. Not exercising harms me physically. Perhaps even more mentally. Why am I not taking care of myself? A dissonance between how I perceive myself and how I act. How to bridge the gap.

Travel, like exercise, fills the heart. Shifts in perspective. Lightheartedness. So many good memories. Singapore. Angkor Wat. Joseon dynasty palace. Okgwa, Seoah’s home village. Street food in Bangkok. Blood pudding in Inverness. Italian coffee. Chilean fjords.

Last time I left home for more than a day: September, 2023. Back went bad. Sent me into chronic pain world. Better now. Stamina sucks. See exercise. Standing for any length of time. Nope. Makes travel feel onerous. Beyond me.

Drought takes. Water from the bunch grass and lodgepoles. Traveling to see Joe and Seoah. To see the National Museum in Taipei. Damages roots.

Like our snow drought I have no surefire way to fix my travel drought, my play and lightheartedness drought.

Drought dehydrates. Devastates. Stunts growth.

And yet. Snow slides off lodgepole branches. Shadow dances, her blackness covered in white.

 

Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Politics, Shadow Mountain

Peace?

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Thursday gratefuls: Tara. Fantastic Four. Shadow, the early riser. The U.S. military. The Middle East. War. Peace. Negotiations.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Snow

 

Kavannah: Shleimut.   Being present to myself.

Tarot: Ace of Vessels     My emotions need recharging from the deep waters of my soul. I am the stag.

 

One brief shining: Today they begin, the bone scan, the echo, the pet scan. Two cts. Is my body strong enough to withstand the trial? How we will know if the treatment I’m getting works. This bone scan against that one.

 

Not looking forward to the next week and a half. My life has pauses, then bang, bang, bang. More blood tests. More diagnostics. Since last May, the pace of surveillance has ramped up. A lot.

More scheduling. More rides needed. More information over my transom than I can keep up with. A lot.

Meanwhile, the world.  Crazy. Real estate developers as diplomats? A President against foreign intervention starts his second war this year. Israel a hegemon.

A headline says Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler may devolve into niche makers of the last gas fueled cars as China rises in building ones fueled by electricity. Many self-driven.

Climate change supercharges hurricanes. Ate our mountain winter. Sea levels go further into Miami. New York City. Thwaites Glacier rests precariously on warming Antarctic waters.

What about measles? Polio. Even covid and the flu. A polio survivor. I remember the line at age 8. Thurston Elementary. About to get a shot. The vaccine. How indignant it made me. Not fair.

Vaccines don’t work? Says the cabinet secretary, Robert Kennedy. Thanks to the polio vaccine, twenty four years later. 1979. Polio eradicated in the U.S. Measles outbreaks increasing.

The context of my old age.

Where can we find peace? Not in the clanging of the MRI or the cool gel of an Echocardiogram. Nor in bloodwork or office visits. Certainly not in the newspapers I read every morning.

A touch on the arm. Shadow’s tongue licking my hand. Tara sitting with her legs draped over the chair arm. Shadow and Eleanor playing, bumping, running.

The Mule Deer does that visit my front yard often. Dining on grass. Delicate. Graceful as they move across my field of view.

Ruth offers to drive up. Make me French toast. Even bacon. Gabe asks me to offer him fun facts about himself. He can’t think of any.

No matter. The craziness. The tests. No matter.

Even in the midst of external chaos. Teshuvah. Return to the homeland of your soul. I am a writer, a lover of nature, human partner to Shadow, curious, resilient. A friend and a brother and a cousin. A Jew named Israel.

I also love. My Ancient Brothers. My synagogue friends. Mozart. Shadow Mountain home. My life.

Peace lies not on the newspaper pages. Not in lab results or treatment protocols.

Peace lies in being who you are.

No matter what.

Family, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Korea, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Travel, US History

Is it time to go?

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Tuesday and the Moon of Tides

Monday gratefuls: Tara and Eleanor. Arjean. Costa Rica. Iran. U.S. Israel. Gaza. Lebanon. War and peace. Mark in Hafar.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tara

Kavannah: Shleimut. My lev, calm. Clinical trial decision made. Living into the next.

Tarot: Knight of Vessels, Eel. My spirit, strong. My decisions, made. Old, not dead.

One brief shining: While I sit in peace on Shadow Mountain, Shadow gnaws a toy, asks for breakfast. Mary roasts in summer heat. Joe and Seoah shiver in a cold Korea. Everyone seems further away.

 

A conversation U.S. Jews. Is it time to leave? Is this a Weimar moment after Adolf took power? Friends Marilyn and Irv looked at land in Costa Rica. Decided not to go. Irv said he loved the mountains. Too old to leave.

Tara and Arjean. Have hired a property manager. Are cleaning out 27 years of stuff.  Move to Costa Rica sometime in June. Stay in AirBnBs as they scout for a place to settle. A year or so experiment.

Two times when I almost left the continental U.S. 1969. Got the call for my draft physical. To Indianapolis with all of my money and all my possessions. (not much) Would have moved to Canada like my old friend Mike Hines.

Turns out psoriasis worsens when wearing wool and in hot, humid climates. Army uniforms. Wool. Vietnam.

As I left the place where I’d had my physical, a serious man told me: “You cannot enlist in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, or the Marines.” I asked him, “Are you sure?” When he said yes, I said, “Thank god.”

Second time. After Kate died. Joe and Seoah. Planned then to retire after Korea and move back to Hawai’i. Cleared out the house and garage. Researched places on Oahu where Kepler and I could live. Checked out synagogues. Studied my budget.

Jon died. I couldn’t leave Ruth and Gabe.

My sister and my brother, Mary and Mark. Long time expats.  Mary now in Melbourne and Mark teaching ESL to young Arab men. Joe and Seoah: Hawai’i, Singapore, and Korea. Nine years

State Department urges Americans to leave the Middle East. Mark stays. Hafar has no military targets. He lives among the Saudi citizens. Not in an Aramco US compound. An old Saudi hand at this point.

I’m the stay at home of a far flung family.

When is it time to leave?

 

For me. Not yet.

Ancient Brothers, Family, Fourth Phase, Friends, Politics, US History, World History

Holding Opposites

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Monday gratefuls: Ancient Brothers. Shadow, my downward dog. Iran. Israel. U.S. Gaza. Hezbollah. A cool, dark morning.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  The Deep Blue Sea

 

Week Kavannah:   Shleimut.   The alignment of the inner self with outer actions, bringing a sense of completeness to life.

 

Tarot: Three of Bows, fulfillment       Teshuva, alignment between neshama and the Self, a power that flows through me.

One brief shining: Fulfillment. Satisfaction. Not happiness. Joy in writing with more precision. Nouns. Fragments. Revising, a process with which I still struggle. My Shadow life. My Ancient Brothers life. My Jewish life. Engaged with Iran and with Mark, close by in Hafar.

 

Painful. To see Iran and my Ancient Brothers. The same day. Mary, down under. Joe and Seoah far away. Mark far away from me but near war. Grocery shopping and day care. A man pets his dog. While death races along the streets of Tehran. The One, yes, but. Pain and love, together again. Always.

A danger. Exhaustion from the steady, too steady beats of killing, of government acting in Iran and not acting at home. Epstein files. Rising health insurance costs while medical care disappears. Hospitals close. Cost of living rises. The cost of war.

So easy to turn away from accelerating drought in the Rockies. From those who need the Mountain Resource Center. ECHO’s food bank. Easier to launch Cruise missiles, Tomahawks. Drop bombs.

Ruth coming up to make me breakfast. Her specialty, French toast. This Saturday morning. Gabe sharing the poems he wrote in Oregon. Ruth in college, Gabe getting ready. Their lives full with preparation. Classes. Applications. Learning. Testing. Readying themselves for a future with dramatic climate change, increasing acts against Jews and Blacks and Latinos. What they have been thrown into.

I work. My candle is lit. These words. Those words. A Hansel and Gretel trail leading to, leading to what? A record of an Alexandria boy grown into a man. A man who acted. In theater. On the streets. In the soil. On the page.

A man whose life unfolded in the shadow of war. Whose maturation, delayed, came when conservatives began to gain ground. In 1981 Joseph’s plane landed. The wicker basket. Reagan inaugurated.

Fatherhood. Joyous. Daunting. Inspiring. Joe turns 45 this year. Seoah 48. I turned 79. Ruth will be 20. Gabe 18. That thin, yet strong line of love expressed as Ruth masters chemistry, Joe watches North Korea. I learn to write.

Too late?

We braid our lives into each others. French toast. Sunday morning themes. Breakfasts at Aspen Perks. Eleanor and Shadow playing hard. Parallel. Our braids. Their braids. The wider world. Iran. Israel. Minnesota fighting ICE.

Ruth goes to class. Bombs drop. Joe goes to work. ICE leaves Minnesota. I write. Cartels ship fentanyl. No life independent of another. The web of life woven by photosynthesis, by kisses and hugs, by acts of war.

Life. Lived in paradox and irony. Always. Holding opposites.

 

Cancer, Fourth Phase, Health, Science

In time, leaves brown

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Thursday gratefuls: Alan and his new knee. The Hummingbird. Diane. Alfred North Whitehead. Process metaphysics. Shadow the Coneless.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Kristine

Week Kavannah:   Yetziratiut. Creativity.   Learning novel revision as part of the craft

 

Tarot: Ten of Vessels, Happiness

In the midst of medical turmoil: friends and family, reengaged creative work, Shadow bring fulfillment home.

One brief shining: Radiation ended December 11th, a PET scan on January 28th showed failure of androgen deprivation therapy. No wonder I slipped into I’m not gonna make it mode. Uncertainty. The bane of those of us with chronic, progressive illnesses.

 

Cancer, as my journey typifies, never gives up. Removed my prostate. Came back. Radiation. Recurred. Since then, 2019, it’s here to stay, a hostile partner I must feed.

Within that overall arc there are periods of relative calm. I had six years with androgen deprivation therapy, six years of stable PSAs. Glad I did. Within those years Kate’s illnesses took hold, changing our lives and ending in her death. Jon’s divorce rattled the whole family again and again. His death shattered Ruth and Gabe.

How could I have been present and effective for my loved ones without six years of a cancer detente? Here’s a generous offering of gratitude to the scientists who discovered and perfected androgen deprivation.

If I’m to live fully into the happiness I feel, I’ll need another tranche of medical discoveries. Especially therapies like Pluvicto and Actinium which deliver toxic radioactive energy preferentially to cancer cells. Not the systemic poison of chemotherapy.

How else can I continue ancientrails into its third decade. Revise and market Superior Wolf. See Ruth graduate from college, maybe even medical school.

Folks with manageable terminal illnesses now encounter shuttered laboratories. A defunded NIH.

The practices of physicians like Dr. Bupathi and Dr. Carter deliver to me the fruit of decades of basic science, clinical trials, pharmaceutical advances.

Like turning off irrigation to a field of vegetables, the results will not be immediate. In time, leaves brown, Tomatoes and Beets rot. I’ll probably live long enough to enjoy treatments created in the recent past. Like Actinium.

The next generation of prostate cancer patients may not. Joseph? Mark?

I’m a lucky guy. Options, sound options, exist even as I enter my 5th year of stage 4 cancer. A gift to me. Letting me fill my days  with happiness.