Category Archives: Cancer

Back Pain, Cancer, Cooking, Coronavirus, Politics, Post Polio, Sport, US History

How Great an America is This?

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Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Dodgers win the World Series! Rabbi Jamie’s hug. Joe. Alan. Jim. Corey. Irv. Matt. Torah study led by Luke. Bagels and schmear. Joanne in rehab. Back to real time, standard time. Dark Winds. Everwood.  Heather. Tramadol. The boiler. The mini-splits. My breath. Sight. Touch. Taste. Hearing. Smell. YHWH.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Home

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Histapkot.  Contentment. Acceptance.                       I’m comfortable with who I am and with what I have.

Tarot: Being a metaphysician

One brief shining: Sitting in regular chairs, my head unsupported by a back rest, fasciculations begin, muscles straining and flexing, moving under the skin, distracting me from the words of Hagar and the Angel, from El-Roi, the God who sees, I don’t notice it, the wobbling, at first, until my shoulders get sore and I’m no longer able to concentrate, be sharp, as my head tilts right, polio wreaking one last not so subtle blow.

 

So. I’m taking notice. Part of my fatigue, maybe a big part, follows from my increasing inability to hold up my own head. Dr. Eunberg diagnosed it, post-polio syndrome. I’ve been to an orthotists’ office and been told my situation has no other instances. They’re going to modify soft collars for me. We’ll see.

Beginning to feel like my body’s falling apart literally from the neck down. A tumor on T4 needing radiation. Arthritic L1-L5 nerves needing ablation. A right torn labrum possibly needing surgery. I mean, geez.

I’m so far ahead of my insurance company with expensive cancer drugs, pet scans, mri’s, and radiation. That makes me feel somewhat good. Even so…

 

Food: Had the last of the sheet pan meal with my Cherry Tomatoes and Beets. So. Good. Planning more sheet plan cooking, easy, quick, lots of Veggies. Of all the health maintenance matters, cooking for myself has proved the most challenging. Just hard to pull off.

CookUnity has been ok, but just ok. Pricey and with time constraints that make it difficult to use. Some of the meals are tasty, many of them edible, but only edible.

May not be getting enough calories, protein.

 

Sport: What a world series! Game 7, extra innings, Dodgers behind with two outs in the ninth…and Rojas hits a home run! Tie game. In the 11th, the 11th inning of Game 7 of a world series with a historically long game 3, 18 innings, a double play ended the Canadian’s dreams. Dodger’s repeat. Not since the Yankees 1998-2000 run has a world series champion repeated.

Meanwhile, back in forlorn football country, JJ McCarthy returns from injury absence. Will he play like a future franchise quarterback? Or, will he rip out the hearts of a Twin City’s fan base already inured to the breaks never falling their way. If the Vikings didn’t have bad luck, they’d had have no luck at all.

 

Just a moment: SNAP. Medicaid. Obamacare. Taking money literally from the mouths of the poor, taking away their final recourse for medical care, raising health care premiums to the    sky for even middle class Americans. Funneling the money “saved” into the pockets of oligarchs. How great is this America?

Cancer, Health

Let’s Get Radiated!

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Samain and the Summer’s End Moon

Shabbat grateful: Joe Greenberg. Joanne. Shadow, the aggressive chewer. 26 degrees. Dr. Carter. Todd. Jenna. Another CT. RMCC. Ruby. Her Snow shoes. A full tank. Morning darkness. The festival of Samain, the final harvest. The fallow time. Winter is coming. That scene in Dark Winds, season 3, where Robert Redford and George Martin play chess in the Navajo Tribal Police jail cells.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Dodgers force game 7

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei

Week Kavannah:  Histapkot  Contentment     Acceptance.    I’m comfortable with who I am and with what I have.

Tarot: Being a metaphysician

One brief shining: A purple haired, antennaed alien, and Todd settled me once again into a CT sled, gave me a warm blanket, and heated a plastic mesh that fit just below my chin, over both sides of my bare chest almost to my belly button, pressed it in place, then hit the button that sent me under the whirring scanner after which Todd gave me two black tattoos, ouch, to insure correct placement for my 10 sessions of radiation.

 

Health: Drove 45 minutes to RMCC (Rocky Mountain Cancer Care) off Dry Creek Road in Littleton. I was a little unhappy because I had liked Dr. Leonard, but he was unavailable so I had to see Dr. Carter. While driving, it occurred to me that I might like him, too.

A handsome man in a rugged way, gray-blue eyes, short cut curly hair, and wearing gray scrubs, he entered the room smiling. I liked him right away. May sound silly, but it matters a lot to me that I have a good fit with my many doctors. Hell, they’re a significant part of my social life after all.

He went through my chart and my symptom list more carefully than any doc I’ve had. I felt cared for in his attention to the details. He and I laughed a lot.

I agreed to ten rounds of lower dose radiation rather than three higher dose sessions since my T3 vertebrae had been radiated in 2023 and T4 is right below it. Radiation can weaken the vertebrae and there was a spot where the T4 radiation might overlap with the older site. The lower dose per day decreases the chance of any harm because of that. It’s my spine, after all.

A kind man, too, Dr. Carter arranged the necessary planning CT to happen right after our visit, saving me a trip. Thanks, doc. Jenna, a CT tech, dressed as the alien. It was after all, Halloween.

Cancer. I’ve had many years now to consider it. An inner assassin. My body turned against me. A chronic disease. And, it is all those things. Yesterday I considered it sui generis. Simply an organism, if a runaway cell can be called that, cancer follows its own path, doing what it needs to do to survive. As I, the larger organism do, too.

My cancer is crafty, cunning. Consider that I’ve had the collective wisdom of decades of experiments, scientific break throughs, surgery, radiation, and drugs. It’s beaten them all. I admit to a grudging admiration for its tenacity.