Finishing the fractions to renaissance music. It conjures up visions of castles, balls, courtly life. A world far removed from photons and linear accelerators. No CyberKnifes in the late middle ages. Just a lot of great art, city states. Kim, therapist Kim, says it reminds her she wants to go to the Renaissance Festival. That, too.
Thirty-first fraction yesterday, 4 to go. Gut problems reduced. Much less gas. Nicky measured my bladder. Each day I get a small amount of gel rubbed on my tummy, an ultrasound probe goes on the gel. Yesterday. “100.” Nicky said. That’s ml of urine, btw. 100 is the magic number. Anything above it and the treatment can go ahead. Unless gas. The things we do for a cure.
Michelle and David brought fish, salad, rice, vegetables, and lemon cake on Sunday. CBE folks. When SeoAh was here, we ran into Michelle at Walmart. This was January. Her husband, David, had a month old diagnosis of prostate cancer, with metastases. I told her about my experience in 2015.
Later, when my new diagnosis came, I talked to her at mussar. David and I got together for coffee at the Muddy Buck in Evergreen. As it happened, that was the Friday I saw Dr. Gilroy to discuss treatments. David mentioned Lupron to me in the morning; I had it prescribed for me in the afternoon. David, too, had radiation, though 20 sessions rather than 35.
The Muddy Buck, Evergreen
He’s had side effects from the Lupron. Memory loss, hot flashes at night. Since he had mets, they couldn’t do a radical prostatectomy. Too much chance that would spread the cancer rather than eliminate it. In his case they’re trying to suppress all the testosterone, so he’s getting a second medication that takes care of testosterone produced in places you don’t suspect, like the adrenal gland.
It was good to talk with him again. A mini support group. I’ve got lots of support, but David is the only one who also has prostate cancer.
The last week of treatment, one drive down, four to go.
Had breakfast with Alan yesterday at the Lakeshore Cafe. Told him about the interesting failure of the bank we tried to create for the poorest of the poor. This was after a 1989 trip to Bogota where we spent a week with staff of the Fundacion Grupo Social.
This group, now a huge corporation, began with Jesuit inspired credit circles for citizens of barrio Jerusalem. In order to give small loans when these folks had no assets the Jesuits conceived of co-signing. If I wanted money to start a small business or build a home (a shack, really), you could co-sign as my guarantor. The default rate on these loans was minimal. Social cohesion is as good as a down payment. This was the start of the micro-credit idea.
We worked hard for a year to put together a Minnesota version, but a recession forced the bank that was working with us to withdraw their generous offer of two million dollars for capitalization.
Alan asked last week over breakfast what I’d done. When I told him a few things: West Bank Community Development Corporation work, Jobs Now, MICAH (Metropolitan Interfaith Affordable Housing Coalition), Minnesota Council of Non-Profits, I surprised myself by being eager to talk about it. Realized that with the exception of Kate and Jon a little bit, no one here in Colorado knew my Minnesota story, my second phase of family and work.
Life is so different here. No contacts. No friends of decades. Only a few places with memories, most tied to the grandkids.
The West has always been a place to start over for Americans from the humid east, guess I’m no exception. No expectations based on prior achievements or prior failures. A new person rising where the sun sets.
A friend asked me: “(As a result of facing death) have you been informed by any wider sense of the simple joy of being? Or any other description of the immediate worth of being?”
Mortality signals. They’ve been in my life since toddlerhood. Polio in 1949. Mom died in 1964. Lost all hearing in my left ear suddenly at 38. MRI for brain tumor as a result. High blood pressure. Took me years to come out from under mom’s death. An alcoholic haze lasting until my late 20’s.
Even after I emerged from my grieving sober, there was still rage, still self-loathing, still so much overburden. Took another decade of Jungian therapy. Then, finally, I met Kate.
She was my chance to live a different life, one unhooked from the patterns and history, or, at least, unhooked from their power over me. We made a pact to support each others creativity, each others deepest hopes. And, we have done that.
We’ve raised two boys into men. We went as close to Mother Earth as we could. Years of soil amendments, planting seeds. Corms. Tubers. Bulbs. Slips. Trees. Shrubs. Harvesting tomatoes, leeks, onions, beans, beets, carrots, raspberries, apples, pears, plums, cherries. Bee keeping. Artemis Honey for friends and for ourselves.
Kate’s quilting and sewing became her place to express love and imagination. I wrote. Many novels. Literally millions of words on this blog. We both supported, in our own ways, political values of compassion, love, justice. Or, leadership as my friends Paul and Sarah Strickland, Lonnie Helgeson, and Gary Stern defined it for Leadership Minneapolis back in the 1980’s. (funny story there. for another time.)
We moved. For family. And, because, as John Muir said, “The mountains were calling.” Mortality signals began coming with more urgency. Prostate cancer once. New knee. Prostate cancer twice. Kate’s Sjogren’s, her bleed, weight loss, lung disease. Her new shoulder and, earlier, hips.
All this time, even from my youth, besotted with religion, small r. The deep, the awesome, the wonderful. Sure, in my childhood it had Methodist as a label. Threw that away in my junior year of high school. “Your god is too small.”
Went looking for other clues. First in Roman Catholicism. Then, existentialism. Later, a more examined, more intellectual, more spiritual Christianity. The ministry. Disillusionment.
Here’s the synchronicity. Before I met Kate, a year or two, I’d been in spiritual direction with John Ackerman at Westminster Presbyterian. As I explained to him where I found spiritual sustenance, in the earth, a tactile spirituality, I said, he had an ah-ha, “Charlie, you’re a Druid!”
By the time I met Kate I was well on my way out of Christianity. In fact, I was all the way out, yet still, Grand Inquisitor fashion, working in the ministry. When she agreed to my quitting the ministry to write, the timing saved my soul.
She recommended I find a niche, a place to call my own when writing. Hmmm. Looked to my ancestors. Knew I had some Irish and Welsh blood, Ellis and Correl, so I went searching into Celtic thought.
The Great Wheel. Seems innocent enough, ordinary. An agricultural focused calendar. The Celts started out with only two seasons: Summer and the fallow time, Winter. They added the solstices and the equinoxes, then named the cross-quarter holidays: Beltane, May 1, Lughnasa, August 1, Samain, October 31st, and Imbolc, February 1, each halfway between either a solstice or an equinox.
The sequence was “…a Druid!”, Kate, Celtic thought, Andover and the perennial flowers, the orchard, the raised beds, the fire pit, the bees.
After, in Colorado, living in the Rockies, I found the consolation of Deer Creek Canyon. Drove back home to Shadow Mountain after my biopsy results confirmed my cancer diagnosis. Through Deer Creek Canyon.
The mountains on either side of the road that followed Deer Creek Canyon. Exposed rock, cliffs, peaks. Deer Creek moving rapidly down toward the South Platte. Their age. The Laramide Orogeny. Rock thrust up from its place in the earth’s crust. Started 80 million years ago, ended 33 million or so years ago.
Those rocks reached out to me as I drove, called to me. I thought about the Appalachians, once mighty and tall, now worn down by millennia of rain and streams and trees and grass. They formed 480 millions years ago. These mountains, these rocky mountains through which I drove were young. Still jagged, still exposed in parts. Might take 400 millions years, maybe more, to wear them down to Appalachian size.
The may fly. Flies up and mates in one day. Then, dies. Oh. I see. My life. A may fly life. Shorter, even, compared to the Rockies. More like a fraction of a second. When I’m gone, my may fly life ended by prostate cancer or something else, these mountains (I’m still driving and thinking and feeling shocked) will look as they do now. Yet, even their life above the earth’s crust has limits.
So, too, the earth. When the sun comes to the end of its life and becomes a red giant, it will engulf the earth and our planet, our only home, will be gone.
That day the strongest mortality signal I’ve ever received cracked me open, laid my soul bare to the complex interleaving of human life, of life itself, and the souls of the mountains. We are one, all part of the cycling of elements that began with the Big Mystery. We have our time, long or short, then we return to the primal forces that wander among solar systems and galaxies.
That was the Great Wheel realized at its most expansive, a repeating series of beginnings, growth, harvest, and decay. The movement from Beltane to Samain. It became enough for me, spiritually and religiously.
When the cancer reemerged, I was in a different place. The consolation of Deer Creek Canyon, the fundamental and universal rhythms of the Great Wheel had reshaped my inner landscape. I do not need a text based religion to tell me who I am or what life means. I do not need a guru or a silent retreat to go into my own deep well.
This is me. 72. Prostate cancer. Still alive. Still living my life. I sleep well at night. When I wake, I do not ruminate. I have a pleasant, floaty feeling, then return to sleep. This is new for me. Not something you’d expect after a recurrence of cancer, but true anyhow.
Here’s my direct answer to my friend. “Have I been informed by any wider sense of the simple joy of being? Or any other description of the immediate worth of being?” Shifting one word is enough. “Have I been informed by any wider sense of the joy of becoming? Or any other description of the immediate worth of becoming?
Deer Creek Canyon finished my long journey from monotheism to a process theology. I was not. I am. I am not. I don’t care. A Roman epitaph. I would change it to: I was becoming. I am becoming. I will become. I love this butterfly turning of the Great Wheel.
With Chuang Tzu, I don’t know if I’m a butterfly dreaming of Charlie or Charlie dreaming of a butterfly.
Counting down. #8 today. Twenty-seven fractions received. Listened to Buffalo Springfield. After “Something’s Happening Here”, I didn’t recognize any of the other songs. Huh.
In and out yesterday. Bladder at 280 ml. Watched the CyberKnife duck below the table and rise up high over me. Laid still while clicks of the lens modified the photonic field. Stared at the wooden ceiling. Then, thanks, see you tomorrow.
A salmon, macaroni and cheese, ratatouille, green salad, and banana bread meal from CBE yesterday. Thanks, Mindy. The Mitzvah committee knows how to generate meals. It helps since I’m weary when I get back from Lone Tree. We asked for meals through the week after treatment ends. I’ll be ready to get cooking as soon my energy returns. Still no hotflashes.
Down to single digits. Nine more treatments. Life after radiation (a bit of a joke, ha) is coming next week. Only three bedbugs were ever found. There was a “bubble” of people who sat in that chair at the approximate time Anova suspects the bugs transferred. They’re having them do extra preparation before they can come into treatment. Not me. Nope. No bedbugs here on the mountain. Gratitude. Probably means I’ll finish on August 9th.
My friend Dave, personal trainer Dave, has calmed down the nausea from his brain cancer chemo. Deb told me yesterday that he rode 78 miles last week, 20 miles that day. He’s in phenomenal shape. You might remember my mentioning that he ran a 15 mile endurance race in British Columbia, the Fitzsimmon Mountains. Lots of elevation gain. This was a year ago. Part of the motivation for staying in shape during cancer treatment is to prove you’re still alive, still have agency over your body. Take that, brain cancer. Take that, prostate cancer.
Found all this out when I took in the check for a large lug of Western Slope peaches. There’s a small section of the Western Slope (of the Rockies, in Colorado) that’s perfect for growing fancy peaches. Tents pop up along roads selling Colorado Peaches. On the Move Fitness takes orders from clients and organizes a bulk purchase from Green Barn Produce. Pick’em up next week. Kate’s going to make a sizable batch of peaches frozen in orange juice.
Another Colorado moment yesterday. On the way to Kate’s hearing test (she’s good in both ears. yeah.) we drove past a long dump truck, a side dumper, full of boulders. When I see a large truck here with boulders, I think of the golf carts leaving Minnesota each year for southern courses. Or, the Christmas trees beginning to head out of state by truck in November. Moving rock is a big business here. Including moving those rocks that fall onto roadways.
Sent a note yesterday to Elk Creek Fire District. They have a staff person who does two hour assessments of fire mitigation needs on your property. It’s been three years since I thinned our lodgepoles and I stopped at that. Might be other things I’m missing.
There were 30 wildfires within the Elk Creek District last year. The recent newsletter points out that firefighters “…must focus on evacuations and effectively apply available resources to defendable homes. In these scenarios, it is crucial that homeowners have already implemented Home Ignition Zone (HIZ) best practices.”
In practical terms this defines the triage that firefighters do in case of a wildfire threatening homes. They leave those already in flames and those too difficult to get to, think way up high or very steep driveways or in an unmitigated stand of trees. Those with short driveways, near major roads, who have done mitigation in their HIZ, will be defended. Our house meets all those criteria and I want to make sure it continues to.
Life in the WUI (pronounced woo-eee), the Wildland/Urban Interface. Yes, it makes about as much sense to live here as in a flood plain or in a coastal city waiting for sea level rise or a bad hurricane. But, we love it here, as residents of those other areas must love their home turf. So…
Thinner crescent this morning. More toward the east. These sickle moons. Beautiful and fleeting. Like life.
Sailor take warning
Because our house faces south, lodgepole pines and Black Mountain block early sunrise and the latter part of the sunset. When I get the paper before I come up to the loft, a red sky is sometimes visible (depends on time of year) at the horizon, peeking through stands of pine. The sun disappears behind Black Mountain like it drops below the curve of the earth on the ocean. No green flash though. At least I haven’t seen it.
Moved to picking up groceries instead of having them delivered. May still use delivery, but having them picked by staff, then loaded into the Rav4 works, too. Saves a lot of time. And, checks impulse buying. Bingo/bingo.
Read the short essay, On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt, philosophy professor emeritus from Princeton. Tom sent it to me. I’ll have to read it again to get clear, but in essence he says bullshit is any attempt to persuade without adherence to the truth, other than a lie. Which, he says, makes bullshit a greater enemy of truth than a lie which at least opposes itself to the truth and in so doing acknowledges that there is a truth.
In this regard he comes to an interesting conclusion. Since, as the Buddhists have said for centuries, the Self changes, mutates, and self-knowledge is therefore evanescent, sincerity is also a form of bullshit. That is, when we attempt to convince others that we are sincere, we do so without knowing our true Self by definition. Chew on that awhile. I’m considering the concept of authenticity in relationship to this.
Two more weeks of radiation. Ten more ten minute photonic zaps. Unless of course. Bedbugs. Looking forward to the end, so stay in bed bedbugs! Don’t come to the office. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.
Don’t think I mentioned the DEXA scan I got on the 19th of July. Dexa scans measure, among other things, bone density. Searching for osteoporosis. I had it because Lupron tends to, in Sherry’s words, “soften the bones.” Making me more vulnerable to broken bones.
No results from the scan yet, but I did learn one fact that disturbed me. I’m now 5’6″ rather than 5’7″. Kate’s lost 4 inches plus over the last few years. We’re shrinking together. This finding disturbed me mostly because it’s a permanent change of something I had taken as a given since I became an adult.
Asimov’s Foundation series is being made into a television series by Apple. Hari Seldon on the little screen. Since I won’t be subscribing to Apple TV, I don’t know when I’ll see it. But. I hope sooner than later. Psychohistory is the key idea. No. Not another satire on 45’s clash with reality. Psychohistory is a way of predicting the probability of future events. Worth re-reading.
Another sci-fi classic has gotten a new movie treatment. Dune. The 1984 vehicle by David Lynch missed the mark, hamartia. The new one comes out in 2020. Will go for sure. Probably worth a re-read, too.
Science fiction was a staple in my reading until a decade ago. Now it’s only the occasional Kim Robinson, Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, or some other one I happen onto. The Broken Earth triology by N.K. Jemisin is very good, for example. Fantasy, science fiction, religion–all utilize similar mental muscles. Poetry, myth and legend and fairytales, too. This is not at all a denigration of religion, btw. I’m placing it where it belongs in my spiritual life which depends on observation, imagination, cogitation.
I’m reading a Neal Stephenson work right now, Fall, or Dodge in Hell. Also, a couple more werewolf novels. Saw a blurb by Neil Gaiman yesterday: The second draft is about making it look like you knew what you were doing all along. Like that one. Gonna pull out Superior Wolf soon and get to work on the second draft.
Buddy Tom Crane sent me a small essay, On Bullshit, which I’m reading today. Sounds germane for the Boris and Donald show.
A lot of my reading is online, sometimes more than I want. Not often, but I can get trapped in reading interesting article after interesting article. e.g. An essay on the introduction of a new apple variety. 25 works that define contemporary art. Everday carry. Life may have evolved before earth finished forming. So much bait for a curious guy.
The waning crescent of the radiation moon was high in the south southeast sky this morning. As it wanes, so do the number of treatments. Yesterday was twenty-five, five-sevenths of the 35. My new calendar from Anova has an endpoint of August 9th, so two more full weeks. Barring time-outs for fumigation and heat treatments.
This does mean that my recovery from the radiation gets delayed. The first week after finishing mimics a treatment week, fatigue and gut wise, Dr. Gilroy said. After that my body gradually returns to normal. Of course, it’s a new normal. One that finds the cancer dead and gone, we hope.
Then the primary treatment related issues will be Lupron related. Again, so far, no hot flashes or other physical side effects. Yeah. May it continue. Kate and I have noticed some lability. I’m a bit more maudlin, though I have a maudlin gene anyhow. Sentimental guy. When I get tired, I’ve gotten a bit down, but nothing that’s lasted.
Entering another phase. As the radiation winds down, I’m finding my thoughts returning to the actual cancer. Been focused on the mechanics and logistics of radiation, waiting for side effects of the CyberKnife and the Lupron. Both their newness and their strangeness have served to deflect my thoughts from the cancer itself.
Without weekday trips to Lone Tree I’ll have no physical signal of the treatments I’m receiving. The Lupron is every three months for up to 2 years. Just a shot in the butt and done. Ten seconds every three months rather than ten minutes every weekday.
Sword of Damocles
Over the last couple of months I have stopped in front of my workout mirror on occasion and looked at myself. Maybe a bit thinner, but the same otherwise. No visible evidence of a terminal illness trying to reestablish itself, to finish the job it began 4 plus years ago. Which is, so far, the weirdest part. Some cancer is aggressive, of course, but prostate cancer, by comparison, is indolent. A good thing. But, its intention is the same. Occupy and eliminate the host. Me.
Until my first PSA I’ll have no idea if either radiation or the Lupron has succeeded. And, since the Lupron is temporary and reversible in its effects, I’ll not know whether the primary treatment, the CyberKnife, eliminated the cancer until I’m off the Lupron for at least three months. Months or years from now.
My gut feeling is that the CyberKnife will have done its job and I will be cancer free. Cured. But, I won’t know that until five years have passed with less than .01 PSA’s. Even then, another recurrence is possible, though less likely.
25th fraction today. Ten more to go. No longer sure when I finish since we lost two days more this week. Probably the 9th of August, barring other infestations.
Kate’s promoting a new superhero: Bedbugman/woman. It starts in a cancer treatment center where a mild-mannered physician, who looks like Dr. Gilroy, gets bitten by a bedbug irradiated by the CyberKnife. There’s more to figure out, like powers and villains and such, but this could be a rival to Marvel, doncha think?
Wednesday and Thursday were what we prostate cancer patients like to call Bedbug days. Hopefully the heat treatment got the little bastards. But. Will bedbug guy return with a new creepy crawly and start this cycle over again? Not counting on August 9th.
Kate and I went to mussar yesterday. Since my treatments are midday, except for Bedbug days, I’ve been unable to go since I started the radiation. We got there once or twice prior to my treatment, but doctor appointments and general fatigue kept at home most of the time.
The conversation was again about awe, Marilyn presiding. I’m going to do some more research here, but from a slightly different angle. As we talked, I became convinced that awe and mysticism have a distinct correlation. That’s one part of the research. I’m also intrigued with the connection between Rudolf Otto’s work, The Idea of the Holy, and awe. It may be that awe is an element I’ve been looking for in reimagining/reconstructing the idea of faith. Perhaps a crucial one. More later.
CBE and the Thursday mussar group in particular have been part of our lives since we discovered them in 2016. It was nurturing to be seen, to be able to recount some of my journey to friends. To be, again, part of a group I care about and that cares about me. And, Leslie brought us a meal in a blue plastic cooler. Mindy said she’d be bringing food by on Tuesday. Feeling loved. Gratitude.
My radiation treatment has gone from futuristic Skynet sinister to the arthropodic surreal. The mighty cyberknife has been temporarily felled by a bug. For a second time.
A moment of disorientation. My brain. Locked door, eh. Are we in the wrong place. Let’s check the signage. Nope. (I forgot the Anova lettering was much further up, nearer the top of the three story building.) A lobby chair was sitting outside on the landscaping gravel. Is that a clue? Are they throwing it away? I might take it, a nice looking chair. Maybe it had a bed bug, from last week? Maybe I’ll leave it.
Due to a malfunctioning phone (getting replaced today) I made the drive to Lonetree only to discover, for the second time in a week, that bed bugs had been found in the reception area. When I got there, I went to the door, pulled on it and it was locked.
And in this corner, the reigning champ, CyberKnife!
Oh. That door’s ajar. I went over to the door, usually locked, that opens directly into the treatment area where the cyberknife lives and pulled on it. I’m a curious guy and I was definitely puzzled.
Hey, you guys know your front door’s locked? Stupid question, but I thought, well I’m not sure what I thought. Still a bit disoriented by being unable to gain access to my cancer treatment. That’s cancer. And, my treatment is trying to save my life. So, you’ll forgive me, I hope, if I felt discombobulated by the situation.
Patty and Dr. Gilroy were there. Dressed in his usual tattersall shirt and slacks, Gilroy was at the computer station where, before each session, I have to say Charles Buckman-Ellis, 2/14/47 and give Nicky or Kim my music preference for the day.
Oh, yes, they knew it was locked. Another bed bug was found.
Then followed some learning about bed bugs. They wait until you get to sleep Dr. Gilroy said. Your co2 exhalations tell them it’s safe to come out. They crawl out from the seams in the sheets and mattress, climb up on your body, and drink your blood. Like a mosquito, he said. Yeah, I thought, more like a vampire. Then, Dr. Gilroy went on, they poop blood. That shows up as black on your sheets. Oh.
Patty, usually dressed in light flowing blouses, had on an athletic t-shirt from some local college and white pants. We don’t know who’s bringing them in or whether the fumigators last week didn’t do a good job. So, we’ll be closed today, probably tomorrow and Friday. I hope we’ll open up on the weekend.
No, Dr. Gilroy said. They need the rest. Seven days in a row is too much.
Patty said, “Well, we’ll open on Monday then.”
The Arthropoda, means joint-footed according to Ms. Anderson
In response to my unasked question Dr. Gilroy said, “Having some space between treatments is not a problem. The important thing is getting all 35 treatments. This will just push the finish date back a bit.”
We talked a little more, shaking our heads at the absurdity of the situation. Cutting edge robotic and nuclear medicine technology felled by the common bed bug. This shows, I said on leaving, the power of arthropoda.
Yes, Dr. Gilroy said, they’re taking over the world.
