Monthly Archives: May 2015

Beyond the Boundaries, Health

Encouraging and Unsettling

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Beltane                                                                      Closing Moon

Since I’ve begun letting folks know about my prostate cancer diagnosis, a curious and, while encouraging, a somewhat unsettling thing, too, has happened. One friend wrote, “Don’t despair. I faced this ten years ago and am doing fine.” Another, “Because of my age (80’s), I have seen more than 50 men go through this and most of them are doing fine. Many over 10 years later.” Another, “We have three friends going through this right now.”

That so many report good news obviously buoys me up, makes me feel more confident about the path ahead. I’m very glad to have personal testimony about the power of current treatment protocols.

But. I compare the general awareness among men about prostate cancer with the broader and much more public awareness of breast cancer among women and realize something is out of joint. The pink ribbon, the runs, the NFL sneakers, the celebrities have all made breast cancer information broadly available. Women are keenly aware of the warning signs, the tests for its presence and the treatment options if faced with a diagnosis.

Why don’t men have the same level of awareness? I imagine it’s a combination of things. Prostate cancer doesn’t strike, typically, until men are older. The average age at diagnosis is 66. The prostate is a less well-known organ that has a little understood function, even by men. Men have not had their feminist movement moment, so there has not been a broader cultural push for health related to men’s reproductive organs.

Men have a stoic reputation when it comes to reporting health issues. I don’t know if that reputations bears up under scrutiny, but it does serve to obscure conversation among men about health matters.

Then there’s sex. Our society has a confused, contradictory and tangled attitude toward matters sexual and the prostate is in that mix. We don’t know much about it to begin with and what we do know we don’t want to talk about.

Is it time for all this to change? At one level, yes. Of course. Just makes sense. On another, no. It isn’t happening and doesn’t seem to be happening. What would it take to create a more general and healthy understanding of prostate cancer? I don’t know.

Feelings, Holidays, Memories, US History

Summer’s Gateway

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Beltane                                                                  Closing Moon

Beltane marks the start of the growing season and the Celtic summer on May 1st. Meteorological summer doesn’t start until June 1. The summer solstice isn’t until June 20th/21st. Even so, we have just passed through our cultural gate to the summer season: Memorial Day and the Indy 500.

Yesterday bike riders began to show up in greater numbers, a fact that encouraged a lot of barking here on Shadow Mountain. There goes another one. Woof. And another one. Woof. The doggy equivalent of OMG.

Decoration Day, as it was called when I was a kid, was also the end of the school year. 12 years in the Alexandria, Indiana school system left me deeply imprinted with its meaning. First, we had the last day of school. The student’s equivalent of OMG. Then, we had the Decoration Day parade which ended at the cemeteries on Highway 9. After that, bliss.

Each year since, even today, the day after Memorial Day feels different. Lighter. My heart fills up with possible small adventures: hikes, road trips, movies, long evenings outside with friends. Too, U.S. history becomes more important to me, so I often pick up a Civil War book or something about slavery. This year I imagine they will be about the West.

So, let’s go play!

 

 

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Beltane                                                                    Closing Moon

Slow day. Nap. Feed dogs. Watch TV. Read. Get work done on office in house. Watch the hail come down.

Lots of thunder here at Fjellheim. Thor wandering the sky.

Our Land and Home

Coloradan Leaves Home

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Beltane                                                                          Closing Moon

IMAG0650croppedLoaded up Minnesota specific gardening and plant books, some International Ag Lab chemicals, Artemis honey and wild-grape jam for the Vorhees and stowed it 30 minutes later in the trunk of a little white Nissan. Kate, in her Boulder purchased cloth jacket, took off from the Enterprise parking lot just off Wadsworth in Lakewood. She’ll be in Minneapolis tomorrow, sign the closing papers on Tuesday and meet with R.J. Devick, our money manager, on Thursday. Back here on Shadow Mountain Saturday sometime.

She has a cache of audio books, road food, a Travel Pro packed full of clothes and necessaries. Tom’s gift of a large type Road Atlas travels on the backseat along with the Travel Pro, though she’ll likely rely most on Ophelia, her Garmin. No need for it once she finds Interstate 76, at least not to get to Andover and the motel. But to find the Burnet title office and other spots. It’ll be good to have.

Meanwhile the hounds and I are here in the mountainhome. Thunderstorms today and, if the forecasts hit it, right on through June 1st. A very wet chilly May. Not nearly as much of that often bragged about Colorado sunshine.

Faith and Spirituality, Health, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science

Zombies

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Beltane                                                                         Closing Moon

Cancer still on my mind. This time the battle, war, fighting, struggle words so often attached to thoughts about it. Cancer caused 585,000 deaths in the U.S. in 2013. That’s a city, a whole city the size of Tucson or Milwaukee. From this social perspective perhaps a fight against or a battle against or a war against cancer makes some sense. That’s a lot of people to lose and war would be fought if some nation took out Tucson or Milwaukee.

On a personal level though, say my level, those militant words feel like the wrong metaphor. Cancer is not, in my body, an outside invader that has breached my defenses. No, it’s more like a group of deluded idealists, a utopian commune to which I (or at least parts of me) belong, dedicated to the concept of their own immortality. To extend this metaphor the commune might grow and grow and grow, taking resources from the larger population until everyone outside the commune starves.

Another metaphor might be mental illness. Gripped by the illusion that certain actions will make me live forever, I first cut off a foot and eat it, then a hand. Later, hungrier still, I cut off a leg. At some point there will be nothing left to feed the illusion, but the conviction remains and I take no other sustenance. Death results.

Cancer, of course, has no motive. It has no intention, other than survival. Yet, it is my own cells gone off on their own, to a different rhythm than the rest. As they grow, zombie like, staying alive when they should be dead, cancer recruits other cells to supply it. The host, me, must furnish more and more resources to keep the cancer cells alive. This process has a finite limit.

Cancer cells are more horror movie than battlefield. The first step, it seems to me, is to stop seeing cancer as an enemy and begin to see it for what it is, a deviation from normal cellular processes that left unchecked will slowly consume the host from the inside. It is not fear or violence that will put a stop to it, but careful application of known techniques like surgery (removal), chemotherapy and radiation (to stop the zombie cells). Will these techniques always succeed? No. Not right now.

Horror movies rely on fear for their effect. So do the metaphors of war. We need to back away from both and demythologize this monster. See it clearly. Then, deal with it.

 

 

Family, Health, Minnesota, Our Land and Home

To Our Future

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Beltane                                                                              Closing Moon

We celebrated last night at the Prague in Evergreen, wiener schnitzel, reminiscent of our honeymoon’s late night dinner on the Ringstrasse in Vienna. We’ve traveled a long distance since that red checkered cloth table across from the Hotel Astoria and we’ve traveled it together.

The house in Andover will close next week, the funds from the sale wired into our bank account. This means we can replenish our emergency fund. The emergency fund served us well during the move, providing our our 20% down payment to avoid mortgage insurance, paying the movers and the many miscellaneous expenses of an inter-state change of homes. We did drain it though, almost to the bottom, with all of our non-IRA cash then effectively tied up in the Andover property.

With two mortgages and two sets of utility bills we’ve had a tight budget in Colorado for our first five months and little reserve. So, yippee!Kate and me1000cropped

We’ve also confronted, unexpectedly, a serious challenge to our life together. A cancer diagnosis may not seem like a reason to celebrate, but it was for both of us. As a couple, we work much better with facts, data. We can then make decisions, choose ways to move forward. From April 14th, the date of my physical, until May 21st, the day I got my biopsy results, we were in a zone of ambiguity. That was tough on both of us.

With not only a diagnosis, but actual data about the cancer, we can work together, suss out the most intelligent line of treatment. That removes the anxiety of the unknown and helps us see a way beyond vague fears. It helps a lot, of course, that this particular cancer is usually caught early and has good clinical results for treatment, in many cases a cure.

Kate started our dinner with a toast, “To our future.” That was why we were celebrating.

 

 

Faith and Spirituality, Health, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

An Enemy Within?

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Beltane                                                                           Closing Moon

No longer the same terrifying monster that stalked through my childhood and adult years, cancer yet demands careful attention. And, it kills.

No longer hypothetical for me, but a fact. Inside my own body, lodged in the core, lies a strawberry sized organ (mine’s a bit bigger) that now carries the seeds of my own apocalypse. I imagined I would feel my body had betrayed me, but no. Instead, if I understand it correctly, some of my cells have reached for that long held human fantasy of immortality. Oddly, if those cells reach their goal they will end their dream and me.

Yesterday I felt stunned when Ana, Dr. Eigner’s physician’s assistant, told me I had a positive biopsy for prostate cancer. So much so that her next words about the Gleason score came in my ears, rattled around hunting for understanding and failed. Later, in the book Eigner recommended, How to Survive Prostate Cancer by Patrick Walsh, they fell into place.

Cancer was what I had expected, given my PSA, the digital exam of both Dr. Gidday and Dr. Eigner and my family history. Dad’s prostate cancer at age 65. And, survival until age 89. Even so, the movement from hypothetical to real caused a reeling sensation that momentarily scrambled my thoughts.

Slept fine last night though there was, before I could get to sleep, a small fiery knot in my lower abdomen, a signal that I had unacknowledged fears. Through a trick I learned from either Carl Rogers or gestalt psychology I let this fiery knot speak to me. It spoke not in words as sometimes happens, but in a release of tension. Those fears needed acceptance, not repression. After that, sleep came and my dreams were usual.

On June 11th Kate and I will see Eigner for a long consult on what treatment option to take. After taking into account the pieces of information I have now and calculating that I have over fifteen years to live, I imagine radical prostatectomy, complete removal of the prostate, will be my choice.

Next up. Echocardiogram. Gosh.

 

 

Colorado, Mountains, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Colorado Natives

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Beltane                                                                    Closing Moon

Colorado Native Plants. The books are out and water stained: Colorado Flora, Colorado Noxious Weeds, Native Plants of Mt. Falcon. The also water stained plant list for Mt. Falcon has check marks for the plants I need to know. Went through about half of them yesterday, the other half today.

In studying the very specific nomenclature for plant identification, I got a new appreciation for medical jargon. In writing and communication with other doctors and nurses it is necessary to name the various parts of the anatomy with specificity. Otherwise, the wrong limb gets cut-off or the wrong organ removed.

It is a comfortable feeling to take out books, arrange them in a particular way so they can be referenced easily, to create a plan for learning what I need to know and then execute it. This is an ordered world, one I know well. A safe, predictable world. Today, I need that.

This paintbrush is a beautiful flowering plant, one you may already know, Castilleja integra, the Foothills Paintbrush. It’s in bloom right now, creating impressionist dashes of color as it flowers in otherwise green fields of cheatgrass and yucca.

Permit one thought on mortality. These plants in the foothills of the Rockies have long evolutionary histories, often involving millions of years and thousands of miles, some crossing continents as continental drift shaped and reshaped earth’s land masses. They grown on soil covering rock created in the Archean eon, preceded only by the Hadean. Plants, animals and one-celled creatures have been living and dying on the thin, fertile layer below them for millions of years.

Our own lives are part of that same living and dying, drawing our sustenance from the same thin layer. Yes, each individual life is unique and precious, but each individual life is also ordinary and unremarkable, life and death being not rare, but mundane.

 

 

Plants

Fist down

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Beltane                                                                            Closing Moon

OK. I’m done shaking my fist at fate. At least for now. I’ll wait until the data gets clearer.

We had some sunshine today, helped my overall mood. Colorado has lots of sunshine, but over this month of May, not much.

Right now I’m studying for the test we’ll have during my first Colorado Native Plant Master class on Friday. It rained hard the first class and I left early to make sure Kate had time to make an appointment. Last Friday’s class was the day after my biopsy. My absorption rate is not at its usual high level. Means I have to study harder.

Lot of new terms: drupe, calyx, corolla, receptacle, sepal, dehiscent and many, many more. All part of the extraordinary details, named and differentiated, that make up plant taxonomy. So, I’ll pat my bract, sit on a cuneate leaf and twiddle my axils. Until later.

Anoka County, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science

they cannot and will not define my life

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Beltane                                                             Closing Moon

The closing process with dribs here and there. At the UPS store in Aspen Park, Lauren, in a turquoise UPS shirt, opened her book of notarial acts (not kidding) and recorded her work on our closing documents. I signed them in her presence. Creedence Clearwater played on the muzak. When I said, I like your music. She nodded, I’m 67. 68 here.

The closer wants a document we sent by USPS two weeks ago, a document we couldn’t fill out online. Why’s that? Anyhow I took a photo of it with my phone and e-mailed that to her this morning. Another hard copy goes in the mail today.

A lien waiver for work we had done to follow up the inspection report. None of this amounts to much, but after three months on the market and six with double mortgages everything related has an edge. Though. Glad to do it. Want this done.

Got an appointment for an echocardiogram next Tuesday. They’ll fit me with a Holter monitor, too. I’ll wear it for a month. This is the follow up to those episodes of shortness of breath and palpitations. Could be stress related, I suppose. Trouble is, I don’t feel stressed. Slept fine last night for example.

Then, in other news, I get my biopsy results tomorrow. You might image a scene from Mel Brook’s High Anxiety, but instead I’m calm. Yesterday, as I said, I was weary of all the threats to my life and with this weariness I felt a bit down, but that has lifted.

Exercise helps. So does having framed all this in the week after my physical. That frame puts all of it, the house closing, the prostate biopsy, the heart follow-up in life as it is, not as I wish it would be. The closing takes time and exacts small cuts, none fatal. The prostate and the heart, though each could be fatal, do not change my life. I can still read, laugh, love, plan, hope. They may define my death, though I hope not, but they cannot and will not define my life. However much of it is left.