Spring Rushing Waters Moon
Cancer seems to move the wheels of medicine a bit faster than other things. My axumin scan will happen on May 14th. A radioactive molecule of an amino acid, leucine, cancer cells take up axumin “avidly” according to Blue Earth Diagnostics. PET scans can observe this activity through gamma ray emissions. According to one website, each dose of axumin costs between $3,000 and $4,000. My cost will be much less, probably around $200.
On May 17th I meet with the radiation oncologists at Anova Cancer Care. Dr. Gilroy will review the axumin scan and use it to recommend a treatment plan. Given the velocity of these matters I imagine the treatment itself will happen soon after.
How this effects Kate and me is uncertain right now. She still has a diagnosis of her lung disease ahead of her, which might entail a lung biopsy, as well as the surgery to place the j-tube. These may happen concurrently. If she’s recovering from surgery and I’m receiving radiation? Not sure how that will be.
Geez. Downbeat. I know. Wish my reality were different. Oh jinn of the lamp where are you? Even so, it’s life. Kate asked me if I was thinking, why me? I said no, never. Why? Because I’m human and we’re frail creatures, our bodies a compromise between life and entropy. Entropy always, always wins.
The technology involved in all this fascinates me. My buddy, nuclear engineer William Schmidt, studied the underlying physics of it all, utilizing nuclear power to create electricity. Now it will find those little bastards that want to advance the entropic time schedule for my body. When my prostate was cancerous, I wanted it out. In this situation there is no thing to cut out, no organ to remove. It’s similar, I think, to a forest where small fires have been ignited by lightning. None of the small fires, in themselves, will destroy the forest, but they have the potential to kindle whole forest consuming wildfires.
I looked at myself in the mirror yesterday. The same. The seven small scars from the DaVinci robot in a jagged curve, hardly visible. Yet, somewhere inside something nasty is happening. My former internist, Charlie Peterson, said we’re all black boxes to a certain extent. Right now, hanging between my psa numbers and the axumin scan, I’m in a limbo where all I know for sure is that there is some cancer, some where in that torso.
Not depressed, but melancholy. A heaviness settles in at some points, some staring. Numb, like my whole body rests on my crazy bone.
