Summer and the Radiation Moon
Cancer treatment has given my life a new structure for at least seven weeks. I workout in the mornings earlier than I have been, head to Lone Tree for a visit with the Cancer Predator and its priestesses: Patty, Nicky, and Kim, and return, tired, but knowing that I’ve accomplished something important.
I may, often do, cook supper, too. That’s a full day for me. It’s noteworthy for what it doesn’t include. Painting. Writing or revising. Doing much else except some TV or a movie.
I do read, of course. Reading a number of books right now. Wolf Moon by Charles De Lint. He’s an original fantasy writer and this is his werewolf novel. I’m still reading werewolf novels, watching werewolf movies, and reading about transformations and wolves in the middle ages. I Like to Watch by Emily Nussbaum. A collection of her essays on the Golden Age of television. She pegs its beginning with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She had me at Buffy. The second novel of a duology about a Boston pathologist who intervenes in the millennia long history of werewolves from Arcadia. Lots of newspaper and magazine articles on the web. Essays on the Parsha Kate and I will present in September at the Bagel Table.
A once a week breakfast with buddy Alan Rubin from CBE. E-mail correspondence, a bit of Facebook. Feeding the dogs. Getting the mail. Ordering groceries. Yes. These, too. Trash. Those normal domestic activities. But the key focus is on radiation and taking care of myself/those I love.
Lupron therapy will extend past the radiation treatment, possibly for several months. It doesn’t have the same daily impact of a trip to Anova Cancer Care. There is though the waiting. Not for Godot, but for side effects. None yet. May that continue.
I will be under more surveillance, more regularly, again. PSA’s every three months for some time period. As long as I’m on Lupron, for sure, which could be as long as two years.
Another existential reality that I’ve not really come to grips with yet, too. My cancer returned only three and a half years after my first “cure.” As a result, my expectations for what cure means have been permanently altered.
Even if the ultimate result of all this radiating and testosterone suppressing is a long term drop in my PSA, there will always be at least a soupçon of doubt. I don’t believe I’ll ever be as carefree about cancer as I was after my prostatectomy. I thought it was over. Nope.