Health

Samain and the Thanksgiving Moon

Friday gratefuls: Radiation injury to my sigmoid. Dr. Evans. Becki and Pam, nurses at Arapahoe Endoscopy. Freddy’s hamburgers. Seat heaters. Money, more money, from oil. So strange. Mary’s efforts in this regard. Mark getting oil money from the U.S. in the sands of Araby. Kate. Cribbage. Bicycle playing cards. I know, but I’m putting it here anyhow, Amazon. Tony’s. Safeway pickup. Snow. Cold. Christmas and Hanukkah. And, Winter Solstice and Yule. 40 days!! Easy entrees.

 

And, the inner truth I sought is: radiation injury to my sigmoid colon. Sigh. The odds have not been in my favor. Even though they were low in both cases I ended up with urgency incontinence and radiation proctopathy. This last diagnosed yesterday via sigmoidoscopy. In my case, bleeding is the primary symptom. And not too bad. Mild. May disappear. May come and go for the rest of my life. These two are preferable to death. Not pleasant, but not life changing either. I can deal.

I did stop taking the incontinence med, mirabegron. It raised my heart rate during exercise and increased my resting heart rate. Affecting my overall fitness negatively. Not ok with me. We’re in a period of time when many cancers have a less threatening prognosis, prostate cancer among them. Yeah. The treatments that can cure them or turn them into chronic conditions though. Sometimes. Boo. Not in their direct results, holding the cancer at bay or killing it. But in the unintended effects like I’m experiencing.

Even so. Terminal illness versus manageable condition? No contest which I choose. Because of this, and because I know the source of these symptoms, I’d choose the treatments again. Every time. Even knowing.

Snow today. Colder. Looking more like December. May it continue.

Anti-maskers. Anti-vaxxers. You’re the bad ones, Mr. Grinch. Anti-election results lawyers. Anti-election states. You’re the bad ones, Mr. Grinch. Say it out loud. You’re the bad ones. We may have to navigate around you, but we will pass you by, leaving the Covid wards, the measles epidemics, authoritarianism in its all too many forms to your blinkered selves. Hope you decide to catch up, reform, revisit your thoughtless, seditious views. But, if not. Hey, hell’s better with company, right?

A busier than I like it week. A bit odd since this is the time of Covid and Kate doesn’t go out except for a doctor. Oh. Well.

Looking from the Mountaintop. Black Mountain lost in a white haze, a light Snow falling. The Lodgepoles and the Aspens welcoming the moisture. Me, too.