Lughnasa and the Herme Moon
Wednesday gratefuls: The Trail to Cold Mountain. Joan. Rebecca. Deb. Abby. Tal. Acting. Being Jewish. Israel. Korea. Rabbi Jamie. Night drives up Brook Forest and Black Mountain Drive. Black Mountain. Shadow Mountain. Berrigan Mountain. Conifer Mountain. Aspen Perks. Friends there. Travis. Brought me coffee without asking. Grieving. A journey toward wholeness. The work of acting. Memorizing. Love. PSA and testosterone. Prostate cancer. Love.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Love
One brief shining: Undetectable again my PSA and a T score lower than 10 which you would think would make me feel wonderful but no, it raises the reality now of the drug holiday when I go off Erleada and Orgovyx for as long as my cancer will allow it which feels like jumping out of a plane with no parachute relying on good luck or another sky diver to pluck me up before I crash into the earth.
That probably overstates how I feel. But not by much. Since 2015 I’ve segued from one treatment protocol to another, always getting surgery, radiation, or androgen deprivation therapy. To go naked. To just let the cancer have a safe space with no barriers to its growth? Yikes! The theory is two fold. The first. The radiation and ADT (androgen deprivation therapy. keeping my psa and testosterone suppressed chemically.) may have done such a good job that my cancer [my cancer. huh. I guess it is just that.] will not wake up, at least not for a very long time. The second. The ADT drugs lose their efficacy after a while and have to be stopped before that point, usually two years after starting their use.
I will still have blood draws every three months. Always waiting for the one where the PSA starts to rise indicating the cancer has begun to grow again. That is the most likely scenario. How long that takes is unknown and peculiar to the individual. There is a slight possibility that all these treatments have cured me. Unlikely, but possible. However, even with a long run of suppressed PSA tests I will never know for sure. That will only happen when or if I die of something else.
This is that window of time every three months where my blood gets drawn, the test results come back, and I meet with Kristie, my oncology PA. At this point it doesn’t raise my anxiety level much, but it does raise my awareness level. Oh. Yeah. Cancer! No escaping that. Literally. No escaping it at this point. Big fun.
The good news is that I keep living instead of waiting to die. Writing The Trail to Cold Mountain. Learning to act. Putting on a showcase. Converting to Judaism. Taking care of the house. Eating out with friends. Talking to friends and family over Zoom. Living in the Mountains. Seeing sacred moments like the Rainy Night Watcher. Dreaming. Dog sitting. Traveling.
In that sense, that most important sense, my cancer treatment has been wildly successful. With only occasional periods of awful fatigue and hot flashes, side effects, I’ve been strong enough to care for Kate through her long illness, continue working out, engaging life, not sitting in death’s waiting room. Good enough for me.
