Imbolc and the Ancient Moon
Sunday gratefuls: Blood. Radiation. Prostate cancer. Great Sol. Joan. Alan. Cheri. Francesca. Shabbat. Conifer Medical. Movies. Returning to Seoul. 2:22. Going nova. Odysseus on his side. After having passed through the Scylla and Charybdis of Lunar landing. Space above and the Moon below. Scientists. Engineers. Space travel of all kinds.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Bleeding stopped
One brief shining: In June of 2019 I spent thirty-five sessions under the mechanical dinosaur shape of the Cyberknife, lying quietly as it jerked and twisted its away around my abdomen, sometimes to jazz sometimes the blues sometimes Mozart all my choice; the trips to Lone Tree stopped in August but some of the side effects might come even years later Dr. Gilroy said. How right he was.
A lonely night last night. One of those side effects, radiation induced proctitis, an inflammation of the lining of the rectum, kept me up last night. A lot of blood. I mean, a lot. My first thought was: this is where Kate’s decline began. And she had less bleeding than I had. Didn’t help. After the first session I called Conifer Medical. What should I do?
Wait it out, use the suppositories. If you go to the emergency room, they can’t do anything for it, so they’ll put you in the hospital. Yep, that’s what happened with Kate. Don’t want to do that if I don’t have to. I didn’t. The oncall doc said I might have two or three more episodes but that it should quiet down after that. If not, call again.
And so it did. Nothing since 2 am.
If that’s TMI, sorry, but I wanted to give you the context for the real difficulty I had last night. I handled the bleeding and talking to the doc just fine. Didn’t want to, but I had to. I was calm.
The real problem was this. I felt alone. Because I was alone and having a real crisis. When Kate had her bleed, I was there to talk to her, take her to the emergency room, stay there, wait. No Kate. The burden felt very heavy. Handling the crisis and handling the emotional weight of it. Having to make the decisions alone.
I did go back to bed and got a good night’s sleep. That has helped this morning. I had to contact Alan and Joan to tell them I couldn’t make the concert this morning. Didn’t like that. I keep my commitments. And I couldn’t.
This morning those feeling are gone, replaced by my usual alone but not lonely. Still. They happened, opened a hole in my life situation. Made me consider the downsides of living alone. At 77.
Doubt anything will change. Don’t know what kind of change I could make short of living in a senior care setting and I don’t want that. Maybe consider who to call if such a thing happens again. Maybe talk to a couple of people.
BTW: the radiation accomplished nothing positive.
