Spring and the Moon of Liberation

Tuesday gratefuls: Neck brace. Frailty. Horror. The Big C. Laura Linney. Oliver Platt. Spice Ranch Fusion. Iran. Israel. U.S.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Eggs

 

Kavannah: Wonder. Malchut. cuTo salad. Mark in Hafar. Meds.

Tarot: Five of Bows, empowerment.  “…the battles you face are not necessarily for destruction, but to test and validate your inner power, leading to genuine empowerment.” May it be so.

One brief shining: I lay there on the exam table while Samantha fussed with the EKG machine. Needed more paper, the red horizontal grids. She tried various positions, but had to call in Lee. I asked why I had to take this again.

“The other one expired,” she said with a sardonic chuckle. The extended runup to the actinium trial. Long enough that the EKG I took a month ago was no longer current. “Just another example of our broken healthcare system.”

I like Samantha. She taught ESL in Bangkok. Too humid. “I wanted someplace drier. We’ve lived in Colorado for ten years.”

I drive down Shadow Mountain, down 285. Down the hill. Takes about forty-five minutes adding in a long stretch west on 470. The neck brace reduces exhaustion while driving. Its chief benefit.

I’m not completely fed up with the broken health care system. Not yet. I could get there. The physical demands of driving. Drug side effects. Imaging. Appointments.

It wears me down. I get home, peel off my neck brace, grab a cold water, and plunk down in my chair. Done for the day.

Here’s the irony. Stage 4 is no longer a death sentence. New drugs. New treatments like actinium. I so appreciate all the research. However. The longer I’m kept alive–my goal and my oncological teams–the more dramatic and invasive the treatments.

Costs go up, too. Erleada and Orgovyx. Drugs I’ve taken since 2019. Eight-hundred to nine-hundred dollars each. Monthly. Modest by the standards of other cancer drugs. Privilege. I have the money. I wonder about others.

Early on in this journey I could have had an axion scan. Insurance denied it. 35 sessions of radiation aimed at defined cancer activity. A possible cure. I got radiation to the place where my prostate used to be. 50% of returning cancer shows up there. Wasn’t where mine was.

Litigating the past derails the journey. Could I have been cured? Maybe. I wasn’t. Irrelevant today.

Today, eleven years later, I’m awaiting word on my randomization for the trial. Thursday. Samantha said they all hope I get into the actinium plus the souped up Erleada arm. That touched me. These RMCC folks. Kind. Helpful. Smart

My response to this trial will indicate my future path. If positive, I’ve got years ahead of me. If not…

Get an EKG.
Sign papers.
Keep going.