Faith and Spirituality, Health, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Don’t Leave Town

1 Comment

Summer                                                   Healing Moon

With the waning healing moon 13% full I have been healed.

Here’s an analogy. One April day when the air is a bit cool and daffodils have broken through, yellow against the gray, a stranger comes up to you, perhaps at home or at a bus stop, in the grocery store.

“I have something to tell you. You have been chosen at random to be put on trial for a terrible crime. The maximum penalty for this crime is death.”

“Wait,” you say, “What do you mean? How is that possible?”

“You’ll know more after an initial hearing before the judge. Until then keep yourself available. Don’t leave town.”

A month later, in a Gothic courthouse, you visit a judge who opens your file.

“Hmm. Well. This is all in order. Yes. Sorry you had to be chosen, but these things happen all the time, you know. I’ll call with the results of the trial in about a week. Don’t leave town.”

Shaken even more than when you met the stranger, you go home. You don’t leave town.

“This is the clerk of court calling. Is this X?”

“Yes.”

“You have been found guilty and the sentence is death. You’ll be under house arrest since the execution date is not certain. Sometime in the future. Don’t leave town.”

Stunned, you fall back in your recliner. In every way you feel the same as you did before the stranger came except for your various reactions to his news. Anger, fear, courage, hopelessness, resistance, frayed anxiety. Now this.

“Hello, X?”

“Yes.”

“The judge has decided to hold another hearing on your case. Please come back to the courthouse on this date. Thank you.”

On a day almost 3 months from the stranger’s visit, you climb in your car in the dark. They’ve set the hearing for a very early hour. On the way you realize this might be your last chance. You consider the suddenness, the arbitrary nature of your guilt. And you feel afraid. Again.

The hearing is long and you are present, but can neither hear nor see. Hours later you awake in a prison cell, disoriented. You don’t remember why you are there. Slowly, it comes back. The trial, the sentencing, the final hearing.

A jailer in blue prison garb says, “You’re free to go. The report of your hearing will be available in three to five days. Don’t leave town.”

Unbalanced and unsteady from the hearing process your wife drives you home, this time through dense rush hour traffic. At home you gradually put the hearing behind you.

On a quiet afternoon three days later the phone rings. You pick it up. It’s the judge.

“X. How are you feeling? I see. Well, let’s get right to it. The panel looked over your case and decided to set you free. No capital punishment. You may leave town whenever you wish.”

 

 

General

Wow

Leave a comment

Summer                                                             Healing Moon

Wow. Path report came in early. Clear margins all around. Gleason score 4+3 with extracapsular involvement. This last means I had to have surgery. The first means the surgery was successful. No seminal vesicle involvement. In effect this means I no longer have prostate cancer!

I’ll have PSA tests on a regular basis but the presumption is that I’m now cancer free. This will take a bit to integrate. Just as it was difficult to absorb being a cancer patient, it will also be hard for me to recognize myself as a cancer survivor. The whole episode lasted almost exactly 3 months, April 14th to July 11th. Which is odd. To have something that momentous arise as a possibility, become a certainty, then disappear as a problem.

Lisa Gidday, Ted Eigner and their supporting staff…thank you all. Without you I would have fewer days in which to write, to laugh, to love. How can that be repaid?

General

Old Self Gone

1 Comment

Summer                                                  Healing Moon

After three months of seriousness, distraction, medical visits and surgery I’ve told Kate many times I just want my old life back. And I meant it. Or, at least what I meant was, I want out of this pit of uncertainty and back to a world where tomorrow is not a question mark.

Now, three days after the surgery, sort of the top of a bell curve of anxiety, I see I was wrong about wanting my old life back. The me who lived that old life-writing, Latin, family, hikes, friends-is gone. My pre-April 14th self has vanished, the one who had those priorities. That’s not say there aren’t continuities, yes, there are, but it is to say that my post-cancer diagnosis and treatment self is different, substantially different, I think.

This awareness is only coming to me now so I can’t see with any clarity those differences. They will emerge as I live into the fall and winter. But they exist and want to claim their own ascendancy as time moves forward.

I did not expect this, but in retrospect it makes sense.

Health

Surreal

Leave a comment

Summer                                                                   Healing Moon

While in Skyridge, I had several nurses, all interesting: Ron, Esther and Elizabeth. When the first of them came in my room I noticed on her security badge: Elizabeth and then Medical Oncology Nurse. Oncology, I thought? Why do I have an oncology nurse? This hours after surgery for prostate cancer. That’s how surreal this whole time has been for me.

I’ve not felt seriously ill, except ironically, after my surgery. I had no symptoms. The context was all new to me: Colorado hospitals, doctors, drives. It’s been difficult to raise my inner sense of alarm to the CANCER level. Yet I have it. Or, hopefully, had it.

The weather yesterday, the day after the surgery, was beautiful. Blue skies entertained parties of cumulus clouds, the eye could follow the unusually green plains as far as the horizon line. The world was unconcerned about my health or the health of anyone on the med-surg floor.

The hospital room was beautiful, too. Nicely appointed in woods and sandy textiles, it was a pleasant place to be.  And yet. There was that surgery. That biopsy. Those things that turned my world inside out and upside down. Strange. Surreal.

 

 

Health

Strange

Leave a comment

Summer                                                                   Healing Moon

So. Cleansing continues.

Talking to Kate yesterday I mentioned how strange I feel. Physically, as I’ve said, I feel fine. But tomorrow I’ll have surgery to remove a part of me. Gone forever. A disturbing thought, balanced only by the knowledge that if it stays, all of me might go.

It’s as if I’ve stepped into an alternative universe where I’m desperately sick and can be saved only by drastic actions. Oh, wait.

I’m not describing this well. The cancer is an abstraction, as I’ve said before. I feel no symptoms. My body is not telling me that anything is wrong. Only tests done inside my body, where I can’t see, have found it.

Trust has guided me to tomorrow. Trust in Lisa Gidday, my internist, trust in Kate, trust in Edward Eigner. That trust says this is serious. It’s now. And must be dealt with. Still, trust itself is an abstraction even though those people are not.

But. I feel. Fine. Yet tomorrow I’ll lie feet up high for 3.5 hours as a robot crawls around my innards snipping, cutting, removing, sewing. Very, very strange.

Family, Great Work, Music, Our Land and Home

The First of July

Leave a comment

Summer                                                                  Healing Moon

Hodges Plumbing came out yesterday. They will install the gas line to the generator. Gary or Mike Hodges, I didn’t get his first name, arrived in a red truck and wearing overalls, has a gray handlebar mustache, gets up slowly after visiting the crawl space, and has a train whistle as his ringtone. I liked him.

The generator has to get over to the breaker boxes first, of course, and that’s Eric Ginter’s job. He and 3 other guys will muscle it out of the garage and over to the west side of the house. Eric will install the automatic transfer switch and hook up the generator to it. The automatic transfer switch starts the generator when power goes out in the house and shuts it off when the power returns.

While waiting for Hodges to arrive, I cut down aspen suckers and painted them with an herbicide designed to take out heavy brush and poison ivy. In the wild aspens throw out suckers in a ring around a parent tree. When the suckers grow to a certain size, they throw out more. One of the largest living organisms is an aspen stand which began from one tree*. I’m encouraging certain aspens by not cutting them down, but leaving them enough space to grow large. They are fire resistant, as Jacob Ware, deputy chief for the Elk Creek Fire Protection District, said. “Water, not pitch.”

In the evening we went again to Dazzlejazz, having been there last Friday with Tom and Roxann, this time with Jon and Jen. It was a sweet evening. We gave Jon a large gift to help pay down his student loan debt, part of the house sale proceeds. They were both surprised. They asked about my surgery and how they could support Kate. We listened to groups of teen jazz musicians, two jazz bands and a choral group. One tenor sax player really caught my attention, an edgy growly sound.

We drove into the mountains, back home, with Venus and Jupiter in conjunction and a bright full healing moon hanging in the southwestern sky.

*The Pando (Utah) grove consists of about 47,000 tree trunks, and it covers a little more than 100 acres of land. Overall, researchers believe it could weigh 13-million pounds.

Friends, Health, Woolly Mammoths

BFFs

Leave a comment

Summer                                                              Healing Moon

Down to new Bent’s Fort in Morrison last night. Perched high in the red rock (Fountain formation) foothills overlooking a glittery Denver to the east, the Fort is an unusual Western experience. Tom and Roxann Crane took us out for a second wonderful meal and honest, heartfelt conversation.

This meal really started over 28 years on a cold January late afternoon when Tom and I were initiated into the Woolly Mammoths at Valhelga. No kidding, that’s the name. It’s the family retreat of the Helgeson clan, designed by architect and fellow Woolly, Stefan Helgeson. Tom and I didn’t know each other then, though in the six degrees of connection way we had mutual friends.

Since that time both Tom and I have married again, this time to the last partner. We’ve shared twice monthly meetings, annual retreats with this group of 11 men. The relationship among the Woollies now has decades of memories, intense and often intimate sharing, hard times and good times. The extraordinary piece of the experience is the durable and deep friendships we have formed with each other. These are not buddy relationships with a lot of backslapping, sports watching, gun shooting or fish line throwing; rather, these are bff type friendships, now irrevocable and unbelievably precious.

These men will be with me when I fade out on the morning of July 8th and when I wake up hours later. Their support and that of family, docent friends and high school classmates will make that isolated moment far from lonely. Too, they all constitute a reason to recover and continue living this one life.

 

 

Health

This Is Happening.

Leave a comment

Summer                                                      Healing Moon

Coming back from the pre-op/post-op consultation things felt different. As Kate said, “We’ve moved from thinking to doing.” Since April 14th, it’s been tests, visits to various doctors, reading, talking with friends and family, taking in information,  then decision making. That time period ended with our visit to Eigner on June 11th. We decided on a prostatectomy on July 8th.

The intervening period was a sort of suspension between deciding and acting, knowing the diagnosis and treatment, but having to wait for the surgery. With yesterday’s visit matters have moved to consent forms, instructions for surgery prep, yet more systems checks to see if this body can stand the procedure. It can.

On the way out from talking with Anna, we saw Dr. Eigner. He shook my hand and we had a brief chat. “That looks like a Santa Fe shirt.” “No, Montevideo.” “Ah, that’s Uruguay.” “See you on the 8th.”

It has been an odd experience, this prostate cancer. On April 13th I considered myself a pretty healthy guy. On April 14th I first heard the word malignancy related to me. After the biopsy result I was terminally ill. I went from healthy to definitely not in a matter of weeks, yet I felt no symptoms. There were only clinical findings (digital exam), an elevated PSA, then the biopsy results. All abstract and outside my view. I can’t see my prostate. I can’t feel the cancer. I really don’t feel any different physically than I did on April 13th.

A penumbra of shortened mortality rose over me, shading the future sun. Under its cooler light I felt fine, but wasn’t. In 1992 I went to the Plaza de Toros in Mexico City, the largest bullfighting ring in the world. Tickets were sold sombre y sol. Shade or sun. I bought tickets sombre. Now I would like to move back into the sun.

Definitely feeling a bit more jittery. Imagining the 4:30 am drive to the Sky Ridge Hospital for a 5:30 arrival. Preps. Talking with anesthesiologists and Dr. Eigner. Nurses. Needles. Then quiet for 3 and a half hours. Real. This is coming.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Health, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Yet Another Appointment

Leave a comment

Summer                                                                   Healing Moon

Today is my pre-op/post-op consultation with Dr. Eigner’s physician’s assistant, Ann. She’ll go over what I need to do for surgery prep, what we can expect during the surgery and immediately after, then give us post-op instructions. My level of comfort with all this is substantially higher with Kate involved, both because she’ll be there to hear what I miss and because her own skills make her over-qualified to help me before and after surgery.

I continue to sleep well, have no symptoms (none expected, but still good). Since we are now 10 days out, I’ve stopped my aspirin. My feelings have become more labile as the surgery approaches, which makes sense to me.

The surgery itself has a paradoxical quality, as I imagine many such surgeries do. The paradox is this. It offers me real hope, an opportunity to continue my third phase cancer free. And, that, of course, is the reason for the surgery. On the other hand it has attendant pain and discomfort, improbable but possible complications.

It also might reveal that the cancer is worse than we imagine.  My staging included the seemingly innocent, NxMx. The N refers to the status of the lymph nodes near the prostate and the M refers to possible metastasis, or the spread of the cancer to the rest of the body. The x means unknown.

This is where the paradox becomes strong, intense. The surgery might (probably will) move me past this whole episode. In that case, hallelujah. Or, it might dash that hope and begin another series of tests and treatments. In that case, uh-oh.

The good news is that if Eigner had suspected lymph node or metastatic involvement he would have ordered imaging studies prior to surgery. He didn’t. That’s a positive sign, but only that. We won’t know until the surgery is over, perhaps not even then. We may have to wait on the pathology report, or even the first few p.s.a readings in the year + after surgery.

My emotions ride along the trajectory of which outcome dominates my mood. Most of the time I imagine negative margins on the removed prostate. That means no cancer cells in the tissue surrounding the removed organ. Not definite relative to NxMx, but very positive. Occasionally my rational side will bring me up short while I’m feeling good about this most likely outcome. Wait, it says. You might be right, but what if you’re wrong. Then, you’re feelings will fall from the height of hope to the canyon of uncertainty. Oh. Right.

When rationality moves me to consider all the possible outcomes, then I can slip into fear. One problem with an active imagination (7 novels and one underway) is that I have no difficulty following the path of more tests, more treatment all the way to death. The first feeling that comes in the wake of that thought is fear.

I’ve worked out over the last 50 or so years, a philosophical position that calms me before the fear dominates and shakes my foundations. Usually. Nothing’s 100 percent. I’ve expressed it elsewhere. The short version is: something, some time. It’s buttressed too by my belief that life is the mystery, death is ordinary. And those rocks around Turkey Creek and Deer Creek Canyon roads. The ones that have been here so much longer than I’ve been alive and will be here so much longer after I die.

 

GeekWorld

Singularity Already Here?

Leave a comment

Summer                                                                  Healing Moon

On the way to a new breakfast place in Evergreen this morning our Garmin, Ophelia, lost the plot. We were hunting for the Lakeshore Cafe on Upper Bear Creek Drive. Ophelia took us over 5 miles on Upper Bear Creek Drive, which winds past some of the most expensive homes I’ve seen out here. Lots of stone and timbers and glass, a rushing Bear creek, wide expanses of stupid lawn and horses. Ophelia took us past Winter Gulch road, up a dead end road, then directed us up Yankee Drive, which was a dirt road winding uphill. Finally, at the end of Yankee Drive we came to a gate and that was that. We had to turn around, reverse field.

Turns out the Lakeshore Cafe, which we did find no thanks to Ophelia, was less than a thousand feet off Highway 74 on Upper Bear Creek Drive. In  hindsight I guess we should have suspected something when Evergreen Lake was far behind us, since a lakeshore cafe would probably have a lake view. But we trusted in Ophelia. Doesn’t bode well for the human versus machine wars predicted by the Singularity folks.