Notes from the Cafe Fiasco

MLTD - 10/31 - All Souls' Eve

So this year it was a treat rather than a trick.

The news of yesterday is that, for the moment at least, the cancer is in check and I can take a deep breath and contemplate what parts of my life I can start again since a great deal of it has been on hold since June. Of course, the PSA number going down doesn't mean that I've "beat cancer" or any such ridiculous concept, it just means that for the moment we've got a stand-off going on and I can't let up lest I fall into the hole of self-congratulation. So I've resisted going on a bender (alcohol, burger, or other type) and I'll try to start to take stock this weekend about what in my life should move forward and what will still have to be left for later now that I have this small opening. It always takes me a while to sort this stuff out and I don't expect that this time will be any different.

The usual Halloween message from me is to point out that my pagan ancestors knew that this time of year is about death and rememberance -- a time to deal with the transitory nature of this incarnation head on and to remember to put our lives within the context of the temporary. It is ironic that this year I have a small message of life while at the same time the tentacles of death still have themselves wrapped around my organs of procreation. And it is also ironic that, this being the case, the message hasn't changed but, if anything, has deepened because of this fact.

Life is, indeed, short. Do what you should do and love well and deep. And do it now. Right now. None of us know how much longer our particular number is going to go down, but only that it won't go down forever.

Happy Halloween.

MLTD - 10/30 - Treat

Just got out of the doctor's office and I haven't really had a chance to digest the meeting, but the immediate news is that the visit started with Dr. Loughlan saying, "Whatever it is that you're doing, keeping doing it."

My PSA (prostate specific antigen) number has dropped from 4.6 three months ago to 3.2 last week. PSA's are not perfect indicators of the progression (or non-progression) of prostate cancer but, even with a good margin of error, this means on a worst case that the cancer has not progressed and, at best, it may have even shrunk a bit.

Next marker is in January.

First the Sox, then this. It's been a good week.

More later on the cosmic importance of all this.

World Series Game 1

Sitting on the couch, cat snuggled up against my leg, I spent the night flipping the TV back and forth between the World Series and a great documentary called "Crazy Sexy Cancer" on TLC. Yup. That's life these days.

MLTD - 10/20 - Waiting

Blood test for new PSA numbers is done (last Monday) and the results won't come up until probably next Monday. I've got an appointment set with the Main Doc for Tuesday the 30th, but maybe he'll give me a call when the results come in. Maybe not. Waiting for someone to tell you what's going to be next in your life is a large part of cancer. Test results -- blood tests, scans, x-rays -- you get through all this by learning not to focus on things that will determine the immediate and long term course of your life because to do so is not good for your mental health.

And that's what I've done for four months now -- try somehow to balance intensively working on my health every day with actively trying to not expect to have any outcome from this activity. Because it's the expectation of results (any results or especially particular results) that drives you nuts. Of course, this strategy also involves a certain amount of mental dissociation from what's actually happening in your life and this is not healthy unto inself either, but this is part of the balancing act that is called "Living with Cancer".

I'm learning that the mental health part of this cancer thing has more parts and layers to it than just dealing with the fact that you might die a horrible messy death in x number of days or weeks or months or years. You also get to do all sorts of mental gymnastics just to keep yourself functional enough so that you can avoid collapse and this particular end won't happen before it's really time to go. This is all part of the fun.

Lately, friends response to my expressions that this whole cancer thing has put a new spin on my thoughts about mortality has been that they totally understand that we all have a limited time because they have been touched in some way by death. It's true that you can't really get though life without confronting death of others if you're paying attention, but it's qualitatively different when it's your condition that you're focussed on day after day and the pressure of this never goes away. Or when you have to constantly and actively put your health out of your mind as much as you can because you're waiting for the next test or scan results and to focus on things that you can't do anything about, even things that will determine the immediate quality of life or if you will actually have a life at all, will just drive you over the edge of place where you've camped out living your life every day -- waiting and trying to make the most of the time that you have, however long that is.

This is one of the great lessons that cancer drives home -- the focus on waiting and not waiting for death and trying to make the most of the fact that it hasn't shown up yet. I can write about it here and we can philosophize about it. But can we actually do it?

Spriggs to Norsk: Watch Out

Dear Norwegian Friends,

Now you've done it.

Tucked way up there at the top of the world out of the way, the American Right undoubtedly never thought much about you. You were up there with the Polar Bears (that they heard were in trouble for some reason but didn't care about) and there was no reason to pay attention to you. That was until last week when you gave the Nobel Peace Prize to one of their main enemies - Al Gore.

Al, of course, has picked up many prestigious awards lately for proclaiming what to many of us seems like common sense - put a whole lot of crap in the atmosphere for a long time and eventually something bad will happen. But this seems to have never occured to the American public and it has taken a whole lot of charts and graphs to convince them that this is indeed the case. But Al's made good inroads with the half of the American populice that isn't living in the 19th century. Good for Al. Somebody had to do it and he's been laboring mightily for many years attempting to take sense to the people. I personally wish that he had done more in this department with Bill when he had a chance before the Dark Ages, but that's another story ...

Anyway, now the Exxon/Mobil knows where you are (actually they knew where you were before but, since Norway is a major oil producer, they assumed that you were on their side) and you may be in trouble. They may send Ann Coulter out to slime you so that she can sell more books or Bill O'Reilly may go into some sort of anti-lutifisk rant, all so that they can continue the current war against science and rationality that they are making so much money at. You survived a Nazi occupation so you can probably handle this, but its really too bad that you might have to put up with what we've had to deal with for the past seven years.

Above all, don't take it personally, because they don't. It's just business to them and it really doesn't matter to them if we kill the planet as long as they continue to get their cut of money and power on the way down. And, of course, people like Al Gore don't get theirs.

And, after all, you may luck out. They probably figure that the Swedes gave him the prize. And given your feelings about the Swedes, wouldn't that be ironic?

Best,

MTS

Fall

It was cold when I got up
This morning.
The landlord hasn't turned the
Heat on as yet.

And as I sat down on the couch
To put on my shoes
And socks
To go to work,
My attention
Was drawn up and
Out the window
To the first blaze
Of a tree set against
The Boston skyline.

After all this waiting,
Fall's here.

MLTD - 10/5 - Gray Zone

First, I have to apologize for not posting very much during the past month. The truth is that I've been depressed and have not been given to writing about the inner experiences that really haven't been happening. In fact, they haven't been happening to such a degree that it's only during the past week that I've realized that I've been depressed - like many men I'm a little slow on the uptake when it comes to inner states.

But I haven't felt badly and I've been able to function. Rather, after the inital rush in June of figuring out what I had to do to combat the cancer and how I was going to do it, the mental aspects of dealing with the disease have taken on the quality of living in the Gray Zone over the past month.

First, it's tough living without a future. At least it is for me since I'm not all that Zen yet no matter how much I try.

I'm a planner by nature (I actually have two university degrees in Planning - Community and Land Use) and it's hard for me not to have an idea of what I should be doing next in terms of the Big Picture even if I constantly make up the Big Picture. But with the coming of the Cancer, life, as I usually know it, stopped and with it a great deal of planning.

Initally, I had to deal with the question "How bad is it?"; then came "What are my options given how bad it is?"; and then "How do I implement the way that I have chosen to go". Having chosen not to go the heroic route for the moment (no surgery, no radiation) and to "watchfully wait" I've had to do just that and it hasn't been easy. Career decisions -- on hold ("Sure, you should hire me. By the way, what sort of major medical plan to you have...?). Social life -- on hold ("Sure you should get involved with me - except possibly for the 60-40 chance that in the near future we'll never be able to make love without pills or other paraphenalia"). Except for the minute particulars of everyday life (which have become legion), most of the things that make me feel like I'm actually living my life and am not just existing are on hold.

Add to this watching my diet (suddenly vegetarian and trying to figure out how to cook like one), watching my alcohol intake (one beer in the past four months), reducing my intake of dairy (still can't shake the need for cheese), watching my consumption of coffee (down to three cups a week), watching my supplements (new info about flaxseed makes my day), making sure that I get enough exercise (not enough cardio yet), getting the usual acupuncture twice a month, trying to keep up with the latest research on my particular LT Disease, advocating for myself within the wonderful American medical machine, ah ..., system, doing my chi kung exercises (about half an hour a day of visualizations and other meditations) and I'm a busy guy long on the specific and short on the general. This is not the way that I usually live my life and not the way that I want to. At the moment, I don't seem to have a choice, however.

All this has made the totality of my life a combination of what's right in front of my face and the next thing to do. At times, life has lost it's three-dimensonality in a way that I haven't seen since I worked in factories growing up where a day was measured by the number of widgets that you could produce over eight hours. Sometimes things have just been getting gray and two-dimensional. Things aren't difficult as much as meaningless at times. Life has been about getting to the next task and waiting to restart my life. I haven't been unhappy - I just haven't been home. Life (such as it is) has been living me and not the other way around.

Of course, now that I understand what's going on (as much as I ever understand what's going on), I can do something about it (I wish that it didn't involve more "doing" but this seems to be my lot in life). I'm not sure exactly what it is that I'm going to do, but I have returned to drawing class on Thursday nights and that has seemed to help (I don't seem to suck as much as I thought that I would have after not drawing for four months). I'm going to learn the whole Chen Man Ching Tai Chi form if it kills me (even though at times it seems like a race between the form and the Cancer). Also, getting pissed off about the state of my life seems to help (so be forewarned and expect more rants).

And I will try to write more - even if I don't feel like it. I'm not sure that this will help, but I have to do something while I wait for the next PSA test at the end of the month (besides everything else that I have to do).