Health Update

 It's been quite awhile since I've posted anything about my health issues--perhaps it's because I don't want to think about them? Or maybe I've just been a bit ... lazy? Anyhow, here we go ...

My prostate cancer, which has metastasized into my bones, is sort of on Pause right now. My most recent med (Xtandi) has been very effective, reducing my PSA to "unmeasurable"--and that's good, right? I have no prostate gland (removed in 2005 surgery), but prostate cancer also emits the prostate specific antigen, so my oncologists have done all the medical things they can do to lower it. But it will be back, as soon as it figures out how to deal with Xtandi (i.e., evolve).

And next comes chemo. (I've already had two rounds of radiation + immunotherapy.) And after chemo? Nothing can be done.

For all the good it's done, Xtandi has had some deleterious side-effects. My energy is down ever farther, and (coincidence) my physical stability is so poor that I can't walk or stand very much: dizziness overwhelms me, and I have taken some bad falls in recent months--one requiring stitches in my forearm.

I occasionally ride our stationary bike--which happens only when I'm feeling fairly stable--sometimes as often as six days a week--though, lately, I haven't felt secure enough to mount and ride and pretend all is well.

I've seen some specialists about this dizziness: a cardiologist, an ENT, and now a neurologist. I've had some brain MRIs and some other tests. On Wed. I'm having a remote visit with a specialist at University Hospitals, so ... maybe I'll get some encouraging news from him?

Meanwhile, if it weren't for Joyce, I would be in assisted living now. It is she who makes possible the baking I do (she saves me steps in the kitchen); it is she who helps me get up and down the stairs; it is she who ... makes all possible. And I absolutely dread the day when I must go into some kind of care facility.

The old expression "one day at a time" applies to me now in ways I never would have believed in my younger days, the days when I saw no end of days.

Poet Mary Oliver says it succinctly:

When I Was Young and Poor

 

When I was young and poor,

when little was much,

when I was nimble and never tired,

and the hours of the day were deep and long,

where was the end that was already committed?

Where was the flesh that thinned and

stiffened?

Nowhere, nowhere!

Just the gift of forgetfulness gracious and kind

while I ran up hills and drank the wind--

time out of mind.