BLUEBERRIES ARE GOOD FOR WHAT AILS THE BEATNIK BOOMER

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Thanks all who have checked in here recently. My continuing exhaustion means that imaginative writing is still some distance in future, but I visited a new urologist today and, again, a scope was shoved up my little urethra. The good doctor found nothing abnormal in my bladder except the scar tissue one expects to find after the application of high doses of radiation aimed to defeat a "highly aggressive prostate cancer." Turns out the Flomax generic I've been taking does not treat the condition that's been depriving me of sleep and comfort for the past 5 to 6 weeks. Flomax only works when there's a blockage in the system. There appears to be no blockage, and my problem is nerve damage associated with the high doses of radiation that were needed to treat my prostate cancer. The new drug he prescribed will hopefully calm the nerves that are sending too frequent and intense messages from the nerves in my wounded bladder to my brain. Hopefully, the urgent and continuous need to pee will lessen, and I'll catch a few more winks per night. I was near tears with feelings of hope as we talked. I cry at the drop of a hat these days. Where did Mr. Masculinity disappear too? Somewhere between the doses of hormone, I suppose. Maybe by end of next month, I'll get back to the writing projects I've put on hold. 

BEATNIK SORT OF EXPERIENCE: POOP

Finished for a time the rewrite of a story called "Down Home Man". I have another great short story idea and I've still got a novel to completely rewrite, Delinquent Lives, and I'm working on another poem for Up Your Ass. It's to be called "Two Days" and made up of two oddly contrasted experiences that happened over two consecutive days. Below are the rough notes for day two. It's been a Facebook entry so maybe you've seen it already. Forgive it's length.

Ah, it's great to be old. I had another fascinating experience today. Some would say this will be far too much information. Several years ago I started having bouts of bowel incontinence. I cut out coffee and tree nuts, and I thought I was doing well, but, no, even then, every month or so I'd have an accident. Then the prostate cancer and medicines and specially the radiation treatments can also create urinary and bowel problems, so recently, I've been wearing diapers every morning and leave them on until I get home. This morning we had a plumber over at 8:30am to fix a leaky faucet in the tub in our guest bathroom. He was a pleasant young man and very proficient. We exchanged many pleasantries, and, as he was leaving, I told him, "I think I'm going to celebrate and go out for breakfast. I don't know why. I haven't done anything. You did all the work." We shook hands and he left, and I departed not long after. I felt so healthy that I decided for the first time in months not to wear a diaper [now you all know where this is going]. Intending also to break my vegan diet, I marched out into a brilliant sunshine morning to a newly remodeled Sharis for breakfast. I ordered hot chocolate and from the honored menu a two egg cheese/ham omelet and French toast. While waiting, I was reading a book that a Facebook friend has written, The Triple Diamond Sutra. Humorous as hell and entertaining. The morning was going swimmingly. My interactions with the waitress were pleasant if not informative. Then it came time to pay the bill, and I carried my bill to the cash register, as you do at Sharis, and my waitress was also the one who came to the register to ring me up and swipe my credit card. That's when it happened of course. The credit card was in her hand when I experienced the tiny familiar burp feeling in my bowels that occurs without warning, and I said, "Excuse me, I've got to run to the bathroom." Of course, once I feel that tiny burp, it is already too late. All the way to bathroom, I was offloading a pile of food that had seen better days. By the time I reached the throne room, there was nothing left to offload. What a mess. I had to clean up the toilet, the floor and myself and wrap my soiled underwear in paper towels and throw the whole mess into the trash. Fortunately, the underwear was sufficient to protect my cotton trousers so no stains had appeared in the rear area. Of course, being without shame, I told the new woman at the cash register who was holding my credit card for me all about it. "I had to rush off to the bathroom," I explained. She said, "Yes, I understand those moments." "And I wasn't wearing a diaper," I continued. "What a mess." Later I realized the image my remark must have left in her mind. What can a man make of all this stuff? Yesterday afternoon, a kindly woman, probable thinking of me as a father figure, offers me a cross. Last night the Cubs win their first World Series since 1908. This morning I'm reading The Triple Diamond Sutra at Sharis and, within minutes, I'm shitting my pants. You can't make this stuff up. I'm sure there's a deeper meaning somewhere in all this chaos.

BEATNIK BOOMER SILENTLY EXPOSES SELF

Short and sweet. Six more radiation treatments. They will end next Wednesday, the 31st of August 2016. Got back two more rejections. One for a set of three poems. The other for a short story. Bright spot? Both invited me to send more material. The task of rewriting The Porn Writer leaves me cold. Have I rewritten it to death?

Picture is of one of three marks on my body. One on each side and one in the middle of my body. They align these marks with laser beams for first rough alignment of my body to the radiation device. 

That's all folks. For now.

BOOMING BEATNIK'S MIND COMES AND GOES

Twelve more days of radiation treatments under this machine to go. Dr. Siddiqui tells me we'll wait three more months [time for the prostate to normalize] to take a PSA test and find out where we stand, i.e. did we get it in time before the cancer spread elsewhere in my body? A PSA of zero would be great, a 2 is not so bad. 

I wrote a new cancer poem yesterday, "Tabled Memories", and I've had three good days of work on the 7th rewrite of The Porn Writer. From time to time the fatigue caused by the radiation treatments make my mind feel like a pool full of slugs. Everything I write during those times seems awful, then a light comes on, the slugs slip away, and I know I write as well as many others who have been published. This morning I'm awfully tired again and uninspired, but I want to finish this last rewrite of The Porn Writer so I can get queries about it into circulation once more among the agents. Of course, it's been some time since I sent any of my novels out on query status. I'm starting to feel guilty again when I walk into the office where file cards are strewn about on a card table next to the outdated 2013 Writers' Markets book. 

Lastly I had a moment of self awareness yesterday while lying on that narrow table above, waiting for my irradiation to begin. The kind of moment when you see beneath the obvious and get a glimpse of some synaptic setting that underpins your personality at a fundamental level. The techs had stopped the process because one of the computers fell asleep and had to be reawakened. They requested, as they always do, that I lie very still. As I lay there clutching the ring they give us to hold so that our elbows don't fall off the table edge and ruin the process, I caught myself feeling quite proud to be lying so still and proper for them, the obedient little boy part of me. Smug it was and proud as proud can be. I didn't necessarily like what I saw, but our deepest selves, our un-mirrored selves, are just the sort of things that trip us up. I was watching a documentary tonight about Richard Nixon. I just realized he was like me too in his deepest self.

BEATNIK BEAT. WRITING SUFFERS. BUCKET LISTS TO PORT.

I'm staggering today, the result of the hormone injection and also Flomax [increases urine flow] that relaxes the smooth muscle walls of my vessels and arteries. Sometimes when I stand too fast or rush up a stairway, I get a stunned feeling and my temples feel pressure. First time I thought I was having a stroke. Now I stand still until the feeling passes.

The writing is not going all that well. I have many periods of fatigue, a side affect of radiation treatments when I feel completely uninterested in writing. All I want to do is sit and watch TV. Even reading seems too much effort. Still I get some writing done and exercise at the Firstenberg Community Center, and believe it or not, the effort seems to overcome fatigue for a time, but first I've got to overcome the fatigue and make myself get going. I've been craving McDonald's "Egg McMuffins" for lunch, and my vegan diet suffers, but I crave the feel of solid foods in my mouth. Chewy stuff. Something to get my teeth into. I still have banana, spinach, strawberry, apple with grape juice and soy milk smoothies for breakfast.  

At 3:15 I go into PeaceHealth for my 5th low dose radiation treatment. Not long after that, Mertie comes home from work, and we begin another weekend together. Long live weekends with my wife.

PREOCCUPIED, ANOTHER FORM OF WRITER'S BLOCK

It's been 10 days since my last posting and that's too long a span of time, but nothing much has changed as far as my bucket list item and the forces of nature working against it. Am including two pictures I scanned. One of a poem I wrote several weeks past and the other of the nice illustrative drawings Dr. Siddiqui did as he explained my options to Mertie and I. 
 
Mertie and I had our second opinion meeting today with Dr. Faisal Siddiqui who performs radiation treatments at Peacehealth and also the more focused radiation treatment called the Cyberknife. His recommendation is against surgical removal of the prostate in the same terms as Dr. Jason Smith. The best looking option appears to be a two stage radiation treatment. First 5 weeks of irradiation of prostate and lymph nodes with 40-45 on the grayscale (power rating), then 5 treatments of a nearly double amount of irradiation on the prostate alone. After our talk with Dr. Siddiqui, Merie and I felt very hopeful about extended life expectancy. The details of the after care are too involved to put in here. Oh ... I've already commenced working toward my transition to breasts and hot flashes. Dr. Siddiqui prescribed Bi-ka-loo-ta-myd, one a day. He says it will immediately block or slow spread of cancer cells in prostate while Mertie and I decide on course of action. Will need to put plenty of vitamin D and calcium additives into play. 

As for writing. One rejection of 3 poems returned this past week, and the rewriting of The Porn Writer has been slow going. I'm sure there's a subconscious blockage between me and my imaginative powers. I feel, I think I'd call it, "preoccupied". Good beginnings for poems about the cancer come to mind constantly, but the impulse to complete them doesn't follow.