In the last seven days I crapped my pants twice. Fortunately the accidents occurred at home as I rushed from my living room recliner to the bathroom. The accidents were distressing, and I've bought adult diapers. Aside from painful urination which I tolerate pretty well, the second side effect that troubles me most is fatigue, so much so as to soften my acuity and make writing nearly impossible at times. As a writer I tell myself I ought to be able to describe how these occurrences distress me, how they play on my mind and emotions. I finally summarized it to myself this afternoon as I drove to my radiation treatment. A month ago, I felt like a virile youthful—for 78—attractive male who still enjoyed sex with his wife and thought of himself as funny and comparably confident, happier than at any time in his life while looking forward to achieving his single bucket item. Yesterday, after the 2nd accident, I was badly deflated and imagined a much decreased enjoyment of my final years, however long that might be. It was a gloomy appraisal, one which I don't like and one I'm trying to resist. Just writing it down helps me a great deal.
The upshot of what I'm getting at is that until treatment is over on August 31, I will not push myself to write but will concentrate on limited exercise, diet and pampering myself, plus meeting my responsibilities at home. I will be drifting sideways and making little progress on my goal to get someone other than myself to publish a novel of mine before I kick the bucket. I'll write only when strongly moved and in a fairly alert state of mind. Following is a list of potential side effects of radiation treatment. Ain't they a kick in the pants?
- Frequent urination
- Difficult or painful urination
- Blood in the urine
- Urinary leakage
- Abdominal cramping
- Diarrhea
- Painful bowel movements
- Rectal bleeding
- Rectal leaking
- Fatigue
- Sexual dysfunction, including diminished erectile function or decrease in the volume of semen
- Skin reactions (similar to a sunburn)
- Secondary cancers in the region of the radiation
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.
Today in a couple of hours, I get my first treatment with the Cyberknife. Exercised early today at Firstenberg Center and have tried for several hours to get some writing done on poetry collection Up Your Ass and later on my novel about dysfunctional relationships The Porn Writer. I see that I'm unable to concentrate very well so I'll just go home and get a shower and take it easy until I have to set off for PeaceHealth Hospital in Vancouver. I'm told I will have to lie perfectly motionless for half an hour while the procedure is completed, but, even if I do move, the roboticized arm stops and recalculates the position of my prostate in order to continue to treat the cancer with high doses of radiation. I recall when we Americans were all in a tizzy about Strontium 90 drifting into America from Chinese atom bomb testing. Now, I'm hoping that radiation will kill the cancer cells that threaten to kill me. Nothing ever changes except change.
Ten days I've let pass without an entry. Sorry, but I'm keeping busy. I just began the sixth [or 7th] rewrite of The Porn Writer, and I didn't finish the 5th [or 6th] rewrite. My friend poet Geoff Peterson is visiting from Tucson, and it was his comment that caused me to return to "go" and start again. He made some sense about the history of an MFA in my narrator's past that made good sense. So I began again, and I'm happy with it. I had begun the novel with the idea Frank held an MFA then took it out because I thought the idea was cliched. Now I'm putting it back in again. Geoff's considerations had to do with potential audience, then, for other reasons of authenticity, I saw a good reason for it's remaining in the novel, because the real center of the novel is "dysfunctional relationships" that are divorced from the MFA considerations. The MFA is in it only to add to his sense of failure and inadequacy that have plagued all his relationships.
Reason for relief above. As for the aggressive prostate cancer that threatens to lengthen the odds for my succeeding in my lone bucket list item to get someone other than myself to publish a novel of mine: I finally begin radiation treatments this coming Monday, July the 18th when the Cyberknife will shoot a first heavy dose of radiation into my cancerous prostate. It's only taken from April 25th when my primary doctor found the nodule on my prostate till now....
The photo is of my radiologist specialist, M.D. Faisal Siddiqui.
Hanging in there. Got only an hour of rewrite in yesterday, July 6, on The Porn Writer. Now midway into "Chapter 19 - The Tender Trap" after spending the morning and early afternoon getting a scan and an MRI in preparation for irradiation of prostate and lymph nodes. I've been tattooed...three red dots on my stomach for radiation machine alignments. I felt very vulnerable in the hospital setting yesterday. Usually, I have little trouble walking through tests and paperwork and listening to instructions, but I felt shaky old yesterday some of the time.
As for my bucket list item. I think I've fallen down on submitting my novels to agents. Will have to knuckle down on that part of the process. I like the sound of that word, "knuckle".
Yesterday also I put in an appeal to Kaiser Permanente to overturn their negative ruling on the Cyberknife. This morning I called Kaiser to see if they got the paperwork. Yes, they got it, but the appeal won't be looked at for 14 days. What? I'm sitting here with my prostate showing perineural invasion. [In pathology, perineural invasion refers to cancer spreading to the space surrounding a nerve. It is common in ... prostate cancer and....] Those little terrorists can and probably are escaping into my flesh and bones as I write this, and Kaiser wants me to wait two more weeks? I yelp loudly, then Kaiser tells me they'll have to see if my situation "QUALIFIES" for a 72 hour evaluation and it'll take 72 hours to make that decision. What the hell!!
POLITICAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS:
For all those Republicans who hate the Affordable Care Act and who also ramble endlessly about "death panels", I have an answer for them. My prostate cancer treatment option that includes the Cyberknife has not been approved. Kaiser Permanente declined the Cyberknife part of the treatment, even though my reading suggests the Cyberknife will more effectively and with more powerful and focused radiation add to the kill ratio of cancer cells in my high risk cancer prostate while causing less damage to surrounding tissue, thus increasing my chances of living longer. My insurance plan is not purchased through the ACA nor is it Medicare. Thus the Permanente doctors on Kaiser's "death panel" have spoken and their decision has nothing to do with the ACA or Medicare. It's a decision based solely on saving the Kaiser Permanente HMO money. As I've tried to explain to hate filled Republicans, "death panels" have existed all along. The poor have routinely been allowed to die and insurance companies make daily decisions that allow people to die, and those decisions have never had anything to do with the ACA. A good friend of mine watched his wife die because they didn't have the money to purchase the treatment that would have saved her, and their insurance wouldn't cover it. That was decades ago and had nothing to do with the ACA or Medicare either. My doctor will try to get the decision reversed. My fingers are crossed.
A story of mine was just rejected by Glimmer Train. Nice rejection letter though. On the other hand, the fatigue lifted today as I worked on The Porn Writer. You know? At the moment I'm troubled more by the Glimmer Train rejection. I do not understand myself at all.
Writing has not been going well since I began taking Casodex as first treatment for the prostate cancer. [For loved ones, even though the "uses section" says Casodex treats "cancer that has spread to other parts of the body" that is not true in my case, but my doctor wants to keep the cancer confined to my prostate until radiation begins and this is sort of "the best defense is a good offense" type of treatment, I believe. Meanwhile I wait for Cyberknife insurance authorization.]
As to the difficulty in writing I'm experiencing: if you look to the side effects listed on the attached document, you'll note that two of them are "dizziness" and "drowsiness". I already have some old age dizziness that comes and goes in the morning, but I've noticed now a slight fatigue as I stand over my laptop to write. The fatigue feels like a plexiglass shield that won't allow my consciousness to fully grip the dialogue and narration on the page. However I continue to work on 5th rewrite of my novel The Porn Writer for it keeps my mind on other things than the things I might find worrisome if I let them get all my attention.
ps: I just now thought it might be a good idea to take the Casodex at nighttime, then I notice that "difficulty sleeping" is another potential side effect. Well damn it all to hell. What's a man to do?
In the last seven days I crapped my pants twice. Fortunately the accidents occurred at home as I rushed from my living room recliner to the bathroom. The accidents were distressing, and I've bought adult diapers. Aside from painful urination which I tolerate pretty well, the second side effect that troubles me most is fatigue, so much so as to soften my acuity and make writing nearly impossible at times. As a writer I tell myself I ought to be able to describe how these occurrences distress me, how they play on my mind and emotions. I finally summarized it to myself this afternoon as I drove to my radiation treatment. A month ago, I felt like a virile youthful—for 78—attractive male who still enjoyed sex with his wife and thought of himself as funny and comparably confident, happier than at any time in his life while looking forward to achieving his single bucket item. Yesterday, after the 2nd accident, I was badly deflated and imagined a much decreased enjoyment of my final years, however long that might be. It was a gloomy appraisal, one which I don't like and one I'm trying to resist. Just writing it down helps me a great deal. 
