Category: Surviving Three Cancers and One Recurrence

Time In A Gigabytle

I loved that song Jim Croce sang in 1972 about saving time in a bottle.  I’m saving time in a virtual Gigabytle. 

I finally finished shooting – copying – digitizing and archiving about 30 years of large, desk pad calendars.  I first mentioned the project in an earlier post.  They were referred to as desk pads, but mine was always on my home-office wall.

Some of them shouted the month and year in LARGE FONT, like breaking news headlines, while a couple series appear to have had little interest in going public with the current month or year. 

My personal, historical notations are the most significant inscriptions, but an extra treat was finding several ticket stubs.  They were tickets to events, now they’re tickets to the past.  They are, along with name tags, sticky notes, and other souvenirs, fastened to appropriate days or nearby margins.

When I put all the months in order, I found that some were missing.  January 1990 is missing, as is August 1995.  The entire years of 1998 and 1999 are missing.  Maybe we tried an alternative calendar then, but two random, single months?  My perfect alibi is shot. 

Maybe in those missing months, I urgently needed some crushed paper packing materials, or something to quickly protect the floor under the cat-food dish. 

I’m solid from September 1976 through 2007, except for those missing pages – those missing memories.  It’s not that they aren’t filed away in the database of my mind, it’s that the physical calendar pages turned out to be the “product code” that unlocks them.

If anyone has been waiting for the opportunity to rewrite a little history, I’m accepting bids on a full set of like new, never marked, but naturally aged 1980 (20″ X 25″) calendar pages.

Seven Weeks

My Urologist and my Radiation Oncologist agree the prostate cancer has returned.  My options appear to be:

  1. Do nothing – and probably enjoy 10 years before quality of life issues become apparent.
  2. Wait, watch, and maybe do something later. PSA will sometimes increase and hover around 0.2 for a long time with no real problems.
  3. I can have targeted radiation treatments now.

Improving my likelihood of long-term survival, and the fact that I am currently employed and have fairly good insurance are good reasons to act now (although the Multiple Myeloma – or the unexpected – could change my circumstances at any time). 

The only negative my Radiation Oncologist listed (other than the ever-lurking unexpected or unlikely) is before the treatments are finished, I should expect to experience some inconvenient bathroom related issues.  These symptoms usually subside after the treatments have ended.

The Radiation Oncologist explained that when prostate cancer returns, it’s usually found in one of three places: the old prostate neighborhood, the lymph nodes, or the bones.  Since they know historically it’s in the prostate area 75% of the time, that is where I will receive daily radiation treatments for seven weeks. 

I returned to the Radiation Oncology Center in Beaverton where seven years ago, I had 24 daily treatments, not realizing it was a rehearsal.  I was mapped, scanned, and tattooed (again).  The treatments and commuting will begin on April 18th.

On the positive side – I signed up a couple weeks ago for the second annual Chubby Bunny Challenge, a weight loss competition at work.  I joined it to be involved and supportive, and for the $20 sign-up fee, you get a nice T-shirt and Pizza. 

With my previous radiation treatments, I lost 30 pounds.  This year, with the help of radiation, I may have a pretty good chance of winning first prize!