Any day above ground is a good one

When I was a little girl I loved that Teresa Brewer song called Music, Music, Music. Maybe you know it. It always made me feel so happy and full of wonderfulness when we played it. My mother loved music, and she taught me how to use it to lift my spirits. Mom, I miss you. It has been fifteen years since we said goodbye.

 Mom also loved to dance, and she and my sister and I spent many a happy moment bopping and twisting around the living room to the hi-fi. Tonight is our almost annual New Year’s Eve Party. Dan and I have been working for two days on it. We used to get into horrible little fights off and on during the process. He thought I was too obsessive with the nice details and I thought he was too unconcerned with the prettiness that I have always created in our parties. Today we had a few very minor tiffs. We are learning (and it is not easy) to live our moments- one by one.

Our house is beautiful this evening as we await our guests. Candles inside and out, blue lights in the front yard and on our back porch and deck. The elephant ears and the ginger are still soo green. Our midcentury decor which has all been handpicked dirt cheap at yard sales over the past twenty years looks fabulous. Each object has a memory. We made this house us.

 Our parties are always good, for we are blessed with wonderful friends–all different types of people who laugh and dance and read books and care about things like animals and the environment. I am so thankful for them. They will be here tonight. We will eat and chat and eat and chat and then the dancing will start. Dan and I will move our 1950’s purple curved couch to the side. Something like "Purple Haze" or T Rex or a silly disco song plays. And we get crazy and silly and sweaty. The airconditioning must be set very low even if it is cold outside which it is not tonight.

I love Dan. I love our friends. I love music. I love cats and kittens. I love gardening. I love books. Oh, there is soooo much for which to be grateful. The best thing about our friends is that they are sticking with us. Right from the get go Dan and I decided that we were going to talk about this cancer situation like someone else might talk about their kids or their job. No connection intended. Hee. Hee. We have lost many friends to Aids already. So our group of folks is real about stuff. I want nothing but real in my life. The best to you, dear reader, in 2006.

Activism, I think, is part of why I started this blog. I wanted to get the story out, my story yes, but I felt the need to tell it. I felt better when I read the many stories of men and how they dealt with their choice of treatment and how well it was progressing for them. Because everybody’s story is different because of the state of their cancer and the choices that they made all you can do is try to compare things like your Gleason score, PSA, typing. With that information I was able to decide on my course of treatment. Their activism helped me.

Telling your story is one type of activism there are many others. I just read the article, Cancer vs. Kosovo by Steve Corman over at PSA-Rising. I was shocked that the funding for Prostate Cancer was so low as compared to breast cancer. These stats are from 1998 and I am trying to find some newer ones. My point is that the squeaky wheel gets oiled when dealing with funding for research from the Federal Government and this requires activism on our part. Write your legislators. Complain. Demand action.

I am trying to keep the tone and tenor of this blog to our personal feelings, which amounts to observations and our whims about the whole cancer experience. This will included a rant from me from time to time when I feel I need to. In no way do I expect to be the new cancer news blog as there are many fine blogs in that category. Mainly what I would like my readers to do is talk about this cancer with EVERY man you know. BUT DO SOMETHING!! Talk about it, get tested, inform others, donate money, write your leaders, just do something. But don’t be scared by prostate cancer, don’t be embarrassed by it, don’t be paralyzed by it. Get help for yourself; get all the knowledge about the topic you can obtain, most importantly TALK about it.

It’s so fun to learn new things about the man to whom you have been married for 25 years. I have recently learned that I am married to the Pope of Prostate, and now that having been revealed, I believe that our marriage will be much less fraught with friction.

I now know how to behave in His presence. Oh, if I had only known sooner– the fights that may have been avoided.

Wait until he finds out who I really am. It is indeed going to blow his mind.

Any guesses?

I have been hanging around today doing nothing in the afterglow of a wonderful Christmas spent with my wife and father-in law. I feel grateful for all that I have in my life, but mostly I am grateful for my family and friends. I have received a huge amount of support from them since I found out that I have prostate cancer. This has helped me more than I can tell you. It is important when you have received a diagnosis of cancer to have a supportive environment. It helps you keep a positive attitude, which I think is the most important thing you need to do. Being positive with cancer is a very hard thing to do, but very important. Being depressed about something doesn’t help anyone including you. So if you are depressed go to your doctor and get some antidepressants. They help.

This Christmas I received many gifts as I always do, but the most important gift was the time I have spent with friends and family. But two gifts of note were from my sister-in-law Mel and my friend of many years Sue. My friend Sue, who grew up Catholic, makes hats and for a while there she was on a jag where she was making Pope hats. I got one. That and along with the wonderful robe that looks amazingly like vestments, that Mel gave me, I am now the Pope of my prostate. I have tried a few things. I have tried a couple of blessings and I have laid my hands upon my prostate. I tried to do a couple of miracles. Nothing seemed to happen. I go to the doctor next week, perhaps he can tell me if it worked.

Pope of Prostate

That holiday song about how this is the happiest time of the year has been spinning around in my brain for weeks now. At first it pissed me off. Then it made me laugh with irony. But right now I feel happy.

I am happiest when I am not thinking. My thoughts get me in trouble with myself. My mouth gets me in trouble with others when I express those thoughts. So I need to practice just letting the thoughts pass through my brain without giving much credence to them.

I wonder if our insurance covers prefrontal lobotomies. That would help cut down on the thinking a bit.

Seriously, tonight I am happy. For me it is best to be totally engaged in the moments. To listen. To see. To smell. To taste. To feel. Be with the all of any moment. And just keeping breathing and taking it in and letting it out.

Christmas Eve. A panorama of gift wrapping- kitties running through silver ribbons and rolling in blue and purple gift wrap- Dad in the new blue cashmere that matches his eyes- Dad, Dan and I attend a buffet at our longtime friend Sue’s 1920’s lavender bungalow- homemade white bean and spinach soup- hearty brown thick bread- brandy and eggnog- and Sue’s sweet home is a dancing vision of color and design = and we all sit together for a dinner- eight of us- Sue’s mother and father from Alabama and her sister from San Francisco, Dad, Dan and me and a beautiful lady of eighty dressed headed to toe in lilac- and on her way to another party this evening to boot!

The eight of us came to that table to enjoy the moments. I know that each one of us there could tell more than a story or two of grief, but what is good is that we all showed up.

I continue to believe what young Anne Frank wrote in her little red and white cloth diary:

“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are good at heart.”

And yes, I do believe this. Thirty-two years of teaching teenagers made me know that THIS IS TRUE. I refuse to believe that any human being is intrinsically bad.

Tonight there is gratitude in my heart. Tonight there is joy in my heart. Tonight there is renewal in my heart.

I wish you, dear reader, the best of all in this coming year of 2006
May you live your moments fully.

Christmas is tomorrow. I’ll try not to think.

There is only To Be.

(sung to the tune of “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth”.)

All I want for Christmas is my prostate fix
My prostate fixed, see my prostate is fixed.
Gee, if I could only have my prostate fixed
Then I could wish you "Merry Christmas."

It seems so long since I could say,
"Sister Susie sitting on a thistle."
Gosh, oh gee, how happy I’d be
If I could only piddle.

All I want for Christmas is my prostate fixed
My prostate fixed, see my prostate is fixed.
Gee, if I could only have my prostate fixed
Then I could wish you "Merry Christmas."

Merry Christmas to all and we will see you in a couple of days. Please contribute to the Prostate Cancer Foundation and you will get some cool arm bands.  Hand them out to your friends for me. Please tell them to get checked by their doctors. Also if you have a minute add yourself to our Frapr map.

I’m mad at my dog, her name is Ginger and I have had her for almost 8 years now. She is a yellow Labrador retriever and I have had her since she was a puppy. Up to today I have felt that she was a very very good dog. But now I am not so sure. I am told that she is a great dog by many of my friends. Many of who have expressed that they would want a dog just like her. I have worked very hard in training her. I have used a clicker to train her and it has worked pretty well. She will do just about anything I ask her to do. She will sit and stay, lie down, come to me, heel. She just LOVES her Frisbee and would do anything to play a game of catch with me. She loves the water almost as much.

So why am I mad at her? Well I have always been under the impression that dogs were man’s best friends. By my definition that would mean that she would do anything for me. Well that is hardly true. She still will not go to the fridge and get me a beer. I ask her all of the time and she just sits there and looks at me.

Then she goes and gets her Frisbee. Does that mean she doesn’t care, is she self-centered? I would really like a beer though.

I ask her all of the time not to get in the lake. But does she listen to me? NO!

When I am outside she bugs the crap out of me with her Frisbee. Even when I say NO. Well there is always the stick.

She insists on going on car rides with me along with her friend and gives me no money for gas or anything. She just sits there and talks with her friend.

But what I am really pissed about is that she didn’t detect my Prostate Cancer. Other dogs do it. In fact MANY dogs do it. Cocker spaniels do it. They even have a Poodle in on the action. They detect all kinds of cancer, prostate cancer, bladder cancer and kidney cancer. But noooo, not my dog. Why can’t my dog be more like the other dogs?

We are going to have to change our training program. Sniff here Ginger, sniff here…… Good dog…… Oh my God there is a dog in my pants!!

Well studies say this and studies say that. It always use to be that you were suppose to have a high fiber diet to help prevent colon cancer. Now they have a new one that says it doesn’t help. I have over the years heard conflicting studies and findings about many things medical or health related. This confuses most of the folks I know as well as myself. And who does these studies and what exactly is their stake in the research? Will they or the company they represent make a few greenbacks on this study? Where did their sample for the study come from? Was it a large sample or a small one? Was that somehow skewed in one direction or another? And how was I represented in that sample? So what is it anyway? Very confusing.

I haven’t posted since last Thursday, partly because of holiday activities, but mainly because of statistics. My mind has been swimming in confusing stats. Some say that only 13% of prostate cancer ends with death. Others say more. So where am I? It also depends on a lot of factors where you land in the statistics themselves. What your PSA is. What your Gleason score is. What your stage is. And when you start plugging in all of those factors your head starts to spin. Half the time you can see yourself in the group that “MADE IT” and then you see another study and suddenly it doesn’t look so good. That is where I have been, in the half empty cup. I don’t generaly worry, perhaps it is the dancer.

Yoo Hoo, Dan. Where are you? This is supposed to be your blog.
I am sitting here in the middle of the night feeling frustration. Dan has been depressed more than usual the last few days.

The reason why doesn’t really matter. I am certain it is a combo of some of the following: He has cancer. He is on a myriad of drugs. It is the holiday season, and perhaps the contrast of the carnival gaiety with the heaviness in his brain is just too damned much. Ya Dee Ya Dee Yada.

So I want to help him. I have become very aware during this that I have a strong tendency to want to help people fix things. This has really been surfacing since I retired from teaching. Although I absolutely adored most of my students, the job was often emotionally draining. So basically I was often tapped out on playing Big Momma Fix-It Lady in my personal life. But, of course, that was all before my husband got cancer, so the stuff I just said might not have a damned thing to do with it. All aside, I want to help Dan feel better in his head.

I know for a fact from my own experience that daily strenuous exercise lifts my spirits, gives me tons more energy and yes, is good for my body. Plus it is fact that cancer is anaerobic and does not like oxygen. So see I want Dan to exercise, but he is not interested. He gets mad when I bring it up. This is very hard right now. I am feeling frustrated and pissed.

I live with Dan. We are intricately connected in so many ways. It is HARD AS HELL to step back and watch. How would I react if I got a cancer diagnosis?

Am I being Big Momma Fix-It Lady or am I just a normal caring wife? I really think it is the latter. He says not.

How much of my business is this cancer?

Hard Call.

Dan’s last post illustrates how one’s mind reacts to scary news. I read once that the mind can only hear what it is ready to absorb. That is why it is good to have a trusted person with you when you might be dealing with some heavy information.

Dan thought his statistics were “better” and then after reviewing some articles he perceived things differently and got afraid.

Again, it is important to see statistics for what they are. Just data. Not necessarily Dan’s data, but data nevertheless. It is better for us to keep things as light as possible when we can. There are some times when we cannot.

The totally best thing about this blog for me is that Dan and I harbor no secrets about what is going on in our heads with all of this cancer stuff. Back in September when we first got wind of what might be coming down, I was working so hard to be casual and upbeat . That is not my true nature. Dan knew that. You can’t be what you aren’t. We can’t stop being real with one another because of fear.

Last evening was a good one. We dressed up and went to a little party given by one of our very good friends. It was on the veranda of an historic hotel in Tampa. The food and decorations were good, but the conversation was much better. It was real. It was deep. Many of the folks there were people that Dan and I have been friends with for over twenty years or so.

One man just passed his sixth year out after prostate cancer treatment. Two men have been HIV positive for many years now, and look and feel great. Each person among that group could tell a story or two or three or more of loss— this is part of the package of getting to this age that we are- this late 1940’s/early 1950’s baby boom generation that we are– time is catching up, but we are still showing up. More importantly, we are still dancing.

We decided to go ahead and do our traditional New Year’s Eve dance party here at home. When I mentioned it, E. said that she thought we might not because of what has been going on with Dan. I had been thinking that way too, but then it became totally clear that the worst thing to do would be to NOT have our party. Why not? Oh my. The healing balm of like-minded friends.

On the drive to the party we discussed that we needed to make some changes and to plan more fun into our lives. So far we have been doing quite well. We just need to do this with greater frequency.

On our way home we had a hankering for something sweet. We pulled into the Farm Store and got a container of HEAVENLY HASH ice cream. We got in bed with our kitties, ate ice cream and watched the late shows.

Things feel safe in bed at home with our pets and our stuff.

My mom had often said that when some one gets sick that people don’t want to be around them. So when we got the News I wondered about that. Do you remember that old television commercial where there are a bunch of bad little roaches playing in a kitchen? Then a big Raid Man Can comes in and the roaches yell, “RAID”. Well, I was hoping it wasn’t gonna be that way with the cancer. Oh yes, some will drop off, but by this stage in our lives, we have pretty much shed those already.

I get tears in my eyes as I think of the kindness and light in the eyes of our friends.
They are so dear to me.