Any day above ground is a good one

I find myself here in Sarasota for nearly a week now and I just today had my first of eight IMRT follow-up treatments. I had to get new CT scans and X-Rays so the Dattoli Center could plan my post seeding IMRT treatments. All of this was done last week. Today during my treatment I saw for the first time the 73 seeds that were implanted in me back in March. There they were like stars in the sky glimmering in the ultrasound image. Very sobering indeed to see a bunch of metal glowing in your body. Last week I also had a full set of blood work done. Included in this is the first PSA test I have had since I was diagnosed back on that fateful day last Halloween. I am pretty sure that it will be down but it will really not show much at this point because I am still on androgen deprivation therapy and I am still receiving radiation. Both of these will skew the results of the PSA test so I am not trying to hang on every word of every test. What will be will be. I am here today still kicking and screaming and that is all that matters. While I have no reason, at all, to think that my PSA test or any news that I might receive re: my cancer will be bad, I am choosing not to dwell on the negative. It is a waste of time because ultimately I can’t control any outcome so why waste the energy worrying about what I can’t control.

I sit here writing this from my sister-in-law’s house ( Thanks Mel!! ) where I am staying during this phase of my treatment. I sit here without Paula, who stayed at our house in Michigan, and without any of our critters. While I have been apart from Paula for a good length of time, 6 weeks or so, and I do miss her, but I have never been without the company of animals for as long as I can remember. I now know how integral they are to my life. There is defiantly an empty space there. Animals have always been better friends to me that people have, they are totally accepting of you no matter what is going on. Perhaps it is the food we give them, but I choose to think not.

Well I am on my way. Just about all packed and we get up at 4:00 in the AM to get to the airport for a 6:00 AM flight. I have no reservations about the trip at all, at least medically. I at this point feel this is the last part of the protocol that Dr. Dattoli uses and that is what I have to do. I am not happy about leaving in the middle of my vacation. But this is what I’ll have to do. I will be in Sarasota for 18 days for 8 treatments. I will have to find some things to do down there and I have not been there on my own to explore at all. I may in fact just say at my sister-in-law’s house and read for most of the time. I don’t know

I can tell Paula is all stressed out about my trip. She is sooooo fatalistic. She will at this point assume that I am getting bad news next week and she will storm around all angry about it. She assumes that it will be so. I have also noticed that she is asking how everything works at the Northport house. How to open up the house and close it down for the winter. Things I normally do. Honestly Honey I plan on being around and I have TOATAL trust in my doctors and there are no incicators that things are going south. But still she worries. This is causing some tension between us and the break will do us good.

The article, mentioned in my last post, about this blog was published in the San Francisco Chronicle. I was busy and haven’t been on the blog until this afternoon only to find that the traffic that is coming to the blog has increased over 5 times. I am stunned and humbled that people are interested in this story. I am ever impressed in the power of one or two voices when they are projected over the Internet.

Well I am all settled in at our summer retreat home in northern Michigan and I haven’t had much going on with, as we have come to call it…. “The Situation”. Physically I am doing very with regards to …. “The Situation”. I will however have to return to Tampa to undergo an additional 8 IMRT treatments at the Datolli Center at the end of the month. This I am not very pleased about as it cuts deeply in to my summer time fun, but hey what can you do?

Since my last post I have traveled 1500 miles, visited family, carted myself Paula and all the critters along with a bunch of stuff in a trailer to Northport Mi, opened up our house, unpacked all of the stuff I hauled, had problems with Internet access, received the new appliances into our house ( Woo hoo we have a kitchen now!!) , got interviewed for an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, read 3/4 of a very funny book, was contacted today by a representative for the Gillette Corp and now I do this….

Did you catch the ringers? The Chronicle and the Gillette thing? I mention these because I can’t tell you how many times since I received my diagnosis that I will see a pink ribbon here. Another there. Did I see a pink bat at a recent baseball game? I think it all started with those darn yogurt containers, all for the sake of brest cancer. If you look at the numbers of men who contract prostate cancer vs. the number of women that contract breast cancer you will find that there are more cases of prostate cancer. I don’t see any blue ribbons or pins or donations to our cause on yogurt containers. My point is that there are not many of us out there talking about prostate cancer and staging events at baseball games where the players use blue bats for gosh sake. Men as a group need to talk about this topic more and more with other men, their wives and members of their family. The more people that are aware the better because knowledge does save in the case of prostate cancer.

To that end I will now talk about the ringers… This past week a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle who was writing about people who have cancer and blog contacted me. I will let you know when it is published. What a wonderful thing the Internet is that I can sit here in my jammies and have my voice about prostate cancer herd so far away. This is my activism, to blog my story. You too can be an activist for prostate cancer too, you can blog or you can just talk. But please start talking to everyone you know about prostate cancer and encourage every man you know to get tested. That is how we can at least manage this terrible beast. But please just do something.

The second item encouraged me. A rep of a “cause” marketing agency that represents Gillette who is backing the Prostate Cancer Foundation to create more prostate cancer awareness contacted me. Gillette wants to promote prostate cancer awareness and has started this campaign with the launch of Gillette Men’s Cancer Connection. Check it out. And did you see that they are now going to have a baseball game with blue bats.

’bout time.

Most of the support that I get in dealing with Dan’s diagnosis comes from mailing list on the Internet. I correspond with other women who are dealing with the fears and uncertainty that I do. Life with prostate cancer is often referred to as an “adventure” on these lists. The word adventure has always had a postive connotation for me. I still don’t find anything postive about it.

The damnest thing about this cancer diagnosis is that it is so anxiety provoking. I just cannot make it go away.

I am giving my very best effort to focus on the NOW. I work very hard at not dwelling on this because a huge part of my awareness knows that Dan may not die of this at all. It could be something else, or I may not live to see him die. I might go first.

As I have said before, I do believe that life is a crapshoot, but to be totally candid, life was easier when we had problems that had a chance of being solved.

This may not kill Dan, but the cancer is there. And we both know it.

If anyone has figured out a way to get it out of your mind, let me know.
It still enters my mind several times each day. It is no longer a cold chill like it was at first when this was new; now it is just like a damned big thorn in my side that I cannot seem to remove.

The initial panic is gone, of course. The terrible sadness does not pierce my heart in the same way that it did for a long while, but the knowledge of this disease has changed my perception about life. And not in a good way.

I know a lot of people like to run around saying that cancer is the best thing that ever happened to them. Good if that is the case for them. My husband’s cancer is not the best thing that ever happened to me, and I rather doubt that Dan would say it is the best thing that ever happened to him.

I get sick and tired of putting postive spins on stuff. Sometimes life is just damned hard, and it pisses me off.