Zytiga Monsters Under The Bed

Remember the boogey man when you were six or so?  It lived in the dark back corner of your closet.  The corner you couldn’t see if the closet door was open because the bath robe your parents made you dutiful hang up blocked your view.  If smart you kept the door closed.

Then there were the monsters under the bed.  

 I remember winning an A.A.U. long jump one year when I was about thirteen, set a state record I think, and when asked how I trained I couldn’t explain.  How would I explain that in my younger days the leap from the threshold of my bedroom door onto my island of safety was a seemingly 22’-6”?  Sadly, if I didn’t make the leap the monsters under the bed would get me. 

What?  You scoff a monster free leap of 22’-6” by a six year old?  Well, you’re right.  That is absurd.  That’s why I won gold at the very same meet years later in the triple jump.

Once you were on that island of safety there were further rules to be abided.  After checking to make sure the closet door was closed dreading that it wasn’t as that would require a whole new act of not invented track and field events, you examine your top sheet.

The slightest mar, distressed thread, gods forefend a hole or even worse a full tear in the top sheet rendered that sheet useless as protection from any monsters below, in the closet or from anywhere else.

Last there was the never any appendage over the edge of the bed.  Doing that meant instantaneous grappling with the monsters under the bed.  A grappling match only you could lose and who knows where below the bed was?  Death by Dust Bunnies?

I was well into my forties when I finally got over the monsters under the bed thing.  In the last four years I’ve become quite capable of dangling an appendage over the edge like a worm on a hook tempting the largest of under the bed monsters.

I think that at some point the monsters crawl out from underneath and inside those places they hide and you have to deal with them face on.  A lot of them you vanquish with vigor.  Some you don’t.  Cancer would be a good example of a monster.

The treatment for the Effing Evil Empire can have monsters too.  Forget the side effects.  At some point Zolodex, Lupron, Chemo, Trials your Oncologist is going to deliver rising PSA numbers.  Sorry guys that’s the problem for right now with having Stage 4 Prostate Cancer.  Short of a miracle all we can do is fight it with any and all.

 
You may be offered a drug call Zytiga.  This drug isn’t particularly scary in side effects {I tolerate it fairly wel}.  It’s scary to me because it is the monster that grabbed you that night when you didn’t quite make the leap.  It’s the last monster in your mind.  It seems the last resort and that is what made it a monster for me
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Last resort or not, monster or not, so far Zytiga stopped my increasing PSA in the first month.  Next week I will get the second month numbers.  [If Curious what they are let me know]

The monster under the bed in this case?  I waited four months before taking Zytiga.  I was afraid it was the last wall of defense and I didn’t want to know if it would fail me or carry me.  In my case, at least for a month, it has not failed.  In this case, I wish I had all the sleep back I lost from agonizing about the decision.   

We make our own monsters on a very daily basis.  

By the way….I still after five plus decades on this planet I won’t sleep under a sheet with any hole, tear or rip in it and I mean I WON’T.  There’s monsters out there.

Talk to you later.