Evil Empire Falls Temporaily To Zytiga

Yes folks this just in.  [A Curt Gowdy voice]

PC stage IV was ahead of Zytiga last month.   [Howard Cossell]

A valiant battle was waged during the next thirty days and the new score is in.  [Tom Brokaw voice]

Zytiga rocks the PSA BY 58% Baby.  [Dick Vital voice]

58% DOWN!  Hell that sounds like a sale. [Bob Barker voice]

That extension of life brought to you by, some drug company, but most of all by the prayers and thoughts of my loved ones, friends and certainly the loving therapy from my caregiver.

Today Rocks! [Some Hair Band Voice]

Thanks all…..My voice

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
.

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.

Peanuts and Hope

My wife keeps a small unique pottery cup filled with ten or so unshelled peanuts on the kitchen counter next to the kitchen window.  The kitchen window looks over her beautiful garden and is above the sink.

Every morning like random morning clock work, out side her kitchen window, a Scrub Jay shows up.  The Scrub Jay sits atop the bird feeder that is a bit of six feet away of the window.  Hopefully sitting and wishing, the Scrub Jay awaits his/her expectant daily peanut.

My wife opens the window,  places two unshelled peanuts on the outside sill and before closing the window talks to the Scrub.  Sometimes the bird my wife conversation is quite lengthy.

Then, Scrub Jay makes Scrub Jay sound [irritating as that may be], flits over, and grabs a peanut.  Comes back a few minutes later and grabs the next one flitting away for a hidey hole he/she won't remember thirty seconds later.

Sometimes the Jay shows up and my wife is off on some errand that generally will ultimately take care of me or someone else in our family  and the Jay gets no peanut.

But.  The Jay shows up everyday hopefully waiting for a peanut. 

Hope

The Hell with Zytiga lets talk INK

OK, like I mentioned I’ve gotten my new Tatt.  I thank all of you who emailed and voted but I had to redesign.  For more than three decades I’ve known my totem is the crow.  Minutes before I had the ink applied to my fore arm by Doug Auld I redesigned and he embellished as the artist that he is.  I added a crow. Doug added the art.

So what’s the big deal about a tattoo to someone fighting the Effing Evil Empire?  Permanent ink on your body is powerful.  How many of you are wishing you didn’t have a heart and Judith or Georges dog Jethro tattooed to your bicep.  Powerful stuff marking your body is.

If you are a radiation patient such as me you have lots of tattoos.  Certainly not works of art but they mark you as a cancer patient.  Ink your body and it defines you in that time and gives you strength in that time.  I recently was inked for strength.

Anyone that has read this blog knows I call our disease the Evil Empire and when I’m really angry I go beyond PG13 and say Fucking Evil Empire.  Someone more PC than I came up with Effing Evil Empire for my cancer and all others.  Nerd mathematical me thought “Oh wow that’s E³”  I know I know...Nerd

Then, as I'm a firm believer in symbolism I decided to incorporate E³ and my totem onto my right arm where they [medical], as my wife calls it, “shit” they pump into my right arm.

I will tell you this now.  Whatever God you believe in…do it.  If you believe in a little fuzzy bunny…do it.  Whatever.  I know that the minute I had this Tatt put on, one I’d been thinking about for months, it rocked me.  I can feel it. I was mentally empowered. The Tatt will help me visualize how to defeat this cowardly disease.

The point.  Grab onto what you believe.  Doesn’t have to be a Tatt.  Doesn’t have to be a Bible.  It could be a cool rock you picked up at the river [I have one of those too], a piece of shell from the beach JUST grab and believe.

Just grab and believe.

Talk to you later.

I Need Your Vote Now

Tattoos.  I have more than one.  Admittedly eight of them are for radiation targeting and are but mere pin points but I still count them as tattoos.  One of them though, the one on my left shoulder blade, was done by a true artist. 

My “tat” is iconic in the Celtic world.  You can see a pic of it if you really need to in one of my previous posts.  Back in November of 2011 I think.  Though that tat is years old I can feel it at all times.  Not as pain but as something “being there”, something maybe powerful and this got me to thinking.

In the days of yore Native Americans painted symbols on their bodies seeking strength and courage.  What self respecting alien isn’t inked all over in an effort to, well who knows what an alien is thinking.  The fact is humans and movie aliens have been painting symbols on their bodies in effort of seeking protection, power and portable Pictionary games for eons.

I have labeled my disease the “Evil Empire”.  Naming it something that makes sense out of a nonsensical disease helps me with my visualization as I try to exorcise the Evil Empire from my body.  A polite friend of mine coined the email friendly phrase “Effing Evil Empire”.

Thinking about new “ink” that would help me combat this disease it dawned on me Effing Evil Empire could be written [yes I’m a nerd] E³. For you forgetful of Algebra that's E cubed.

So just like all who have gone before me, their body tattoo’s lending them courage, strength or in the case of aliens protection from asteroids I’ve decided to ink E³ onto my body in some strategic place.  Probably near where they insert the IVs and take blood.

So now comes the rub… take a look at the examples below and vote for the one that conveys how evil this disease is.  The one that looks like armor against this cowardly disease.  The one that, well, just might scare the crap out of the Effing Evil Empire. 

I’ll send a pic of the one that won after I get it inked into my arm.

Next, Zytiga and Monsters under the bed.

Talk to you later

Gray But Back

I sit and stare at a blank piece of paper. 

It has not been a good day.  Oh sure, physical I was no worse, mentally I am a wreck.   

There are spaces between each line I type that are still blank.  Blank.

I’m confused about my mental place today.  I worked but didn’t go in to work. 

Perhaps my mental space today, that gray what's the point sort of space, is a culmination of not writing my blog.  I frequently feel bad because, as the gray creeps in, it takes away things that made me happy and maybe things that helped others.

So whether it matters or not, I’ll be writing again.

How Would I Live If My Life Was a Reality Show

I'm sitting here at my desk with a lap top glaringly accusing me of work not yet complete.  A thought creeps into my brain as I stare mindlessly at photons excited.  

I've not had good news today from my Onc but that news isn't the driver behind this question. I wonder if that news has made me wonder though.

The question?  I wonder how each of us would live, or had lived,  if we knew someone would make a documentary of our life.

Talk to you later