Month 17

Howdy folks,

By the time you read this, we will probably be in Sayulita…that’s a small town about 45 minutes or so from Puerto Vallarta.  We’ll be there for a few days, and then spend a few more days in an even smaller town ten minutes away from Sayulita, known as San Francisco, but referred to as ‘San Pancho’ by the locals.

I finished my eight weeks of radiation for the prostate a week ago Wednesday (October 17th), and there was not much in the way of side effects.  I feel fine, pooping a bit more, but that’s getting better already.  Urination somewhat erratic…gotta go, can’t go, gotta go again, but that hasn’t been bad either.

At this point, I’m glad I went the radiation route rather than surgery.  I will have PSA blood tests about every three months for a year or so, and then probably every six months. The doctor said the PSA numbers might bounce around a little at first, but they should eventually settle in at a very low number.  If the PSA goes up, that’s not good.  The survival rate approaches 100 percent if the cancer hasn’t gotten out of the prostate gland.  However, if it has escaped the prostate, then survival rates are around 30 percent. And that’s not so good.  The doctors think there’s a good chance mine did NOT get out of the prostate.

To celebrate the end of the radiation blasts, we went up to Grants Pass last weekend to check on the grand-baby.

Elyra was not immediately excited about seeing Papa.

Now we’re okay.

 

I had an evaluation meeting with the GI doctor, and he thinks it’s a good idea to do an endoscopy to see what’s going on in my reconstructed stomach and esophagus.  The procedure is scheduled for November 12th.

My stomach has been behaving fairly well of late.  Although, if I eat too much, I get very full and ‘gaggy’… the food feels like it is sitting up high in my stretched-out stomach and almost into my esophagus.

The doctors tell me I should wait at least three hours after dinner before going to bed, to give the food a chance to digest.  So I am trying to make lunch my major meal rather than dinner, to reduce the potential for acid reflux (GERD) during the night.  The GERD seems to happen every couple of weeks, and it is usually because I have slipped off my pillow and end up sleeping level rather than at an incline. It is very unpleasant…it makes my throat very hot, and give me a dry and insistent cough.  I am searching for a beanbag ‘pillow’ that I can wedge under my knees at night so I won’t slip off (or down) the pillow I’m sleeping on.

Weight-wise I’m doing okay.  I weighed 136.6 this morning (Oct 28), and have gotten as high as 138+.  I’m in no mad rush to get back to 150…140-ish would be fine.

Carol and I are continuing our trips to the Y for exercises, usually three or four times a week unless we are on the road somewhere.  And we try to get in walks as often as possible in the early morning.  I carry two horseshoes with me and practice throwing them at a horseshoe pit in a local park.  I throw after each lap (three laps and home again).  I can’t quite reach the darn stakes yet, and it used to be no problem. I did read in the official rules that men over 70 can move up to 10 feet closer!  But I’m not ready to do that yet.

So that’s about it for October.  Happy Halloween everybody.  We’ll be in Mexico for the ‘day of the dead.’ See you next month.

Here’s a repeat of a poem from several weeks ago.  Maybe you missed it or forgot it, so here it is again.

Fate

I sip my morning coffee

And peruse the morning paper.

 

I scan the obits, looking to see if anyone I know is there.

 

Poor souls, gone, and they all sounded like

Such nice people.

 

The obits every day tell of the courageous mother

Or the carefree, free-spirited dad

Who succumbed to a death that grew within them

That over took some vital organ

And spread inexorably to bones or nodes or brain.

 

And then I wonder

Are there seeds of death somewhere

Germinating inside me?

 

I don’t like to think about that fate for me

But you never know

Things can be fine, life can be good, and then one day

The doctor says….you’re screwed.

 

Well, nobody gets out of this life alive

That’s for sure

 

But I was kind of hoping I might.