Prostate cancer shoved its way into my everyday lexicon.
When I spoke to my sister face-to-face while visiting her in Santa Fe last fall, she told me her husband’s doctor had told him, “If you are over the age of 65 and are NOT experiencing issues in regards to your prostate—you’re female.”
My version of prostate cancer had been silent.
Were it not for a random visit to my primary care doctor who suggested I have a PSA (prostate specific antigen) administered in the summer of 2020, I would have been blithely unaware I was slowly but surely succumbing to cancer. Were it not for a friend “suddenly” dying from prostate cancer last summer, I would not have opted to “pull out the stops” and do whatever it took to fight back. Were it not for a history of prostate issues within my family, I might have considered toughing it out.
As I write this column, I don’t know if I can call myself a cancer survivor yet. My 28 proton radiation treatments are finished but the jury remains in session. Future check ups will reveal whether or not the treatments were successful at halting the cancerous spread. In the meantime, I’m undergoing hormone therapy treatment which involves a shot in the ass every three months and—for me—the most significant side effect has been hot flashes.
Yes, ladies, I am now totally empathetic to menopause. (I’m providing a different kind of PSA for any non-empathetic, or clueless, men out there—public service announcement—in the form of a link to side effects of menopause.)
Apparently, testosterone feeds prostate cancer. The less you have the better your odds at beating back prostate cancer’s growth. The usual regimen of hormone therapy lasts six months. Due to my cancer not being fully contained within my prostate, I may have to endure 18 months of a sudden onset of clammy skin, my internal temperature rising out of nowhere at the drop of a hat and a furious desire to shed or add layers of clothing.
Or, as a friend told me the other night, during the hot depths of an eastern Washington summer, you’ll find yourself half-naked standing in front of an open refrigerator.
Non sequitur:
Haikus are easy
but sometimes they don’t make sense.
Refrigerator
My three weeks in the backcountry this spring was particularly exasperating because for about 15 minutes you feel as if you are on fire and then—once it passes—and you find yourself stripped down to your t-shirt and Patagonia tights, you’re left with clammy skin as you realize the air temp is near freezing and you need to—once again—don the half-dozen layers of clothing you just recently threw off. For a cold weather weenie like myself, these were the most trying circumstances.
I loathe being cold. Even for the shortest periods of time.
I recently heard that the better you can endure cold—like Wim Hof (video below)—the better your longevity. I’m going to take my chances and put my mind against other kinds of matter and hope for similar results.
I tried to use my mind as a bulwark against negative results during the six weeks of radiation treatments. I was asked to show up to treatments every workday with “my bowels emptied and a full bladder”. The theory being that you want every possible organ down in your nether regions to be as far apart as possible. Bladders rise like a balloon when they are full, distancing themselves from your walnut-sized prostate. If your rectum is not backed up with ‘cargo’, it too will be as far away from the prostate as possible. To further separate your rectum from your prostate, a gel was inserted between these two delicate organs.
Notice I am using the word “your”, instead of “my”, as if this is a brochure about prostate cancer treatments and not a description of my experience. It’s a feeble attempt on my part to make the whole subject more palatable.
This is far too much information, I know, but I’m slowly meandering to the whimsical part.
So, I showed up throughout late January, February and early March to the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance’s facility in north Seattle. It’s conveniently located directly across the street from the Washelli-Green Cemetery and only several blocks away from a plethora of ‘street walkers’ on Aurora Avenue who clearly follow Wim Hof’s teachings because fishnet and skimpy clothing was the fashion even during Seattle’s foulest winter weather.
SCCA has a lovely lounge area with a variety of beverages available, an enormous gas hearth, plenty of windows for maximal light, a peppy squad of concierges and numerous comfy sitting areas. If everyone wasn’t there for cancer treatments of all kinds—chemo, etc—I could easily have imagined being at a swanky hotel, or being a first-class traveler at one of those exclusive airport lounges.
I’d arrive 15 minutes in advance of my session and—quite often—I’d be retrieved early by one of the radiation techs. Every morning I’d faithfully follow Tom Brady’s TB12 formula to perpetual studness and gulp a quart of water right out of the starting gate. It was the first thing I’d grab getting out of bed. By the time I was driving to my appointment, I would have consumed three quarts which is three quarts more than I have normally imbibed by twelve noon for my entire lifetime.
Needless to say, I would arrive at SCCA with a bladder ready to burst. I took my prep work seriously. I may have hedged a bit on the inaugural day, because I wasn’t sure how long the treatments lasted, but once I learned the proton radiation beam was imperceptible and that my time on the thinly padded metal slab would usually be no longer than three pop songs, I put my mind to work resisting the urge to urinate.
Only once during the 28 treatments did I reach the “eye-watering” stage. The proton beam was in use in another treatment room and, as I lay ‘stiff as a board, light as a feather’ on the rigid stainless table, I had to endure a bloated bladder along with almost a dozen yacht rock songs. For those of you who don’t want to do the math, that would be approximately 36 minutes. Everything from Seals & Croft singing about a summer breeze somehow “blowing through the jasmine of my mind” to the now thoroughly politically incorrect Hooked on a Feeling by Blue Suede that begins and concludes with “ooga Chaka, ooga, ooga, ooga Chaka, ooga ooga”.
I think on that day I exited the treatment room without bothering to put on the lily white bathrobe that was meant to veil my exposed ‘hospital gown’ bottom. I had one mission, and one mission only, and heavens forbid if the bathroom was found occupied.
It wasn’t. I survived. No embarrassing moment to report about leaving a trail of urine down the hallway or on the treatment table.
Beyond that lone scheduling hiccup, the treatments were like a summer breeze blowing through the jasmine of my mind.
Just three—mostly pastel-colored—pop songs each day.
I made a playlist of the pop songs I listened, hummed or outright sang while also listening to the archaic sounds emanating from the proton beam housing unit. (For the record, it sounded like a needle on vinyl scratching/tracing an arc from short to long to short.)
This group did not emerge from those 28 sessions, but I highly recommend their music. Oil & Water by Rationale.
Also, Deliverance by Rationale.
I could listen to the voice of the lead singer all day…
In addition, CostPlusDrugs is a VERY good place to search for your prescriptions. A drug I was prescribed retailed for $200 for a 90 count supply. Medicare covers it, but it still cost ME $75. I could have ordered it through CPD for $7.
More taxpayer’s money down the drain.
I know. It’s owned by the billionaire many times over, Mark Cuban, and I’m all in favor of defunding the rich and refunding the people by re-instituting tax law from the Eisenhower era, but I’m also in favor of circumventing the systems that make most of us poorer.
More apologies about the long break between columns. Some of it had to do with river trips and some of it had to do with moving households and some of it had to do with medical reasons and a lot of it had to do with laziness. It’s amazing how out-of-writing-shape you can get and so I also want to apologize for the topic and the herky-jerky writing.
However, I wanted to share my experience—and I dodged the hoarier parts of the story that I would be happy to talk about one-on-one—because most of us keep this kind of stuff extra-private to the detriment of others who might benefit from the knowledge. I know I felt infinitely better when my significant other told me about all of the people she knew who had successfully navigated various types of prostate cancer treatment.
Thanks for reading and sharing! - JLM
Love 💕 you James 🤙🏽🌅🙏