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Last zap
As I lay beneath the hulking IGRT machine for the last time, my mind started to drift....even as it began to roam over my body......mostly naked, in white socks.….its claw-arms taking pictures of my loins.....then humming radiation in spurts -- would I miss anything here?
Sure, I met a lot of very nice people. My "old" buddies in the Waiting Room, particularly Freeman and Larry, battling their own cancer and fears. The nurses and technicians, who made things easy for us. The front staff who made fresh coffee for me every day.
My approach to radiation had been to take it one day at a time. One mile at a time. And suddenly, here I was. For marathoners -- the last .2 mile. Looking up into the big red and green laser eyes of the radiation machine, the finish was in sight. I had arrived. June 26th, 2008 -- nine weeks and 43 sessions after it started. A marathon run, indeed.....
Getting into The Spirit
As I lay there, I thought about how easy this had been. How lucky I had been.
Because doctors caught the cancer early – with my annual PSA test – I became a perfect candidate for this cutting-edge high-dose radiation therapy.
No drugs, no chemo, no hormone treatments….didn’t have to accept the surgery option, with all of its potential lifestyle drawbacks. No, all I had to do was lay here every day, for 90 seconds of radiation, for nine weeks.
But without the early diagnosis, the cancer would've spread, possibly outside the prostate, and then I'm in deep weeds. Think back to Dan Fogelberg. No PSA test. Because he was my age – fifty-five – the cancer became aggressive, and the music died … in two years.
Looking back
Yes, I pretty much sailed through the treatment, the prognosis is excellent, Humana didn’t hassle me about a hundred grand in bills…..AND, most important, all the apparatus seems to be working just fine, which, if you read the earlier posts, was a major concern of mine.
No question, making the decision on how to treat prostate cancer was easily the most stressful period of the whole experience. Getting the diagnosis produced a significant spurt of adrenalin that got my attention. But digging into doctors’ heads, doing my own research, and aligning heart-head-and-gut on making the right decision….therein lied the grinding, sleepless stress.
PSA Test ….Key to the kingdom
As I mentioned in my thank-you email to everyone who kept me in their thoughts:
Gentlemen, get your PSA Test annually, starting at age 40 (earlier than recommended). Don't skip a year, don't be an idiot because you hate doctors' offices. EARLY IS HUGE. Catching the cancer early saved my life and all the apparatus, you really want the two-fer......
…..catching it early made facing prostate cancer more of an inconvenience than a game-changer.
To all, my endless thanks
Lots of things felt really, really good on my way out the door of the Bethesda Comprehensive Cancer Center for the last time.
I was free of cancer (and the daily routine) and that felt damn good. On the way out, I banged the gong in the front lobby .... a tradition at the Center..... hit it hard ..... signaling the ringing in of yet another official cancer survivor.
(Hmm. Cancer survivor. Me and Lance. We finally have something in common....)
All along, I felt the real concern of dozens and dozens of family, friends and acquaintenances who sent me prayers, positive thoughts and good vibes. I joked when all the good vibes and prayers collided around me, there was a scent of lavendar. Well, something Heavenly was going on—if I didn’t always smell it, I could feel it.
Many of these prayer-people I didn’t know. My old ski bum partner, and now Baptist minister, Marple Lewis, had his whole Sunday congregation sending up prayers for me. “They're talking to God on your behalf,” Marple told me, ominously. A little five-year-old boy, the son of a co-worker, put me in his nightly bedside prayers—but he’d never met me. Email prayer cards flowed in, people constantly reminding me they were praying for me.
My wife, Lorraine, and son, Nick – they were my oxygen as I went into this deep dive that is cancer and everything that means. I breathed their kindness, love and concern every day, as I watched the sacrifices they made to help me deal with everything. They were awesome!
To all…..Thank you, thank you, thank you!
The Gift
In many ways, the experience of cancer has less to do with the disease itself and more to do with the love you experience from others.
I believe that’s why you’ll hear so many cancer survivors tell you that their cancer was a gift. That always sounds like cancer people had tapped into something mystical....and they aren't sharing -- what are you talking about? Cancer a gift? Hell, it's trying to kill you.
Okay, here's what I got, in my vast and bottomless limitedness as a human being:
The cancer does nudge you to see things, experience life, a little differently. I think, plainly, it just makes you a more grateful person. And a little gratitude just may be the ultimate secret of the universe.
If that's the lesson, if that's the gift, I'm a lucky guy.
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More entries to come
