Did Cancer Change Me? i wonder…

Major life events change who you are. In 1976, Dr. Morris Massey created a training film entitled, Who You Are is Where You Were When – when a major life event occurred, taken in the context of where you were in life when it happened. I don’t remember when I saw it, or even if it was for a college course or a career seminar. The premise has stuck with me throughout the years. If something big happens to you or around you, you change, according to your circumstances. In a word, you adapt. But in a major way.

A cancer diagnosis and treatment definitely rank as a major life event. You would expect a brush with mortality to have an impact on you. Right? After all, trauma has been known to alter one’s brain chemistry. People have even died from the physical damage of broken hearts.

Only, it doesn’t feel like I went through a major trauma. Chemo was rough and came close to being emotionally devastating toward the end. However, I never felt as though my life was truly threatened. The cancer had not gone that far and, as my oncologist noted, I was very healthy otherwise. In fact, I had to calm one of my friends down when she started ranting against fate, saying how I was supposed to be enjoying my retirement, not dealing with cancer. I literally had to tell her, “I’m not dying.”

So, despite the fact I will live with this disease, under control, for the rest of my many years to come, I still don’t feel as though my life is in jeopardy. Because it isn’t.

Overall, I have to say the diagnosis and treatment were more of a hardship than an ordeal. Fourteen months later, I am almost fully recovered and living the retirement life I had envisioned. In no way am I feeling traumatized by this experience.

So, what do hardships do to you? Do they change you?

For some, they do nothing. Hard times don’t change them. For others, they put things into focus. You see your habits, patterns, and idiosyncrasies in a new light. They teach us to be resilient and to recalibrate our priorities. They cause us to change our outlook and to grow. Put us on a journey of self-discovery. I find myself in the latter category.

A few years ago, my Godmother asked me if I ever stopped moving. My to-do list was a mile long and I became upset if I wasn’t getting enough done every single day. I had a plan and I was compelled to get it done. But never could because it was always too ambitious. I told myself that if I would just be more efficient, stop wasting time during the day, I could finish my planned tasks. If I took a day or two off, I felt as though I was being a lazy. I didn’t let myself admit I was trying too hard.

I can’t say why, other than I was trained to do so from early on. In grammar school, I overheard my teachers saying to my parents I could be so much more if only I used my full potential. I heard my parents repeat this more than once to relatives at various gatherings over the years. While the pressure was less and more subtle through high school and into college, the seed had been planted. I needed to become more and more and more. I got one degree, then another, then another. Parties, back when I threw them, had to be bigger, better, with more drink and food options. More recently, the garden had to be bigger, better, and produce more.

Then the side effects of cancer treatment brought me to a halt.

When I couldn’t walk up a flight of steps without pausing to catch my breath, when I had no choice but to give myself time off after treatments. It forced me to reflect and re-evaluate how I was judging myself through what I could accomplish in a day, a week, a month. Today, I can fully admit I was trying too hard at everything: the blog, the garden, cooking, entertaining. You name, I overdid it.

Who was I trying to impress? My daughter and my friends were cool whether I finished my lists or not (except maybe the dishes per Beth), and the people who pushed me so long ago have all passed on to the other side. If they’re watching me now from over there, it’s on them if they’re not satisfied with what I do. I no longer care. I’m good with who I am and the me that is becoming post treatment.

Have I given up? Decided to just sit back and sip coffee in front of the computer all day? Said screw getting stuff done because I ended up with cancer anyway? All my efforts to be healthful and productive didn’t do me any good?

No. I just mellowed out.

I didn’t change what I was going to do here at home to make the life we want. I just got real about it.

I developed a long-term schedule for maintaining, expanding, and improving our homestead from the garden to home repairs to building projects. It currently goes out to 2029 and will always look forward five years. What I did differently was to stop and think as to how much time and energy and resources I would actually have to complete projects, then set realistic goals, focused on important tasks with truthful estimates of how long they would take.

For example, housecleaning. I have always and will probably always Hate housecleaning – and I mean that capital H. I did a perfunctory job of it, before, just a bit more than the bare minimum. I mean, I would have to clean the dust and cobwebs off the vacuum before using it. I took for granted that I would have always have the time and energy for it, however poorly I would sometimes do it. A clean house, though, is a healthy house. I rather need a healthy environment now. So, despite still loathing the activity, this has to be done. At first, I only managed one room a day as my stamina recovered. By November, I was able to deep clean each room by devoting an entire week to each one. That caught me up finally and now I clean the entire upstairs in one morning.

Except Beth’s room; she has so many knick-knacks and little stuff everywhere, I vacuum and wash what floor I can find and sort of hover vacuum with our powerful Kirby to dust her desk and all. Any more cleaning is up to her.

As it is, I’m quickly becoming addicted to clean. Had I not been forced to reflect on this habit, I might not have become better at it. I will never enjoy it, but it is now a priority, which I no longer dodge. Although I do enjoy the outcome.

While undergoing chemo, I stopped having my Friday night beer or two, and my Saturday night dinner cocktail. I simply felt it would help me heal faster not to be drinking alcohol. In the time since ending treatment, I’ve not gone back to them. I don’t feel the need to. I’ll have a drink or two at parties. That’s about it. As for throwing our own parties, we’ll have one or two cookouts each summer to share our bounty with the people we care about. That’ll do.

While I’m avoiding activities which increase one’s testosterone, because it’s food for prostate cancer, I’ve gone back to working out religiously with the approval and encouragement of both my doctors. Exercise, it turns out, only briefly and slightly elevates your testosterone. Ten minutes after finishing, levels are back to normal, which is low for me because I get hormone therapy (Lupron shots) to reduce it. After two months I feel so much better; stronger and more energetic.

I’ve also scaled back some garden plans, if you can believe that. I’ve not stepped back from our goal to expand what we grow and become more self-reliant. But I have paused projects like the conversion of rotting wood beds into stone ones like the five I built last spring, opting instead simply to remove the wood as it fails and mulch heavily around the raised mounds. The cement walls and pathways would be nice to have, and I really, really wanted to finish the conversion of all of the beds by the end of next year to be maintenance free. But it’s not truly necessary. Not having stone beds won’t ruin our long-term goals. So, they can wait.

I might even repurpose the blocks from the five for a grilling patio and just go with thick mulch around the beds.

In short, I’ve gotten better at focusing on what’s necessary versus what would be nice. What we need versus what I want. Maybe that is a major change, but I don’t feel all that different. I still think I’m basically the same person with the same interests as ever. Mostly, I simply let go of the need to overperform. I’m allowing myself to enjoy just being.

Not that I won’t eventually get everything on my wish-list. Wishes will still come true on our homestead. Just in moderation.

January 10, 2024

Today is the one-year anniversary of my last dose of chemo!

I wanted to keep going, but my body told me I’d had enough. I had gained about 30 pounds; most of the hair on my head and body was gone; my lungs were beginning to retain fluid; I couldn’t walk up a single flight of stairs without pausing; my fingernails were so brittle I couldn’t open the cat food cans; and I had swelled up from head to toe to the point I almost needed a shoehorn to put on my slippers.

The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak as they say. My doctor agreed without question that I couldn’t have managed another session without the side effects becoming dire.

I managed eight treatments over a six-month period, which he said was more than most, and made significant progress. My real trial, however, was about to begin.

You know how sometimes, when life is really making you struggle, you’re like, “Whatever I’m being prepared for, let’s just get on with it already.” Chemo and the recovery from it turned out to be it. Trust me, the recovery is just as hard if not harder than treatment. You have to push through it and work at making yourself better and stronger day by day. The option, of course, is simply to accept your frailer self and live within its limits.

You know which path I chose.

I went back to the gym and was elated a month later when I was able to jog a little bit on the track. It wasn’t really running, though, just a faster trudging for the land whale I felt I had become. I was equally thrilled the first time I made it up the steps in one go. The swelling abated, my lungs cleared, and my nails grew back. Curiously, my hair came back a bit thicker and just as blond as ever. I’m about to do my third self-inflicted haircut since with a kit I bought at CVS back then.

I also had our hyperactive garden to keep me active, which took over for the gym in the summer. With a lot of help from Beth and one of her friends, we got it planted and it did fairly well with my limited ability to tend it at first. By season’s end, I was able to close it out properly for the first time and create a two-step composting station. I expect a good start to this year’s microfarm.

I’m back in the gym three days a week, starting cautiously, yet leaving my muscles knowing I’ve worked out, and I am actually running. I focus on the motion: picking my feet and knees up, feeling the motion in my hips, and putting some spring into my calves. Each time, I string longer bits of running into walking around the track. By months end, I expect to be doing several laps at a time. And this year, I will continue gym workouts as well as working in the garden.

Today I feel better than I did when I first retired. At that point, the cancer was spreading into my spine and ribs. Now, it’s beat down and tamed further than we had first envisioned. I’ve already gotten down from land whale to something more like that grunting rhino at the back of the stampede in Jumanji. Hopefully, I’ll achieve something like retired race horse or at least quarter-horse by the end of the year. You know I’m not yet ready to be put out to pasture.

Halloween 2022

Halloween. A season to many, a nuisance to some, but generally a fun time for most. With my oncologist’s blessing, I went to a party. The theme was childhood fears. To be able to wear a mask, when necessary, I went as a dentist.

Theme: Childhood fears. I had a mask to wear if the room got too close.

Retirement for me has been remarkably agreeable and peaceful. I know so many guys who went back to work, or refuse to retire because they don’t know what to do with themselves. Sadly, they don’t have hobbies or post-work goals for their lives. This comes, in my opinion, from having been indoctrinated and trained in revering the almighty corporation, in being brainwashed into believing there is virtue in living to work, rather than working to live.

Not me.

I got over that edification of the corporation long ago and while I may have liked the work I was doing, I treated my job as my job, and did not define myself or my life by it. I traveled a bit, did some big-time ghost hunting, tried a side-hustle as a professional baker, and often (usually) ended up short on cash. At parties, I never liked asking people what they did for a living. I would always ask about what they had been up to lately. What fun were they having in life. Once I grasped it was utter BS to devote yourself to a corporate career (unless you became the kind of boss people hated), I rededicated my life to myself rather than an employer who only wanted the revenue I generated for them. When I retired, I told people I’d worked enough years of making money for other people.

Despite my health troubles this past season, the garden was a source of resting my soul and rejuvenation. I may not have kept up with it as planned, nor gotten as much from it as hoped for, but I did enjoy it. The garden is my happy place. The gazebo is my Zen Den. I forget the world exists when I’m planning, planting, or harvesting.

Located my Zen den in a shady spot.

The comfy egg chair no longer sinks into the earth with the new floor.

Rockers we added this year.

Gazebo ready to use. Added the carpet this year.

Preserving, on the other hand, is enough work that I recall I did other jobs once in life and think how grateful I am that the work I do now, keeping our microfarm, is strictly for me and my family and friends. None of my efforts go to benefit a distant Board of Directors, who don’t even know or give a damn about me, but whom I have to keep happy to keep my job.

Anyway, what I’m getting at is I’m the guy who enjoys spending quiet days at home with his hobbies, books, and pets. I’m not the guy who gets bored after two weeks at home and has to get another job, any job, to preserve his sanity. My peace of mind comes from my home and myself. It’s been fourteen months since I quit working and I don’t miss it, nor am I going stir crazy. I have been enjoying every moment of it. Although I got antsy in February to get going on the garden.

Still, as a rather gregarious person, I also enjoy interacting with people. I still stop by to have coffee and donuts with my barista crew from my last job once a week (usually). I don’t hesitate to chat with my neighbors or people I meet when I’m out and about. I’m usually cracking jokes and being my curious self when I’m interacting with my health care crews. And a party was just the thing to really invigorate my soul.

To be honest, I did tire out about an hour or so earlier than I might have in years past. Despite that, I enjoyed myself and had some good and some rather interesting (to put it politely) vegetarian and vegan food in the pot-luck dinner. I made the desserts, full bore fats and sugars in the pumpkin roll and an apple and pear cobbler with gluten free flour for our hostess. I’m kicking myself for not having taken pictures of them.

Internet picture, but mine looked just like this. Honest.

When you’re dealing with cancer, your support network is one of your lifelines. Being able to get out and see my friends and make some new ones was a treat. We may not have stayed long, but it was fun and worth the hour-long drive. Their concern for my well-being is heart-warming and soul-soothing. It helps you in feeling that the disease is just another run-of-the-mill, everyday thing that just takes a little longer to get over, but from which you will recover and be just fine after a while.

Which, of course, I will be.

The two beers I drank at the party were the first alcohol I’d consumed since my niece’s wedding in August, which was the first in over a month back then, as I decided not to drink during my chemo treatments. Part of the reason for that is also to lose weight. I’ve managed to trim off about ten pounds since August. If I can get another ten off before the end of the year, despite holiday dinners and treats, I’ll be happy.

And hopefully I don’t just gain it all back again next year.

Toward that end, we will be joining our town’s fitness center in January. I’ll be done with chemo (at least for now) and on a daily pill. I’ll be seeing the doctors every few months instead of every few weeks. I’ll have the energy for some light exercise, and I need to keep myself active in some way during January and February, when I’m done with one growing season and waiting for the next. It will also be another opportunity to interact with people. No job necessary.

In the meantime, I’m going to start taking morning walks again. I was sidelined last year because hikes of even the shortest nature in the cooler weather left me with an urgent need to pee. Like, immediate, not going to make it home, find a tree type of urgency that came with little to no warning. Which was one of the first signs of my illness. The TURP procedure I underwent in September has resolved that problem. I can take an hour or two long walks now, and need to.

Between that and getting out to a party, life is settling back to a more normal routine. A new one, that is, in which I’m managing my cancer as a chronic condition. It may go into remission, but it will never go away. I’ll just have to do the right things with my diet and exercise, and keep an eye on my condition. Another round of chemo next year is quite possible. I’ll deal with it then, if need be. For now, life is what I make of it.

In other words, just like it was before. With an occasional double chocolate chip cookie.

October of an unusual year

Okay. Wow! How does one encapsulate the madness that was the second half of my summer? I feel like I lost half of this year, although the harvesting and all continued to a lesser extent than normal.

My cancer turned out to be further along than I had thought at first. Having spread to a handful of points in my bones, it is considered to be an advanced cancer. At this point, it is a chronic condition I will have to manage for the rest of my life. Which should be decades I expect, and my oncologist does not disagree, because I am otherwise so healthy.

The first reality check that my body can’t shake things off like before came at the end of July. I didn’t think it worth posting that I was in the ER in April with severe back pain. After several tests, we determined I’d simply strained it with hammering in new posts in the cold, damp weather. I reaggravated the injury in July, probably putting in the floor for our gazebo. I had some pain meds still from April and figured, same injury – same meds.

Nope. Didn’t work out that way. I ended up in the hospital for two days getting my blood levels squared away thanks to severe constipation and urine retention. How bad was it? I didn’t feel the catheter being put in. If you’ve ever been cathed, you know how much pain I had to have been in. I found out the following week when I needed a second one put in, because I was still unable to pee correctly after the first was removed. It’s an experience you never forget. If you’ve never had one, my wish for you is that you never experience it. (Although there are a few people I would wish it on. None of you though.)

Diet and medication cured the constipation. The urine retention, which was related to the enlarged prostate, required surgery (TURP procedure), which I am thrilled to say was totally successful. I cannot tell you what a pleasure it is to be able to empty your bladder and get back to sleep for two or three hours instead of being up every forty-five minutes or so all freaking night.

After the hospitalization, I needed two to three weeks getting back a minimum of energy. I spent considerable time in the gazebo looking at what I needed to do without being able to spend more than five or ten minutes a day doing so. Beth did much of the harvesting in those weeks. The beans got out of control, though, and we only managed to put fourteen quart bags into the freezer for the winter; about three months worth.

We did still manage to put up twenty quarts of tomato sauce, only a few less than my goal. And the peppers! It was a good year for peppers. The jalapenos went nuts. We have eleven jars of pickled, green slices and twice as much sriracha as last year, almost an entire half gallon. We dehydrated the Anaheim peppers and I have about three jars worth of sweet peppers to pickle. With the size of our garden, we dedicate an entire bed to Alma peppers for sweet paprika. We got enough to fill an entire sixteen-ounce jar this year, probably enough for the year. (I use two tablespoons a week in my taco seasoning on Tuesdays.)

The rest of the garden produced adequately, with the exception of the sweet corn. This was the second year trying an heirloom Bantam variety; it has failed in both years in different beds. I’ve already chosen a different type for next year. Likewise, our celeriac failed to form bulbs for a second year in a row. Granted I did have them in some new garden mix I had trucked in at the start of the year. It might have been good on nitrogen, while light on potassium and phosphorous. I’ll give it one more season with better control over the soil before deciding whether to stop trying or change varieties.

This is why you keep notes; to be able to make these adjustments. Another change we’re making is the number of parsley plants we put in. We got more than enough; so much in fact we were tired of processing it by the end. We filled the ten-shelf dehydrator twice!

As for my cancer, we’re moving in the right direction. The component of your blood they use as an indication of prostate health is the PSA; prostate specific antibody. Anything over ten is bad. Mine was at 165 at my annual physical, my first in years for not having been able to afford insurance until I retired. It was a couple of months before I could get in with the urologist. By then it had reached 196. He determined, over a few weeks of testing, it was in fact cancer and that it had spread and I got the referral to the oncologist, who was able to see me a week later. It was another two weeks before we started chemo, at which point it had spiked close to 300. The first session of chemo brought it back to 180, about where I had started.

Fast forward nine weeks to session four. (I get them every three weeks.) Blood tests taken before treatment (to be sure I’m healthy enough for it) astounded me. I was hoping for my PSA to be below 100. I was blown away to see the result: 42.5.

It’s definitely working, and I’m definitely feeling it in the days after. I get treatment on a Thursday and it hits me on Saturday, although this last time it started overnight Friday. For a good five days, I feel like I have the flu: muscle aches and joint pains, accompanied by hot and cold flashes, and limited energy. ( I have renewed sympathy for women going through menopause.) As I write this on a Monday, I am still achy and a little nauseous from session four last week. The most annoying side effect, however, is the loss of taste for up to a week.

We grow our garden not just for sustainability, but to be able to make delicious meals from scratch with ultra-fresh ingredients. I’m also a scratch baker and dessert maker. A week where even water tastes funny is as close to being tortured as I ever want to get. I still season as I think fit as I cook, but need Beth to tell me if the food is as good as I wanted it to be. For breakfast, I have corn flakes and bran flakes to which I add whatever fruit I want. When my tastebuds are like this, Beth is quite accurate in referring to them as wood chips and sawdust. If there was an emoji for laughing and bawling at the same time, I’d insert it here.

Finally for this quick update, I have been purposely losing weight; so far around fifteen pounds. I’m doing this through portion control, resisting junk food, limiting desserts, and suspending having my weekly cocktail or two until after I finish with chemo in a couple of months and go on a daily tablet. I’ve been a little peckish at the end of some evenings and there have been moments where friends posted about their cocktails and I really wanted one. But I’ve held the line to this point. I can probably make it through the rest of the year.

Although it may be too early to take bets on that.