The Big "C"

     I am now in the nineteenth month of a two year hormone(testosterone) block. I have prostate cancer, the kind that get you pretty fast. My Gleason scores are nines and I had twelve of twelve positive biopsies. The treatment had to be radical, but removing the prostate was not an option. I had twenty-five external beam radiation treatments and two high dosage radiation treatments in the summer of 2014.
     The hormone block has reeked havoc on my body. Slowly I lost energy until I reached the point at which I am today. I have almost no energy and my muscles hurt when I tire them, which takes little exercise. Yet, the hardest part for me is knowing that my three sons are going to be very prone to such a cancer. I spent a life trying to pass on every good thing I could to them, and now I have to face that I am also passing on a condition that could kill them before their time.
    I joke about getting to sixty-nine in sixty-nine years and to eighty in the next year, but that is sort of what it is like. I never make judgments on how old I look, but I am constantly told that I look ten years or so younger that my age of seventy-one, later this month. But however I look on the outside, I am an old man on the inside, if old age is loss of energy.
     But, we all live two lives, the ones our bodies live and the ones our minds live, and I am still very young up there. I do not think like most old people I know. Listening to The Drifters singing songs like; "Saturday night at eight o'clock, I know where I'm going to go, I'm going to pick my baby up and take her to the picture show;" I can get all worked up wanting to relive those days. I want everybody to know and enjoy what I enjoyed then. Life was so easy then and the girl at my side was always a princess to me. We did not walk, we floated down the street.
     So now, that passionate person, that eternal optimist in my mind, it is all still there. The big "C" has not robbed my brain of one iota of the love and lust for life that filled my younger days, though it is robbed my body of so much.
     In all of the treatments and tests, only one, MRI, was an intolerable chore. Otherwise I made a lot of new friends and actually enjoyed to process. Well, the catheters were no fun for sure. But the two high dosage treatments where I was asleep for five hours each, were interesting experiences. The twenty-five external beam treatments were fun, really fun. I hated they were over and gave the five people who were there most of the time crystal Christmas tree ornaments with an angel engraved on them.
     I have a great appreciation that however bad some of this has been, there are millions of people who are going through worse physical experiences. And the ones who can do that and still be an inspiration to others humble me. I never asked, "Why me, Lord?" I hope I would never be so small. of mind and spirit.
     And, during all this, my younger brother, Kevin, still in his mid-fifties, has suffered from debilitating dementia. He can no longer take care of himself and needs to be somewhere where he can be cared for. As the old Hank Williams hymn says, "his burdens are greater than mine." I am the lucky one.
     The big "C" will never win for it can not kill my spirit. That is all that really matters.