Running Out Of Time

Running Out Of Time: The message nearly three year ago was ominous. Very aggressive prostrate cancer is not a message about life ending tomorrow, maybe not even for the next few years, but it is a message that your life is going to change. Develop a plan and execute it, and hope for the best.

So my plan was to block testosterone for two years, go through two HD radiation treatments that pretty much wipe out the gland, do 20 external beam radiation treatments, and see what happens. The radiation had side effects, but they were all within reason. The hormone block was hell, and the effects lasted for over two and a half years.

Testosterone is the chemical that my body almost shuts down, without. It is hard to describe the total loss of energy, and the way that your muscles, especially in your legs, always feel. They sort of hurt always, and they hurt a lot after a little use. The emotional ride is no less devastating. I cried more in that two years, plus, than I will cry in the rest of my life. I lost my temper with people, and spent a lot of time composing myself.

Now, the testosterone is back, but so is the cancer which was dependent upon the testosterone. Soon, it will no longer be dependent and that day could be any time now. So, next week, we start blocking the testosterone again, or we enter some form of chemotherapy. It all depends on how fast the cancer is growing. We have to find out if we can find where it is growing, it could be anywhere, and that means tests of all sorts.

No more radiation is possible. The testosterone block, if we go that route, will take me back to a world that is nearly unbearable. Chemotherapy, if we take that route, will reek it own kind of havoc. The end game is about to start, and so this couple of months that I have now are really precious to me.

I had hoped that we could use them to the maximum by spending as much time as possible with grandchildren. But, that did not happen. As a matter of fact, this has been two of the loneliest months of my life. Sarah has been in a lot of pain and spent most of her time in bed. The weekends, except for one when we went to the mountains to spend time with Stephanie, our daughter in law, and her children, have been mostly me trying to make a very quite house a friend that it was never intended to be.

So, my two months of feeling pretty good are almost over and they were pretty well wasted. If Sarah feels like it, we are going to not waste the next two weekends. Treatments should not affect how I feel that much for a while. Next weekend is a quandary. We had planned to meet Stephanie and Brian and the Children at Grandfather Mountain, but David, Kate, and the boys could not come down this weekend and they may be able to the next weekend. The weekend after that, we have reservations to meet with some of our old college friends in Boone.

But, time is running out. When we find out what is coming, we can not go back and fill the time we lost, it is just lost. I know what is probably coming, and it scares me a little. Oh, I am ready to die, if and when that comes. I have lived a full life and I understand the contract we are given at birth.  But, the twilight between now and then is coming. Feeling good is a passing moment, and entering that twilight to never see the full light of life again is much tougher than death. It is the coming of that time that I refer to when I say that time if running out.