Photons on the Prostate - II

Buses and stresses

As I prepared for my rescheduled second course of radiotherapy, as it was later in the day I could get other things done. I had reckoned I should schedule an hour before the appointment for preparation and travel to get to my appointment on time, which might need a review.

On a bus journey that is normally 29 minutes, I alighted from the bus 50 minutes after I boarded it, rush hour traffic amongst other issues. I hate getting so worked up going to the hospital, even the thought of arriving late affects my blood pressure, thankfully, that is not being measured for radiotherapy.

Suited for the suite

On arrival, I was passed from one reception to another, the one that manages the suite where radiotherapy is delivered. They give you another day’s appointment, each visit so that you have 5 in hand.

The radiographer came out to ask if I had done the micro-enema, which I had done at home as the Shit-on-Demand thing was just not working with me. However, to fulfil all righteousness, I went to the toilet and managed to empty my bladder.

When I was called into the suite, the standard formalities of confirming who I am ensued, these were the same radiographers I had seen the day before, and the music playing was Otis Redding’s Sitting on the dock of the bay, as I pulled down my trousers and lay on the hard bed to be positioned for alignment with the green laser beams.

Zap and dap

A few adjustments later, they left me in the room to remotely set off the imaging before targeting the photon beam. In the waiting room, I saw two commemorations of donors of equipment to the radiotherapy department. The kit used to deliver radiotherapy was the Elekta Synergy linear accelerator, first launched in 2002. [Elekta: Important Turns in the history of the company 1994-2005][Radiology Oncology Systems: Elekta Linear Accelerators* Comparison Chart]

It does everything you need it to do and from a table of comparisons, it is a workhorse with very few cons. Within 15 minutes, the deed was done, and I was dressing up to return home.

I had a takeaway last night, but I am still struggling with my appetite for food, I am not fatigued but feel lethargic, and I might need some help around the house. I hope tomorrow, I have the strength to steward at the Cathedral, that’s 2 down and 18 to go. Monday for the next, I might steal a sip of sparkling water before the end of today.

Thought Picnic: Cultivating profitable relationships

Who are true family?

Then Jesus told them, “A prophet is honoured everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family.” [Bible Hub: Mark 6:4 (NLT)]

Sometimes, as I begin to write, a verse of scripture comes to mind around which I can build a context and a story. I am not a prophet, nor do I seek honour, however, just being noticed and acknowledged can help, but that is not the purpose for which I have a blog.

Yet, anyone who has visited my blog finds out there is much to learn about me, my life, my story, my trials, tribulations and afflictions, my triumphs, successes, and blessings, most evidently my thinking and opinions. I remember some friends who had not spoken to me for a while saying, they always checked the currency of my blog to ascertain if I was fine. I am grateful for their consideration, nothing is hidden, I write better than I speak, talk, or tell.

Nothing is hidden

In the past six months, just by engagement of my social media postings, a majority of which refer to my blogs, it would be impossible not to notice that I have had an experience that will pass of prostate cancer.

Yet, I find it bizarre that those who saw my GoFundMe post last year and were quick to preach their bad tidings to Jerusalem, to Judea, and to the ends of the earth by reporting to my parents and relatives along with anyone who listens to their gossip have not found the scandal to interest and occupy them.

They do not mean well, they never meant well, they found joy in the report but never extended a hand to help, a Machiavellian bunch of invisible never-do-wells, will not have the stories or the blessings I get to tell and that is not a curse, you reap what you sow.

The people who matter

What I have better cultivated in life is the genuineness of friendships than the comfort of family. When I was alone battling cancer in the Netherlands, I was blessed with the generosity of strangers who cared for me, cooked my meals, did my shopping, gave me money, and stuck closer than those related by blood. How can I not be grateful for angelic presences I have not deserved?

At that time, there was a clear reading that I was in the hospital, however, someone thought, if he could write, he must be well. Some view life in terms of incapacity, I see things in terms of ability, capability, capacity, and opportunity.

My blog is a journal, I can now refer to things I have written over 20 years of blogging and find the context of the journeys and adventures I have experienced.

Cultivating profitable relationships

What has really helped me in recent times is to have better husbandry of the lands of my life, the orchard trees that need pruning, the crops that need weeding, the livestock that need care, understanding what is sapping energy from what is productive and profitable.

The pruning I took on with gusto, those who during adversity complained rather than gave support were fair-weather friends, it did not matter who they were or how close the affinity, things that bear no fruit get chopped.

Lest I be caught lacking any self-awareness, I am probably just as unfruitful in another’s orchard, and they have rightfully chopped me out of their lives and set me up in the rubbish that needs to go up in a bonfire of vanities. It is well and thank you to those many, even in China who have read my blog daily; some come for a regular dose of another man’s many stories.

To them, I can dare to be honoured because they see something like a prophet in me. At the end of this blog, this is not what I set out to write, not that most of my blogs have ended the way I intended, even to me, it is a wonder to behold. We move, we thrive, we give testimony and write better stories. Amen!

Photons on the Prostate - I

Change and difference

I guess this does not really fit the Men’s things blogs so I have decided to write about my radiotherapy treatment as Photons on the Prostate, basically on how I feel and other experiences. The Image Guided Radiotherapy treatment I am having uses a photon beam rather than a proton beam. [City Of Hope: What’s the difference? Photon and proton radiation therapy]

We are advised not to change our eating habits, but there is no way to prevent changing something when met with the prospect of treating cancer. You adjust or the situation forces them on you.

The first thing I had to sort out to prevent bowel gas was in the drinks, and I miss the fizzy comfort of bubbles dissipating on my tongue as sparkling water creates a sating sensation even before you have swallowed. Still water is so bland and ordinary, it is how things are.

Dishwater tastes so good

Returning from the hospital yesterday, I stopped at my local supermarket to get decaffeinated tea and coffee, how this effluent of dishwater was ever palatable escapes me. The coffee having lost its potency with the absence of caffeine is perceptible to taste, at least to mine.

Two cups of coffee later, I can understand this is being done for a cause as there is no way I could have been persuaded of the benefit of it, I shall persevere. What I have not dared to try yet is the decaffeinated Earl Grey tea, I guess I’ll just pinch my nose when I drink it.

Getting tired of food

In terms of side effects, whilst it is early days, I do not seem to have much of an appetite for food, I have already been skipping meals long before I started treatment, an anticipatory response that I need to counter. Every desire to cook deserts me too.

There is some tiredness and early morning insomnia, whether related or unexplained, I cannot tell. A feeling of bowel discomfort with some urgency that is not presenting effect, I can only wonder what that is.

Men's things - XIX

Point to point

I went to The Christie Hospital today with just one concern, a question I only had the wherewithal to ask once I was presented with the situation for observation and experience.

Having had marks tattooed on my skin for the alignment of the radiotherapy beams, rather than allow the transparent film dressings protecting the three tattoo marks to fall off; I used a larger film dressing to keep them in place.

Giving myself an hour to arrive at the hospital, the heavy traffic was beginning to stress me out, but Brian comforted me with the thought that I would make it on time, and that I had nothing to worry about. I relented with a Yep!

Rearrange with consultation

Arriving at the reception, the secretary, her eyelashes would put the brushes on a street sweeper to shame told me my schedule had changed for tomorrow, putting my session back more than four hours. I have no issues with rescheduling, but as they have various means of contacting me, they should have called to inform me of the development.

We all do make other related or different arrangements and adjustments, even if we are giving priority to treatment, it is outside their absolute discretion to rearrange calendars and schedules without consultation with the patient.

On demand, sod off

Moving on to the waiting room, I was asked to do a micro-enema though I had a bowel movement this morning and to pass urine. This Shit-on-Demand (SoD) or Piss-on-Demand (PoD) requirement rarely works except if you are of a highly nervous disposition. The bowels refused to budge and after much strain, the bladder did empty.

At one point I could have broken out in a nursery rhyme, Goosey Goosey Gander came to mind. Where shall I wander before this presumably old man is taken by the left leg and thrown back into the gents to relieve himself under duress?

Positioned for radiation

My concern was about keeping track of my prostate if neither bowel nor bladder could be evacuated. As I took off my jacket, and my shoes and pulled down my trousers to lie on the hard bed of the linear accelerator (linac), I was told there was always a scan before the photon beam unleashed its deathly rays on my prostate. Aha! All concerns dealt with.

We were using Image Guided Radiotherapy (IGRT) [Cancer Research UK: IGRT]

I was positioned and centred on the bed before the machine began to whirl around me, hands on chest, breathing slowly, sometimes muttering in tongues, and about 10 minutes later, the radiographers returned to the room to set me off on my way.

We discussed the possible side effects for later in the treatment schedule and what times I would find convenient to attend my radiotherapy session. Hardly eventful, easy and painless, that is one down, nineteen to go.

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Infertility does not impact being fertile

At peace with it

One of the side effects of this radical radiotherapy is infertility, she said, in our conversation about what to expect after treatment.

I had made peace with not having children long before chemotherapy zapped the reproductive capacity of spermatozoa 15 years ago. Until that saying about planting trees which suggests the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the next best time to do that is now, for me, there is a limit to which bearing children should be discounted.

At ease with myself

My father was potty training my half-brother at 69 when I at 43 had made peace with the idea that I was 13 years beyond the time I would have found it a worthwhile experience to have children. I never even tried.

It was an advertisement on television that helped me settle this matter. A career woman talked of how she continued her education when her peers got married and raised families, and now, having achieved everything, she realised as the children of her old schoolmates were leaving university, she was just on ‘Incy, wincy spider,’ with her own child.

There was no point looking for that parenting boat, not only had it sailed away, it had docked at too many ports for me to swim out to sea to board it, I had better concentrate on being an uncle where I am allowed to be that to nieces and nephews.

Besides, my half-brothers could easily have been my sons, my father likely thought it was his responsibility apart from my brother to keep the name alive for posterity. You can never be too sure of the motivations for these things.

At these with life

Infertility is not an issue, and it happened because of a life-saving medical intervention. Indeed, people might be more concerned about sexual facility and function for pleasure than for reproductive purposes. The African man in me does not have a predilection for progeny.

In early 1990, I walked past the Cathedral Church of Christ in Lagos where a funeral had brought the most influential people in society to celebrate the life of a lady who had died childless, aged 93. What it brought to light was an inalienable fact, both the one with children and childless will be buried by children, who might not be yours. There is comfort in having lived a good life.

Infertility is not a disability that it becomes a state of mind, the world offers amazing ways to be fertile with imagination, ideas, insights, and inspiration to be just as impactful with the implements of our humanity.

Honour the day and bless the beauty it presents

Yusuf / Cat Stevens – Morning Has Broken (Official Lyric Video)

The day the Lord has made

As I sat in my living room thinking about how well today went, I felt I should be inspired to write something because there is a blessing that abides, abounds, and abodes with me that gives me an outlook and disposition I rarely can find words to explain.

Let’s look at any day in question, for in my case, every day for a long time has been a blessing, regardless of what happens in it, I have a triumphalist feeling that whatever a day brings will not dampen my desire to consider success and accomplishment.

Someone might say, the day has been difficult, probably, they even hate a particular time of day that it becomes a kind of confession that fulfils what inadvertently becomes prophetic. Whenever I wake up, I bless the Lord and would with great expectation address it as this is the day that the Lord hath made, I will rejoice and be glad in it. [Bible Hub: Psalm 118:24 (KJV)]

How can the day not turn out right if you have been given a day made by the God of beauty, wonder, and miracles?

The morning is a recreation

There are nights when sleep seems to desert me, I struggle to find the rest I need to be fresh for the day ahead. The alarm clock stirs me up as dawn breaks and I slap on the snooze button for the respite of another 10 minutes in which little is achieved compared to if you could get a snooze time of 30 minutes and consequently a power nap.

Then the strains of the hymn, “Morning has broken” seep into your consciousness as with a bounding leap out of bed, you want to celebrate the day like the first of the best, and you begin to own the beauty, the warmth, the bliss, and the sweet communion that it presents. “Mine is the sunlight! Mine is the morning, born of the one light, Eden saw play!” The hymn continues to define the day. [Hymnary.org: Morning has broken, Like the first morning]

The Boomtown Rats possibly unaware of the joy of the day or even the opportunity the week presents would sing in refrain, “Tell me why I don’t like Mondays.” I’ll tell you why you do not like Mondays; you do not see every morning as God’s recreation of a new day. Yesterday is gone forever, you are given a new start, each new day.

Then, the inspiration for the song itself was from a 16-year-old girl who thought causing the tragedy of a mass shooting at an elementary school would liven up the day. [Wikipedia: I don’t like Mondays]

One can only wonder how a life so bereft of love and the appreciation of goodness would think that senselessly taking innocent lives can be anything to contemplate.

She has been in prison since 1979 and her next parole hearing in 2025 is unlikely to give her any reason to like or dislike Mondays or any other day for that matter. How you rise for the day can quite easily define the rest of your life. [Wikipedia: Cleveland Elementary School shooting (San Diego)]

The cherished American toleration of daily tragedies

Just imagine, we are 45 years after that school shooting spree, and we still have these tragedies happening with such regularity in the United States of America like an incurable madness. To give this some perspective, it appears the first recorded school shooting was in 1764.

You might be forgiven for thinking it is a cherished American tradition, the way these tragedies are tolerated for the sake of the right to bear arms. There have been three school shootings in September 2024, alone. [Wikipedia: List of school shootings in the United States (2000–present), List of school shootings in the United States (before 2000)]

Arise, Shine

To conclude on the thinking that helped in writing this blog, I had an inward witness within that took me to this verse in Scripture. “Arise, shine; For your light has come! And the glory of the LORD is risen upon you.” [Bible Hub: Isaiah 60:1 (NKJV)]

There is a glow that comes with the blessing of a new day, you can be the light of it, the sunshine that makes everyone happy, the beauty that gives it meaning, and the memory that makes you full of gratitude. That is why each day is wonderful because as the glory of the Lord rises upon me, I rise to shine and give light to the joy of a new day.

How we live the life or death of our spoken words

Mind what you say

I was recently involved in a conversation that left me quite perturbed as my interlocutor stressed and hammed on about their difficulty with one issue or the other. Their belief in their precarity was such that I found it impossible to intervene and an intervention was dreadfully needed.

Usually, I stop or probably warn people about saying unwholesome and unprofitable things because I believe our speech has a spirit of creative energy and purpose. The words we speak carry weight about who we are, and how we think, and for all, consequently, define the circumstances in which we find ourselves now and into the future.

If you continue to speak about incapacity, inability, difficulty, and hardship, and hold expressions of pessimism that you inadvertently say with conviction, these words create the worlds around you and sadly you become a prisoner of your thoughts that have become your beliefs; what you say in words become your world.

Having the wrong perspective

It is a discipline to hold one’s tongue, choose words carefully, and keep one’s peace if we have nothing good to say about ourselves or others. Practising silence over expressing oneself might help review what we have avoided saying.

Then you ask, what best informs the background of thoughts that become words that show up as lived experience? You need a new perspective, a positive and progressive perspective, one that sees you in a different light, with opportunity, capability, and an unquenchable undefeatable spirit.

That is only possible especially if you are of the Christian faith, if you begin to see yourself as God sees you and then you say what God says about you.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ [that is, grafted in, joined to Him by faith in Him as Savior], he is a new creature [reborn and renewed by the Holy Spirit]; the old things [the previous moral and spiritual condition] have passed away. Behold, new things have come [because spiritual awakening brings a new life]. [Bible Hub: II Corinthians 5:17 (AMP)]

The new creation truth of knowing you have been reborn of God and living a new life is one we rarely grasp in any understanding or fulness, but knowing this change and that it is not one of effort, but of the grace of God is the beginning of renewal.

Know all good things about you

That the communication of thy faith may become effectual by the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus. [Bible Hub: Philemon 6 (KJV)]

We need to find out who we are from God’s perspective and acknowledge every good thing that is in us, not out of our own doing, but by and in Christ Jesus. Knowing this and thinking this along with seeing the great promises of God toward us would change our perspective and the words we begin to speak.

This brings me back to the crux of the matter, what we speak can create life or wreak the havoc of death, you would want to give life to ambition, to health, to prospects, to opportunity, to happiness, to the fulfilment of dreams and much else.

The tongue is a master controller

A good deal of this comes from what you have conditioned yourself to believe borne of the limitations of your perspective as a mere hapless human being or a creature of God’s manifest and limitless creativity.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it and indulge it will eat its fruit and bear the consequences of their words. [Bible Hub: Proverbs 18:21 (AMP)]

What fruits and consequences of our words are we living and is it time to start speaking differently by aligning ourselves to what God thinks of us and the value God places on us that he sent His only begotten Son to the world to save us?

“For God so [greatly] loved and dearly prized the world, that He [even] gave His [One and] only begotten Son, so that whoever believes and trusts in Him [as Savior] shall not perish, but have eternal life. [Bible Hub: John 3:16 (AMP)]

Please click on the links shared with the Bible verses to see parallel translations for more understanding and context.

Men's things - XVIII

Rescued to the uttermost

The righteous person faces many troubles, but the LORD comes to the rescue each time. [BibleHub: Psalm 34:19 (NLT)]

This thinking is the fundamental of the challenges and triumphs of 2024, so far. The thought of rescue is a mindset that I am not alone and that there is help well beyond my capability, facility, or resources that plucks me out of dire situations into safety and security. This is a blessing as it means one is neither hopeless nor helpless.

In writing to a friend, to whom I was relaying the events of this year I realised that each month brought interesting and wonderful developments, I am full of thankfulness and gratitude, everything will turn out right.

A blessed year showing up

In January, 2023 had come to an end without any idea of what the New Year had in store, I attended a church service in the suburbs every turmoil set aside for fellowship and praise. Then I had to face some realities, a need for reengagement and the niggling issue of a blood test that had indicators of concern. I received good news and an invitation to attend the doctor’s surgery for some tests.

In February, the blood tests showed that I had anaemia and on the other front, a prospect was taking an inordinately long time to complete. I got to travel the farthest I had in more than 18 months and met up with some old friends who were glad to see me but preferred another. As I boarded my train, a blessing dropped into my life and a moment of great change beckoned. What I wanted was only deferred, I just needed to be patient.

Wisdom is the principal thing

In March, my joy was complete in that I was glad to be counted among the living, the thriving, and the blessed. On the blood front, the anaemia was dealt with, but my prostate was telling concerning tales. That needed checking out. Meanwhile, I had to manage my particulars and experience to fulfil all the requirements for an engagement which was sometimes stressful but not insurmountable. Where I ran out of ideas, wisdom came to rescue me in ways I could not have anticipated.

In April, I was ready for a new challenge even in areas where I thought I had little expertise, I felt it was an opportunity for growth. My doctor had a quick touch and felt my prostate was enlarged too and he referred me to the urology department of our NHS trust, and this set off a range of other tests and the need for an MRI scan. I had much better music to listen to this time.

You are owed an explanation

In May, as I was taking things in my stride, I was invited to the hospital to discuss the results of the multiparametric MRI scan. I had many questions before I could agree to have a biopsy of my prostate. The challenge of facing paternalism in medicine, where they do not believe you should be intimated with every detail that leads to a decision reared its head. We had an interesting encounter and a lasting lesson: I need to be treated as knowledgeable and respectfully informed.

In June, it was just a short email informing me that a period of review had been successfully completed. My annual checkup contained information that should have been better managed as I had not seen the consultant before the detail ended up in my notes, it was a careless mistake. However, I knew it was prostate cancer but that had to take a backseat, I was going to see Brian and that was a beautiful thing.

Celebrate life over adversity

In July, before returning to discuss the options for the treatment of prostate cancer. We had a wonderful time in Cape Town. Understanding what prostate cancer meant was daunting and neither of the intended procedures seemed pleasant when looking at the post-operative or post-treatment situation. I was sanguine as I began to understand things better to do things I had only dreamt of being able to do.

In August, I found myself embedded in a changing and exciting process where I automated and facilitated things that at first would have been painstakingly difficult, manual and prone to error. My confidence grew in areas where I would not have projected my abilities. Then another encounter with medical paternalism was both challenging and upsetting. However, I had got all the information I needed and was ready for my treatment plan.

Maintain the God perspective

In September, there is growth, blessing, anticipation, and expectation. Even as I begin treatment next week, I am also enjoying what I do, each challenge becomes an opportunity to see things differently and find solutions in exciting ways. I am thankful for the blessing of confidence, comfort, and love. To have love and friends who care so deeply and fondly for you makes it a wonderful world.

There are more things of goodness, mercy, grace, favour, and blessings, to come. I am irrepressible because the Lord delivers me fully, wholly, wonderfully, and beautifully. My mouth is filled with testimonies, this little inconvenience will pass, and each subsequent month will have more amazing things to share. The men’s things will dissolve into nothing, and God’s things will be astounding miracles.

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