Today has me pondering my mortality, again.
5 weeks of radiation treatment for prostate cancer ended six weeks ago this past Thursday.
According to the oncologist last Monday, a blood test taken about 10 days prior showed my PSA level was 10.5, down from 21.5 last November. The oncologist said that was really good progress and he expects my PSA to drop more. PSA is how he knows the cancer is dealt with.
A good friend, who dreams a lot about me, had reported about 3 weeks ago of being told by angels in a dream that the cancer was killed.
The same friend dreamed several times late last year and early this year of being told by angels that, because I'm a mystic, radiation would be very hard on me, radiation therapy is treating poison with poison, and I should have the prostate gland surgically removed instead.
How I came to have radiation treatment, instead of surgery to remove the prostate gland, requires going back to the beginning.
The urologist who diagnosed the cancer last November via a PSA test and then a biopsy of the prostate, said, because I was 78, he thought I should have radiation therapy. I said I had a cranky bowel for over 50 years and was worried radiation would make it a lot more cranky.
The surgeon in that urology practice said such surgery is serious, would lay me low, the recovery would take a few months, and he would not operate without a doctor examining my heart to determine it was strong enough for the surgery and he recovery.
I had no such doctor, and a friend called someone who had contacts, and that person got me in to see a highly respected internist. The internist called the surgeon, who said he thought I should have the prostate surgically removed.
The internist's medical tech did an EKG, which showed abnormality on the left side of my heart. The internist scheduled me to come back in a few days for a chemically-induced stress test, he was concerned a treadmill test might be too much for my heart. The stress test revealed heart abnormality. The internist sent me to a cardiologist in his medical practice for an arteriogram, which is a one-day surgical procedure.
After I woke from twilight sleep following the arteriogram, the cardiologist came by and said the arteriogram was clear, my heart was fine, the EKG and stress test were false positives. I wondered if they were false positives, or had angels that wanted me to have surgery, fixed my heart?
When I met with the oncologist, he said he thought I should go with the radiation treatment. I said I had a cranky bowel for over 50 years and was worried about making it worse. He said he thought I should have radiation, for if surgery did not get all the cancer, I would need radiation then. He scheduled me for insertion of a solution that separated my rectum from my prostate, so there would be less chance of the radiation beam striking my rectum.
I said I was a mystic and was not like his other patients, and there probably would be a wrinkle or two. He said he was interested in that and for me to say more. I gave him links to stuff I had written, which he said he would read: https://afewremarkablealabamapeople.blogspot.com/, which has links at the end to other small books I had written.
When the radiation treatments started, I felt side effects right away: as if I was burning, cold shivers at bedtime each night. Otherwise, I seemed about the same.
During the 4th week of radiation, my bowel went haywire, far worse than mere cranky bowel. My internist told me to go to the ER, where I felt for a while that I might die. There was bright red blood in my stool. The nurse put me on a saline drip. The ER physician and my internist said they thought it was caused by the radiation treatments, which they said I should continue. They prescribed Flagyl and Cipro for radiation colitis. I felt some better when I left ER.
Starting the next day, my stools were liquid and bowel movements painful and frequent, perhaps 20 per day. I was afraid to leave my apartment and be caught somewhere and soil my underwear and blue jeans. On the 7th day of Flagyl and Cipro, I stopped taking them. The scripts had 3 days more to run. The next morning, the internist's nurse called to say the evening before the internist told her that I should stop taking Flagyl and Cipro.
The internist got me in to see a colon-rectal specialist, who discovered a fissure just inside my anus and prescribed an ointment I would apply with a finger three times a day. He said he thought the G.I. distress and the fissure probably stemmed from the radiation therapy, which I should continue receiving.
I was in serious gut distress. My dreamer friend told me of a protobiotic (Trust Your Gut) a friend of his had used, which, along with meditation, cured his friend of longstanding ulcerated colitis. I ordered Trust Your Gut online and started taking it.
I had a dream of being taken by some people above me to have a biopsy. The same night, my friend, who had recommended the probiotic, dreamed I was taken up into a space ship where things were done to me. Then, I was dropped out of the space ship on the ground near his home in a different state from where I live. He rushed to where he heard me hollering and found me lying on the ground, disarrayed. I said, "They put a probe in me!"
The liquid stools stopped and my bowel function changed entirely. The bowel was really lazy, like in spasm. I had to strain hard to have a bowel movement. My stools smelled totally different, almost like before the irritable bowel began over 50 years prior. I was still in serious distress.
The colon-rectal doctor prescribed benefiber over the counter and told me to eat yogurt every day. I told him yogurt never had helped and I was taking a powerful protobiotic. He said, okay.
A hard lump then formed under the skin on the right side of my anus. The colon-rectal doctor said he thought it was an infection that had traveled from the fissure, and after some discussion about my tolerance to different drugs, he prescribed the sulfa drug Bactrim. The lump began to recede.
My bowel function slowly improved. It was functioning in a new way that I could not assign to medicine, nor entirely to benefiber and the protobiotic. It was nowhere near normal bowel function, but it was so much better than when I left the ER.
I did a tough angel-directed intervention in a matter involving my father's estate. The lump on the right side of my anus shrunk down to almost nothing by bedtime that night. The right side of the body is the male side.
I met with the urologist, who had diagnosed the cancer, and said I wanted to return to having him as my doctor. He said okay. I told him the oncologist and his radiation techs were very nice and competent, but they insisted the radiation could not be causing my acute bowel distress. The urologist said that's how radiation specialists are.
When I met with the oncologist after the encouraging PSA test came back, I reminded him that I had told him when we first met that I am a mystic and there might be a wrinkle or two.
I told him about my and my friend's dreams about me going up in a space ship and my bowel starting to behave differently afterward. I said that was empirical proof something not of this world was done to me. Likewise, I said, the arteriogram overriding the EKG and stress test. I told him of two other times angels had stepped in and fixed what very good doctors had not been able to fix. The oncologist did not flinch or look at me like I was nuts.
But perhaps I was nuts. I had ignored my friends' dreams about me having surgery instead of radiation treatment. His dreams about me for several years had been spot on. His dream about the cancer being killed by the radiation was supported by the greatly decreased PSA level.
A friend got me into see a gastroenterologist, whom I told the medial history above and kept the mystical history to myself. The doctor said he thought the radiation treatment had caused my gut distress and scheduled me for endoscopy and colonoscopy the day after tomorrow.
Without Medicare, I would not have been able have the medical care described above; nor surgery to remove a benign growth from my larynx this past January.
I feel like I'm about 50 percent of what I was before the radiation treatment began. I was at about 10 percent the day I went to the ER. I hope to get back to where I was before the radiation treatment, but I have no clue what the future holds in store, and as far as I know, neither does anyone else know what the future holds in store.
I figure when I do leave this life, some people will miss me. Some people will remember me as being different, quirky, even irascible, but also gifted or cursed with a different perspective than most people. And, some people will be really glad I'm gone, good riddance.
To any and all such people, I say, I came to march to a different drumbeat, and while I didn't always stay in sync with the drumbeat, I tried very hard to stay in sync, because it was my calling and I was literally terrified of falling out of sync.
I take zero credit for being that way. It was done to me by beings who showed and told me enough about themselves to cause me to think they are angels known in the Bible.
The only credit I take is I didn't kill myself during some of the really rough passages and transitions they took me into and through, and even then, perhaps they stayed my hand from ending my human life. For some of those passages and transitions were so truly rough that no person could remotely imagine it without experiencing it.
Did I see miracles? Yes, many times. A few miracles saved my life. Most miracles, though, impacted different situations in which I was involved.
Although I saw the miracles, and sometimes other people saw them, most of the people involved did not see the miracles. It seemed they were not wired to see in that way, or seeing the miracles would be too disruptive for them.
sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com
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