Taken from my blog. https://slammer1.wixsite.com/mybloghead
Last Friday, I met with my doctor to discuss the very first psa test since my radiotherapy. Good news. it is now at 0.2. The trick now is to keep this steady and unfortunately I have to continue with the dreaded (for me anyway) hormone treatment. I receive this once a month on my stomach and the side effects have an uncomfortable impact on day to day living. The hot flushes and sweats can be severe and the fatigue afterwards can be debilitating. At nights, given the warm weather now, I have a fan and a cool bag I use regularly to cool my body down. Sleep patterns have changed and sometimes i have these nervous jitters, like short electric buzzes through my body. Just like when you have over exercised and you body goes into overdrive. Believe it or not, when I lay on my back and punch with my arms and cycle my legs it eventually goes away. Annoying.
The number 0.2 is a number that will be embedded in my mind for the rest of my life. This is the number my Oncologist said when I attended my appointment to discuss the outcome of my recent radiotherapy and hopefully a landmark in my fight with cancer. Has the hormone treatment worked? Did the radiotherapy prove the right choice? At this stage, yes.
What’s a PSA blood test?
Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is a protein produced by prostate gland cells. Elevated levels may indicate prostate cancer, but PSA levels can also be affected by other things, such as enlarged prostate, a urinary tract infection, or recent ejaculation). On this occasion, the PSA indicated a 'normal' level for the first time in over a year and somehow those three words were the best three words I had heard since being diagnosed.
Now, I am not a numerical type or claim to be a scientist but I do, I think, have the savvy to realise that 0.2 compared to something like 30 or 100 or 2000 is a step in the right direction as far as PSA levels are concerned. So, there I am, looking straight into the face of my doctor while he browsed my files, watching every facial muscle, eye movement or twitch (like watching a fish in a fishbowl), for a sign, any evidence of disappointment or positivity from his face. He looks up and I could see, automatically, this was good news. "Mr Gemmell, your blood level is at 0.2"." He said. Eureka! At that point, I looked at my wife and she had the look of relief and joy. The weight of worry began to fade from her face. All I wanted to do was leap from the chair and hug every living thing in the room. But being a typical, wee 'westy' I allowed my eyes to well up but never to overflow. Boy, the control us men have on these things. It’s just not the done thing to show fluid emotions. Be a man. Suck it up. It will all pass. That may have been fine in the 50’s or so but I think as years advance and in this modern age of gender enlightenment, you can now step out of jail, pass go and free your emotions. Ah the psychological breath of fresh air. I find it is the best way, I have now learned.
We made our way from the consultants room and when we reached the car it was only then that my wife and I opened up and let the floodgates go and we cried tears of happiness and of course sheer relief.
When I was first diagnosed, a friend of mine gave me a bottle of the best malt whisky, of which, on occasions, I have the odd sip of the nip. She said "Put that bottle in a special place in your kitchen so that every day you will see it, but you have not to touch it until you have beaten this cancer." What was the first thing I did that evening. Popped the bottle and enjoyed a few glasses of one of Scotland's best malts. It was like a New Year's eve. Well, given that I was receiving radiotherapy over the festive period, this was the start of making up for it. HIC!
What next?
For me, this is now a time for reflection. I have always been a bohemian type, writing songs, poetry, art and forever looking at life from way outside the box. But I do also have the so called 'ordinary' lifestyle, the 9-5 job (although I am now part time), a wife, the grandchild and the supermarket runs, but, I have always believed that 'variety is the spice of life' and when challenged I would have a go. My father always said to me “son, don’t be sitting on your park bench when you are 80 and look back and I wish You had done this or that.” Therefore, I have been fortunate enough to find the space and time between 'normal' living to experience being out of the box. I remember reading that even Einstein took to living a bohemian lifestyle walking around in hippy style garments or pyjamas way before the 60's era of flower power.
I believe that I am not too deeply engrained in 'normal' living, especially at this late stage in my life, to ignore my bohemian thoughts. I believe I have a mind that can see round corners. I have been wired to try and unpick the taught strands of life and seek out the different and the unusual. Where would we have been when millions of years ago our neanderthal relatives decided to stay in caves, not evolve and live life hunting, conceiving and eventually dying off because there was no advancement in their surroundings. Thank, (God or whoever), for those neanderthals that decided to invent and diversify, breakaway from the norm. What would have happened to the human race if they had not? You can't write poetry like for example Dylan Thomas or paint like Salvador Dali without a level of irresponsibility or non conformity.
So, my message in this present state of mind is...find the space and time to carry out my ideas. Don't be frightened to do so. I have, just (hopefully) staved off cancer and that magic 0.2 blood level will hopefully spark off a new era in the world of Eddy.