Author: jerome

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A Walk by the Bay

March 18, 1997 – A Walk by the Bay

Today was the best day I had so far since the chemotherapy and radiation! I spent a lot of time working today, but at noon I took a long break. I took a walk in Sausalito by the San Francisco Bay, where all the tourists come. The walk was especially nice, since I felt well enough to do it! After walking all the way from the center of town to the Chart House restaurant, I stopped at a beautiful spot near the end of the walkway that is closest to the water. There is a place there where the concrete ends and a gravel path of about 25 feet begins. It has a lovely view of the Bay, Angel Island, and San Francisco. I stopped there to do some stretches and qi gong. The weather was magnificent and it really felt good to be out on my own again. Hopefully, I’ll do something similar to this tomorrow!

I found myself drinking much more today, as this helps to hydrate my system and eliminate the dead cancer cells. This was the first day that I could manage this. I am now in the process of preparing my system for the next phase of chemotherapy and radiation on Tuesday, March 25. I’ll keep you posted!

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Cancer Sucks!

March 17, 1997 – Cancer Sucks!

During the past two days, I have noticed many instances of random tears. Most of the time, they seem to come from nowhere, but other times, I am aware of what triggered them. For example, we watched two pre-recorded episodes of Nova last night which dealt with cancer. Most of the people on the shows were in much worse shape than I, and I felt compassion for their suffering. I realized that it was also my suffering and I wanted my life back. Another example: today, my daughter’s best friend’s mother had a lumpectomy, and I felt badly for her. Much of the time, I simply feel the tragedy of the disease.

Other than these random acts of crying, I’ve had a pretty productive day. I did an adequate job at work, and although I felt nauseous most of the day, I managed to get by. Naturally, my afternoon “mind story” was quite helpful, both in calming my nausea and allowing me to relax and visualize the cancer shrinking.

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Raining in California

March 16, 1997 – Raining in California

I wasn’t able to write anything yesterday. I felt really lousy. I needed a lot of rest and spent some of the day with company. I was feeling a bit nauseous all day and didn’t feel too much like eating, even though my wife made smoked salmon caviar pizza! It was a day to vege out and forget about cancer. Maybe that’s good to do once in a while!

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One Day at a Time

March 14, 1997 – One Day at a Time

Things are now in motion for the first rounds of chemoradiotherapy to work. The elimination state begins and I feel fair to middling this morning. I’m going to try to do some symbolic cleaning up in my office once I get some more bugs fixed and then try to make Leslie Davenport’s class.

Leslie’s class was taught by an art therapist this time and we built worry dolls. My doll was named Homer and he has to worry about the next TURBT revealing no cancer!

After a nice lunch, I crashed for an hour and a half.

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Hair Raising Experience

March 13, 1997 – Hair Raising Experience

Compared to yesterday, I’m not feeling as well, even though I appeared to have more sleep. I feel a little nauseous and a bit constipated. I also feel rather tired. I think I did too much work yesterday, and I continue to work even as I write this, being interrupted by break points in my code. After a while I couldn’t code anymore and decided to sit back and listen to a tape of Deepak Chopra. I must have dozed off a couple of times during the tape, because before I knew it, I was finished with the cisplatin.

When I got home after the first round of radiation for the day, I could do nothing but crash. I focused in on my breath in my belly, and before I knew it, I had a nice nap, only to be awakened by having to pee. I tried to accomplish some work, but felt quite queasy.

Then it was time to go for the second radiation treatment. I felt the hair on my body rise as the radiation impacted my body. This distracted me slightly from my visualization of the cancer cells shriveling up and being properly eliminated. I really felt badly the rest of the day and into the night.

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Chopped Liver

March 12, 1997 – Chopped Liver

The night before last I couldn’t sleep because of the anxiety over the unknown effects of chemotherapy and radiation. Last night I couldn’t sleep because I was waiting for side effects, which didn’t come! So today, I really exhausted. I hope to get my energy up by the time we leave.

I spent the time listening to guided imagery tapes, Deepak Chopra, and surfing the news groups on the web. I had an interesting query from a reader of the news group, alt.support.cancer.

The second day of 5FU and cisplatin was similar to the first. This time I had a chopped chicken liver sandwich for lunch from Max’s! It went well again, although I fell a little exhausted.

After the chemotherapy, I had another guided imagery session with Leslie Davenport. The session was interrupted by an extremely urgent need to pee. Before then, I was visualizing how the chemotherapy and radiation were helping me either revert the cancer cells back to normal cells, or at their choice, bubble up and degenerate into something that could be easily eliminated by the blood stream, urine, and feces. I got some really good images to work with in the future.

We stopped by M. C.’s house to see the girls before the fly off to Palm Springs for the weekend while I recover from my three doses of chemotherapy and four doses of radiation.

I spent a lot of time trying to fix a bug (work for money), so there’s not much more to say. The fact that I feel like fixing is actually saying a lot.

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Jewish Penicillin

March 11, 1997 – Jewish Penicillin

We arrived at the Marin Oncology center at 8:10. Here it is now 9:03 and we’ve just been sitting around. Naturally, they had us down for 9:00, not 8:00. So now I’m really getting restless. I’m not comfortable starting a mind story, not knowing how far I’ll get or if I’ll be able to even begin. I tried working on Practical Intuition, but the same considerations play. The man next to me is getting his i. v. already. I guess that he’s been here before.

Last night was fairly difficult. I seemed to sleep fairly well in stages, but due to all of the hydration, I was up many times. Finally, at 3:00, I went downstairs and did a little writing. Next came a tape, and by the time it was time to wake up, I was ready to sleep.

I haven’t been that preoccupied with today’s treatment plan, but I still felt unable to concentrate on my breath. No one can tell what kind of response I’m going to have to the chemo, and I’m a little worried. To top it off, I have two rounds of radiation also today.

I had expected to be able to listen to guided imagery tapes, but with all the commotion going around here, I preferred to listen to the classical CD’s I brought. The Beethoven Choral Fantasy brought on a lot of emotion. I also listened to Dvorak’s Piano Quintet and Shubert’s Trout Quintet. These pieces of music are so calming and beautiful. I use my computer as my portable CD player.

Once the 5FU and cisplatin where into my blood stream, I felt a few minor discomforts, but all in all, it wasn’t too bad – just like Shipley predicted. I can probably have a decent afternoon. As soon as the cisplatin was finished, I got an urge for matzoth ball soup from Max’s! When I was growing up, this was called, “Jewish penicillin!”

I started having pains in my stomach and needed to pee again! The pains didn’t last long and I continued to pee frequently. At around 1:15 P. M., an hour and a half after the cisplatin was totally in, I went down for my first radiation treatment. Although I was a little nervous, I came through it OK. Within the next half-hour, we were back upstairs, getting the i. v. out and on our way home. Although I felt very tired, there were no other side effects. I was advised to take a sedative tonight to get some sleep, but now that the unknown is known, will I need it?

The second radiation treatment went really well. I was able to be relaxed and visualize the radiation helping the cancer cells to mutate back to healthy cells normal cells, or, if they choose, to self-destruct. This seemed to be really effective. The radiologist placed tattoos for the spots for focusing the beam and then explained the computerized care that I was getting.

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Practical Intuition

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King of the Jungle of the Mind

March 10, 1997 – King of the Jungle of the Mind

This morning, I had to go back to Radiation Oncology department to have a dry run of my radiation treatments. This went rather smoothly, but I noticed that the waiting room was filled with older people! I thought, “I’m too young to have cancer!” This thought doesn’t seem to do me any good!

While I was waiting, I continued reading in Practical Intuition. One of the experiments was to open yourself to your sense impressions according to the instructions,

“To begin, simply start reporting what you’re sensing in the moment. If you hear a car beeping outside, say so. If your nose itches, say so (feel free to scratch it). If you’re hungry, say so. The trick is to report everything you notice-out loud. Don’t forget to report any thoughts, feelings, or memories that you become aware of.” – From Practical Intuition, by Laura Day, page 54.

 

I wrote down my impressions and then I was called in for the dry run. After that, I decided to take a walk along the beautiful stream that flows into the bay across from Marin General Hospital. I had chosen to walk at least two miles. As I walked, I noticed the birds, flowers and other plants, and especially Mount Tamalpais. Before I reached the mile mark to turn around, I noticed that I was behind 919 Sir Francis Drake, where I had my company in 1982. I decided to continue on to Willie’s Caffe and have breakfast, but I didn’t have any money. I only brought my car key, the stone from Anna Halprin, and the ammonite fossil that Barbara Rose Billings had given me. So I asked the manager if I could give her a credit card number. She said no, but would feed me anyway on an “IOU!” Well, I really enjoyed my pancakes, poached eggs, and bacon, with a large glass of fresh orange juice!

As I was leaving the restaurant, I spotted two angels across the street: J. D. and her friend, M. J. J. D. is the mother of my daughter’s best friend. I asked J. if she had some money, and her friend had $14.00 that she had discovered after she got out of the car. Normally, neither one of them would have money with them, but on this occasion, she had just the amount I needed! So I borrowed the money from M. and paid my bill. Not only that, but J. and M. were walking back to Marin General Hospital to get their car with their dogs, so I joined them and we enjoyed a marvelous hike back to the cars!

One of the plans for today was to prepare for the chemo and radiation therapy tomorrow. In accordance with this plan, Dr. Gullion had given me a list of suggestions. One of them corresponds to exactly what the Shipley protocol demands: patient hydration of 3 to 4 quarts of fluids. So that’s what I spent the afternoon doing!
Since it was Monday night, I went to Anna Halprin’s class. Again, it was absolutely healing. The themes for the night were deep breathing and choosing an animal to represent our condition or needs. The deep breathing was inspired by Andy Weil. For my animal, I chose a lion, an image I had had about a year ago. In fact, the wallpaper for my computer at work is a picture of a lion, and of all the animals at P. G.’s house, I was most attracted to the lions. We drew pictures of our animals and then danced the pictures. The picture I drew reminded me of a Sphinx. It looked like a self-portrait of a monkey-lion. The major theme was the courage I need to endure the next eight weeks, and the significance of the Sphinx was the guardian of the temple so that only those with a pure heart could enter. The spirit of the lion I chose was one of a contented cat who was rolled over on his back and relaxing.
The class ended with a healing circle. Anna placed me in the center so that I could receive the energy of the group for my treatments tomorrow. It was very powerful!

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Practical Intuition

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A Nice Day by the Bay

March 9, 1997 – A Nice Day by the Bay

We had to go to a first communion ceremony this morning, and for me, this is an unusual experience. There were several interesting things about the service. First of all, there were many prayers that I remember from my youth in synagogue. Although I knew this to be true from before, it really struck home today because of my acute awareness of little things in life due to my illness. I almost felt like belting out the Hebrew for the prayers!

Somewhere in Spain!

Secondly, I was reminded of one of my favorite prayers growing up. It goes like this:

May the words of my mouth
and the meditations of my heart
Be acceptable to Thee
in Thy sight Oh Lord,
My strength and my redeemer.

I recited this prayer along with the Shemah each night before I went to bed. Now I observe my breath and do other breathing exercises. As long as each is done with spirit, they have the possibility of achieving the same result of peace of mind and a wise and understanding heart which can discern between good and evil.

The views from the church were the first occurrence of spectacular views of the day.

I left early to meet my friends from my enneagram circle group who met me at home. We went on down to Sausalito, and enjoyed a nice lunch at a picnic table by the bay. We spoke of treatment options and alternative medicine. I felt totally supported by my friends.

Unfortunately, I had to leave them for an acupuncture treatment with Dr. Van Vu, which was quite relaxing. Instead of going home and resting, I drove to Belvedere to take a walk with T. R We saw panoramic views of San Francisco, Oakland and the East Bay, and of course, Sausalito! What a gorgeous day! It makes you want to be alive, just to feel the clean, fresh air flowing through your lungs. Boy, was I exhausted, though.

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A Day of Traveling

March 8, 1997 – A Day of Traveling

Last night was a difficult night for me as far as sleep is concerned. I kept sliding into the middle of the bed and woke up frequently. Then the roosters started crowing early in the morning.

We walked along the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk for about an hour and then headed for Los Gatos. We thought we’d have lunch there, but wound up being tourists. We had dinner at the Rossman’s and I went to the Pocket Opera performance of Escape from the Harem. All in all, it was a busy day without too much concern about cancer.

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Copyright © 2004-2018, Jerome Freedman, Ph. D.