A Disciplined Life

  So, here I am, a month into phase 2. It has been, well, interesting.


I’m actually a little more than a month into phase 2. I started my new medication’s on my birthday, and now we’re a bit more than a month past that. Medications are having the desired effect. My PSA is now back where it was before we started this journey. That is to say, it is so low as to be negligible.


Almost as important, my side effects have been modest, at least so far. If I’m in a situation where before I might have broken out a sweat, now I certainly do. It doesn’t help that even up here on the plateau the summer has been hot and humid.


In addition, I tire easily. I can walk, even hike, like I did before we started these meds. I can go out into the garden and water and deal with weeds and cover basic things, as long as I get it done before it’s too hot. It’s just that, having done that, it takes me longer to recover. I am resting more. I am learning to rest more intentionally, having learned the hard way that I have to. I am just up for a few tasks in a given day.


And some of those tasks are the same tasks I had before. I do most of the cooking. I take my share of keeping the dog exhausted. Right now, with this heat, it doesn’t take long to wear her out, but it leaves me worn out as well.


So here I am on these meds that I expect I will be on for the rest of my life. “The rest of my life“ is, somehow, qualitatively different than it used to be. I’m on blood pressure medication. I’m on a statin. I figured I would be on those for the rest of my life, too. But somehow the phrase “the rest of my life“ feels different in light of a condition for which I don’t really expect a cure. These meds will keep my errant cells in check. Perhaps they will starve some of them out, but I don’t know how we would know that. This is not radiation or chemo, designed to actually kill those cells. I suppose if this worked for a long enough time they could put me back through more imaging and maybe not find any hotspots. But, somehow, I don’t expect that. This is working, and as long as it continues to work without disruptive side effects, I think we will continue to let it work.


“We have had people on this treatment for years,” they tell me, “people who presented much sicker than you are.“ I like looking forward to years. At this point, it is simply a matter of new disciplines: the new medications, and disciplines of exercise, and disciplines of diet, and probably other things. Over the years I have occasionally thought that if I suddenly found again that I had only myself to care for, I might attach myself to a monastery. I wouldn’t join an order because I don’t have that vocation. On the other hand, in the small experiences I had of it I found I liked the rhythm, the regularity, of the discipline. I have discovering in a distinct way that this is my new discipline. It is physical and emotional and spiritual, and it seems to touch everything. But then, as I once said to someone asking about the retirement community in which I live, I said “that’s what we came here for, the rest of our lives.“

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