Chuck's Personal Story as a Cancer Survivor
September, 1999

There is nothing special about today - except that I am alive. A long time ago I posted my digest on a Prostate Cancer help list. A few of the highlights: 12/97 PSA 8.6, 3/98 Radical Retropubic Prostatectomy (RRP) - aborted due to positive lymph nodes, 4/98 began Combined Hormone Blockade (CHB), 9/98 3D External Beam Radiation Therapy (3D EBRT). Interspersed with those events are a broken leg, a kidney stone, an emergency gall bladder removal, and 3 episodes of pulmonary emboli.

Today I struggle with incontinence from the EBRT, suffer hot flashes and impotence from the CHB, am subjected to an endless string of blood tests, have to enter the hospital for a week or more for a simple procedure such as a colonoscopy. I have accepted that my future promises bone metastases and an extended period of increasing pain culminating in a death that I will welcome as a release from my suffering.

So, why do I celebrate today? I celebrate because today I feel good. I have a wonderful wife who loves me a great deal and wants me with her regardless of how fast I can run, how much weight I can bench press, how many times a night we can have sex, how much I can remember about yesterday. I have two wonderful children - although at 23 and 21 they are not children except to my wife and I. They constantly show their love to me both in words and by their conduct of their lives.

On most days I can go out and run in the woods along the river bank. I chase deer, wild turkeys, geese, woodchucks, squirrels, and numerous flocks of birds. I marvel at the beauty of the wild flowers and the smell of their fragrance. I pause to watch the insects drink their nectar. I peer in amazement at the patterns of dew droplets on flower stalks. I don't run as fast or as far as I did two years ago, but I rejoice in the pleasure of feeling my feet glide along the trail and thrill to the coolness of a breeze in my face.

Yesterday, I began a new venture - teaching 4-8 year old children how to swim. With my own children now grown I had forgotten how wonderful it is to watch a young child learning while having fun. Soon, I expect to begin teaching nursing home patients how to use a computer. I don't know what to expect from that venture, but I plan to have fun doing it.

Near the end of a week in the hospital I asked my wife to pickup a bouquet of roses to put on the nursing station. I can't describe the feeling I got from the comments the nurses and doctors made or just watching as one after another nurse went up, smelled the flowers, and their faces lit up with joy.

I don't know how much time I have left, but I intend to have as much fun as I can.

Shalom, Chuck in New Hampshire, USA
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