Category Archives: prostate cancer

It’s good to be alive

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Sometimes you don’t realize how sick you’ve been until you start feeling better.

Sickness, as I’m sure you know already, has many personalities. Nausea, fever and then some can jump you out of the blue and you know you’re sick. It’s clear as day. Nothing vague about it. Then too there are ailments like prostatitis, a swelling and inflammation of the walnut-sized prostate gland which sits comfortably, when it’s behaving, under the bladder of the male, like me for instance.  Prostatitis can be caused by a bacterial infection and then there are times there is no bloody rhyme or reason for its appearance, other than to make you urinate frequently, so much so I swear I’ve worn shallow valleys in the floor leading from my sitting chair and bed to the bathroom.

What sneaks up on you, or at least it snuck up on me, is the toll lack of sleep takes on you. At first I sought to manage the symptoms myself, I’ve been through this before and so loaded up on Saw Palmetto (a great name for a gangster in case anyone’s looking for one), Stinging Nettle and Pygeum, but alas, my efforts were, as they say, too little, too late. And so it was that on the 23rd of this month I decided not to wait until my scheduled physical on January 4 and instead headed to the nearest emergency room for treatment: antibiotics and Flomax. By the time I went to the E.R. I’d been operating out of a state of exhaustion far longer than I realized, nearly two months truth be told.

It took awhile to get as sick as I was and it will take a while to feel better; I’m not out of the woods yet, but I can see the clearing. Today, this morning into early afternoon actually, I was able finally to get some uninterrupted sleep in two-hour doses. For more than a month the longest I slept without having to deepen the ravine as it were was an hour, more often than not, less than an hour. And so, this afternoon, for the first time in nearly two months, I felt rested, and, as a result, feel alive. And let me tell you, if there is anything I am sure of, it is this: it’s good to be alive.

Calling Saw Palmetto

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I have been standing in line in this cavernous shopping center for more than three weeks now and I am sure of two things; management makes all employees take Quaaludes and Saw Palmetto is proof there is God, else I would have been to the bathroom 30 to 40 times by now.

Actually, I think Saw Palmetto would be the perfect name for someone in, say, a movie like the Godfather. Can’t you hear the lines now? Yo, asshole, you ain’t got the money? we call in Saw Palmetto and it’s bye-bye knees. You pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down here?

Rhode Island could fit in this store with room to spare it’s so big. And there are employees everywhere, or else wearing blue smocks with name tags are in fashion and I’m more confused than I think I am anyway.

Now the couple before me is finally unloading their five carts worth of items for the cashier to ring up. But, there’s a problem with the bread.

The husband is holding up two loaves of bread for the cashier to see, one in each hand. “You got any idea how many slices in these?”

The cashier: “What?”

The wife: “We want to know how many slices.”

The cashier: “Should say on the bag.”

All three scrutinize the loaves of bread.

The husband: “Don’t say shit.”

The wife: “How do we know which loaf has more slices?”

The cashier: “Which one’s heavier?”

Now I want to call Saw Palmetto. Bye-Bye knees.
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