This extremely unoriginal title just popped up, and I am a bit of a believer in going with these things. It is a beautiful day, actually; maximum 30, but only about 26-27 outside, and very dry, so it feels mild. I went outside and did some watering earlier, including some hand watering for the hoya bush and a rather sick looking azalea in a tub that I have been nursing along for months. I gave this some compost and this has made it look healthier; it now has little green shoots along the branches. It needs a feed, which it is about to receive when I get to it.

Otherwise I have been making phone calls and appointments and ripping some discs to my MP3 player; all very uneventful. I have to be out this afternoon, and because it is going to be hot, I hit on the idea of going to see a movie. The only one with a suitable time is Loving Vincent, so I am going to see that. It should be nice to look at at worst. Had a fairly average night, but I am quite used to it by now. There is a meeting of the Prostate Cancer Support Group tomorrow morning in Box Hill, at which I should get some information about new treatments, particularly those involving radiation. (Jeremy said this was one of the options for me; this will be decided post the next PSA test, to be performed mid-December.)

An odd circumstance occurred this morning. I had to put the tablet on the charger, and my phone was getting a bit low as well. So I thought I would use the laptop to do the MP3s, checking a web site, etc. It turned out that I hadn’t switched this on the last time I had plugged it back in, so it was nearly empty. What might this be called: digital drought? Cyber-withdrawal? Anyway, it made me realise how much I have been relying on these various devices to communicate. It wasn’t always so, of course; once people read books, wrote letters, and so on. So I read a bit more of Godel, Escher, Bach for a while, before I ended up using the laptop plugged in. Just reading or listening to music definitely requires more concentration and the need to overcome FOMO.

Have been feeling quite sad now and again, but this is to be expected. We have had some difficult news to assimilate. This last fortnight, however, with my beloved at home with me, has been wonderful, mostly very serene. We are closer now, I believe. These words from A strange place, courtesy of the wonderful YANA site, definitely apply. The author, Terry Herbert, is describing the experience of men who have worked through prostate cancer to the remission stage.

They appreciate life and their loved ones more. They enjoy each day because they have had an intimation of mortality. It seems ironic that we have to be diagnosed with a life-threatening disease before we truly appreciate how wonderful our lives are.

I felt better today than I have for a few days. I think the secret is not trying to do too much and having enough rest. Like the last bowl of porridge, just right.

TMI alert in the following. We went on an extremely exciting and successful mission to buy another set of towels. (The reason? When I dry myself after a shower, there’s more dripping onto the bathmat than water! I’m still socking down plenty of fluids, so it’s more water than anything else, but still.) I had a coffee and a little tart while Der Fisch looked at clothes and shoes. Then I went to the bathroom and swapped over to the spare pad that I had brought (memo DJs: you need a waste-paper basket in your men’s loos). Joined herself in the ladies’ shoes, a quick look at slippers for my beloved’s dainty foot, then home. Just a perfect length outing.

I am nearly 50 pages into Godel, Escher, Bach, something I have been nibbling away at mostly in the small hours (note I delicately avoid saying “wee small hours”). Anyway, I will be able to post some initial thoughts about it soon. Meanwhile, there was an interesting aside, which I will reproduce below:

” … it is possible to program a machine to do a routine task in such a way that the machine will never notice even the most obvious facts about what it is doing: but it is inherent in human consciousness to notice some facts about the things one is doing. [ … ] If you punch ‘1’ into an adding machine, then add 1 to it, and then add 1 again, and again, and continue doing so for hours and hours, the machine will never learn to anticipate you, and do it itself, although any person would pick up the repetitive behaviour very quickly. Or, to take a silly example, a car will never pick up the idea, no matter how much or how well it is driven, that it is supposed to avoid other cars and obstacles on the road; and it will never learn the most frequently traveled routes of its owner.” (p. 36-37)

I know this is from a book published nearly thirty years ago. However, I guess this indicates how even a phenomenally smart guy like Douglas Hofstadter can be overtaken by technology. Anyone with an Android phone has gotten used to the slightly creepy things it asks you, unbidden, like “Are you interested in the travel time between home and RMIT City Campus?”. And it seems very likely that autonomous vehicles will be on our roads within five years. Of course this quote is getting into the vexed question of machine learning (something for which there does not seem to be an entry in the index). Is he for, against, or an agnostic? Stay tuned.

You can see I am scratching a bit for a title for this post. You should see the ones I rejected; ‘Freudday’, ‘Reverting to the mean’ – please! I guess real writers go through this “OK, how am I going to prime this pump?” kind of stage, maybe several times a day. Hey, whole books have been written about writer’s block, like the Bech novels by John Updike. (I’m sure the literate readership of this blog, and that’s both of you, can supply other examples.) Of course, he said oleaginously, literary scholarship is the most learned of all. Why do I say this? Try doing a Google search for “writer’s block books”, as I just did. What do you get? A whole bunch of stuff about how to fix it! To know what novels are about what topic, unless you get lucky and stumble across a thesis like “By hook or by crook: sheep farming in Victorian fiction”, you just have to have read the books. Look it up in the catalogue, you say? Catalogue records for fiction seldom have subject headings. How did I get to Bech? That’s my secret and I’m not telling.

OK, now I have whetted your collective appetite, time for the day’s major achievement. Are we sitting comfortably? Eagle-eyed readers of the preceding paragraph (you know who you are) will notice that I have located the double quotation mark on this keyboard. This was a triumph of deductive reasoning, if I say so myself. Pressing the key where the double quote mark should be (plus the shift key, of course) gives you the @ symbol. BUT, if you press the key marked with the @ symbol, what do you get? Go to the top of the class if you said ” (or should that be, ” ” “?). Take that, weird bit of keyboard mapping!

So, as will be abundantly clear, I have nothing really to report today. I walked my beloved down to the gym today; this is the longest walk I have had since the op. I felt fine when I got home, but had a sleep for about half an hour. Obviously that is about my limit at present. She is currently cooking dinner, before we have which, we will have a drink. I might have to ease back on the spirits and coffee, both of which are apparently deprecated for prostate health. (Something else to ask Jeremy about, but I will knock them off just in case.) Red wine is supposed to be OK, though, so I will have to double up on that!

I will leave you with an image and caption from Troop-C, the funny part of YANA. The image:

The caption, which I will paraphrase to avoid litigation, observes that when the light is on in the US, the switch is up. However, this convention is reversed elsewhere (like Australia, now I think of it). The down-for-on switch direction may not yield quite what the good Pfizer folk are looking for. Phew, I avoided saying that I was going to enlarge on this topic in future posts!

I alluded to needing to touch base with family members before posting some new information to the blog. I have now done this, and so am free to post this information.

On Tuesday night I heard from my urologist. He had the results of the biopsy from the operation. The results were somewhat alarming. Cancer was found not only in the prostate and one of the lymph nodes, as expected, but in others of them as well. I have a Gleason score of 9, this being about the highest. Gleason, as I understand it, is a composite score denoting how aggressive a cancer is; the higher, the more aggessive. So more treatment is required. When I have another PSA test, the best treatment modality can be determined. The test will be done about mid-December. (Christmas in hospital, anyone?)

I felt quite odd listening to this; detached at first, then, as it sank in, just scared. I had neither anything with which to take notes during the call, nor the presence of mind to request a minute to go and fetch something. So after the call ended, I was thinking ‘Did he really say that?’. That is one take-out for me: next time, I will take notes (as I have during consultations). This is all the more important as Jeremy’s news was pretty sobering, and thus stressful to hear. (My sister’s suggestion, when talking it over with her the next day, was to call Jeremy back and check that I had understood him correctly. This was excellent advice, which I followed, and I had largely understood him correctly.)

When my beloved got home, I told her; we both felt pretty freaked out, and had a drink (second one for me). Talking it over helped eventually to digest the import of the conversation, and work out what it meant for us. One thing that helped was reading someone’s story on YANA. (I read this about 2.00 am when I couldn’t sleep.) This is someone else with Gleason 9 following a radical open prostatectomy. The fact I fastened onto was that he is still around 7.5 years after diagnosis. When you have thought your end was imminent, that seems like a pretty good number! I know he is still around because I emailed him, and he replied the next day.

So where to from here? Obviously, I have to have the treatment required. The other thing is to do everything we can together, and do it now. (This assumes medical clearance, e.g. to travel.) Do I want to know how long that might be? Not particularly. The other thing I did today was to go to a jewellers in Camberwell, and persuade Jill to let me buy her something nice. It took some doing, but the sales lady and I overcame some spirited resistance. I could not get through without her, and I want her to have some token of what she means to me. I think she knows this, but I am learning not to take things for granted.

A big day, somehow. Der Fisch and I dropped the Camry off to be serviced at a local garage, and we walked home (about half a kilometre). This was my first walk since coming home. I have been a bit slack about this, but I guess the increasing sensitivity from the catheter, and uncomfortable temperatures, made this difficult. I was running out of inner pads, ascertained that the local pharmacist had some, then went and got them and some more cash out of the ATM. This was my first drive since coming home.

The internet is a boon to those recovering mobility, as before. I got the second lot of pads (which arrived while I was down the street). I ordered a bunch of T-shirts and a little bluetooth speaker (for listening to music while sitting in the courtyard). I also emailed the co-ordinator of a local Prostate Cancer Support Group, read a reply to a message I had sent to a prostate cancer survivor, whom I located through YANA (see below), and caught up with events via The Age, Guardian, and Facebook. These things were all done online.

The ‘net was also the source of  A strange place, a 30 page information guide to prostate cancer, from a terrific site, You Are Not Alone . (This site is included in my External Links.)  YANA is maintained by a bunch of prostate cancer survivors, the Australian wife of one of whom did the design. So it is a super functional site, fast loading (hooray!), with a huge amount of information available. The emotional impact of the PC diagnosis on sufferers and their partners is addressed. All is very non-sensational, and there is no pretension that the authors are medically qualified. The quality of the information reflects the fact that the site is built by survivors, so that they can share information and experiences with other survivors. They are entirely self-funded, so I was happy to donate them a modest sum for their web hosting and postage expenses.

The good old-fashioned phone also featured large today, communicating with family and Jeremy, my urologist. When I have spoken to everyone I will put an update here about some new information from the last of these. It was heartening to see marriage equality get up decisively. The hot weather which had kept me confined to barracks yesterday has lifted. There was quite a storm, replete with a huge crack of thunder, and an ozone smell from accompanying sheets of lightning. 

Most interesting story in The Age re increased incidence of urinary incontinence in female athletes – see http://www.theage.com.au/executive-style/-gzjy2m.html . Apparently young females think that pelvic floor muscles are something yucky and for old folk. (Maybe we need a PFM Week?) More worrying is that a great proportion of those surveyed do not seek treatment for urinary leakage. This is not baby boomer males we’re talking about here, but 15 – 19 year old females.

Yay! Just managed to pair up the new Bluetooth keyboard with the tablet. Took a few goes, and of course the instructions didn’t match what I was seeing on the screen. But I can see what I am typing as I go. Feel of the keys is quite good. Even has home and end functions! Not bad at all for $15. I am sitting in the living room with the keyboard and the tablet on a tray (the one I have my dinner off). Der Fisch is still out having a massage, coffee with a friend, fringe trim and food shopping. I’m putting her to work! She said something to the effect that I would probably be back on kitchen duties next week. Still, she is holding the fort in great style.

Just had a sleep for about half an hour before having some cheese, biscuits and celery for lunch. (Ah – one of the keys just repeated! I can see one has to stab them fairly decisively. Still, it is a hell of a lot better than the handwriting recognition.) According to the Fitbit I got 3 hours 29 minutes of sleep last night, with an average of 3 hours 41 minutes for the week. So obviously not great, but not all that unusual. I still have to wait another fortnight before resuming exercise; this is probably one of the reasons for the bad sleep. When it is not stinking hot, and I have some more confidence in the urinary continence, I will go for a walk and so on.

I had a brief chat to a friend this morning whose husband has also had a prostatectomy (apparently most of the males in their circle have too). She said (and I am paraphrasing) that Jeremy Grummet was a top man in urology, something of which I was not aware. I did know that he is an associate professor at Monash, and, possibly jointly, developed a new and improved prostate biopsy method. When I read about that I thought ‘I’ll probably have to have one of those’, which turned out to be correct, and I certainly had no infection or complication from that procedure.

Choosing a medical specialist is obviously not something for which one can rely on a Choice test! I chose Jeremy because I wanted a clinician who also had an academic role to do whatever I had to have done. I have an idea that such people are possibly more obliged to keep current with new procedures and methods. The proof of the pudding will obviously be in the eating, but so far, so good. He has always been pleasant to deal with, and is a clear and succinct communicator. I am to see him on the 28th of this month for a follow-up appointment.

Der Fisch has swum out for a couple of hours, leaving me up to my own devices. (I convinced her to let me buy her something nice; we will go and have a look when the weather is less hot.) So I am catching up with things I let go while I was in hospital, like an eye test, and exciting stuff like that.

The peeing is getting better; I am still going through pads like anything (ordered some more online yesterday). I find that a double pad does the job well, the inner one getting quite soaked on occasion, the outer one not looking affected at all. In time I expect I can taper down on the protection. Thank goodness it is past the hay fever season; I haven’t had a sneeze yet; try and remember to think “Activate” beforehand! Getting up is really the problem. I can activate the PFMs, but when I stand up and release them, gravity takes over. Re-establishing control takes time, and apparently is quite an individual thing.

My dearest got me a couple of pairs of XXL cargo pants from Target yesterday. These are just the thing, being big enough to accommodate my still quite swollen middle. The prices varied between $25 and $10 (on sale), so I’m not going to worry what happens to them! At present I am wearing a pair of shorts that is usually a bit too big for me, but are perfect at present. First independent shower this morning was exciting (well, kind of). When my tablet charges up I will try out my new Bluetooth keyboard. I ordered this, also online (a boon to the housebound), to assist with editing the blog on the tablet. I could try it out with the phone, but it doesn’t say that it can pair with more than one device. It probably can, but I would rather pair it with the tablet first, then experiment.

It’s out, thank goodness!  A bit more hairy than the practice nurse led me to believe.  But not too bad. I had a slight misadventure on the way home.  (Warning: this might be a bit TMI.) The practice nurse fitted me with a small pad after taking out the catheter. I was fine to get in the car and out again, but as soon as I released the PFMS,  I felt a trickle. Fortunately I had taken a spare, big pad and some other stuff. So I went to the men’s loo in the shopping centre, changed pads, and put the rest of the stuff (alcohol wipes, Q-tips, and Novocaine ointment) in my pocket. Back at the car I then forgot that I had done this last step,  and beetled back into the men’s, to find no stuff there. Then I felt them in my pocket. (I’ll blame the Endone.) Anyway, I see the urologist on 28th to get the feedback about the operation. Meanwhile,  I am blessedly free of the sensitivity,  which was becoming really quite problematic, despite various measures. Bending down, no problem. I can take off my own shoes! I’l be telling the time next.

I have been reading up on slang for the dangly bits (all in the interests of my readership, and science). I found an online version of Eric Partridge’s Concise new dictionary of slang and unconventional  English, a PDF of about 740 pages! A search for “penis” found 742 hits. Some will be false hits in that they are picking up entries in which the word merely occurs, for example in the definition. But it is obviously an impressive list. I noted down the ones beginning with the letters A or B (there were 62), and selected those I thought  the most amusing, as follows:

• almond rock (rhyming slang)
• bacon assegai
• arrow of desire
• bald-headed mouse
• baloney pony
• bed flute
• beef torpedo
• bishop
• Black and Decker (rhyming slang)
• Blackpool Rock (ditto)
• Bobby dangler
• Boris Becker (rhyming  slang)
• brain (I think Partridge calls this “ironic”)
• breakfast burrito
• bush blaster
• Canadian bacon
• captain’s log (rhyming slang – not sure what for)
• cavalier.

So there we go! No shortage of colorful terms with which to refer to your boerie (a South African term apparently, derived from boerewors, a well-known type of sausage in that part of the world).

Subsequent posts will resume the usual less racy tone.