This happened last year, when my pellets wore out. I had occasion to look at my training log to see when I got my last dose, and it was five months ago yesterday – and five months is just about the shelf life. My Sunday hour run happened comfortably without incident, but today’s 30 minutes turned into a five minute slog and a walk back.
A big difference indeed. It’s like falling off a cliff.
Well, this is the future – or, at least, for the next year-plus. My doctor doesn’t want me to take any more pellets for at least a year, because apparently prostate cancer is exacerbated by testosterone. He said “You’re gonna feel like crap” 🙂 . Thanks, Doc.
That’s a heck of a prognosis.
Fact is, I feel like crap WITH the pellets. So, there’s that 🙂
Just watched a Season One episode of Northern Exposure where Rick, Maggie’s boyfriend, had a skin tumor and had to wait on the biopsy results. Now I know what that feels like. However, his results were “no cancer”. Mine were “Cancer Light – we’re not going to treat it, but you’re going to feel like crap.”
I’m trying to find a positive frame of reference for this 🙂
On Saturday, my grill was out of gas. I’ve only used it three or four times, so it seemed like there was a gas leak – and when we replaced the gas tank, there was a definite leak near the valve.
So on Monday, I start looking into getting it replaced – the darn thing is less than two month old. But when I tried to call Lowe’s, my phone wouldn’t work. Turns out that the nearest tower was broken, and the phone company had to reroute us through a nearby tower.
But in the meantime, I couldn’t get my phone to make wifi calls. It kept telling me that it couldn’t do that, no matter which way I tried to get it to work. Finally Ethel managed to find some magic buttons.
And when I called Lowe’s, they told me too bad – the grill was over 30 days old, and they couldn’t do anything. I was…nonplussed about that. So they calmed me down and told me to call Weber, and Weber would give me a number that I could give to them and they would replace it.
But Weber didn’t do that. They wanted me to do stuff, like do a soapy water leak test and give them pictures of the tank gasket – all that stuff that a software guy doesn’t know how to do. So my mood took another dive.
Then I went out and got in the car to go to a meeting, because I was fuming about all this stuff – and the large center screen in my BMW Z3 wouldn’t come on. It was black.
I restarted the car, and still had the problem. Came inside, and after a few minutes went back out there, and it was behaving.
But it wasn’t a good Monday.
I was attempting Step 10 through all of this, but not pulling it off very well. Eventually, I went to bed. I’ve learned that sometimes the best way to live one day at a time is to make that day as short as possible.
I got another tank of gas today. It doesn’t appear to be leaking. I don’t know why.
But I’m getting an extended warranty for the BMW. I don’t want to take any chances.
This is what I usually see when I start the editor for this blog:
But, lately, I’ve just been seeing the wordpress.com/post/XXXXXX/new/XXX address in the bar, and a blank screen. And I have to reboot my computer to make that go away.
I have no idea what is causing this. And I can’t find anywhere on the wordpress.com site where I can enter a bug report.
I’ve been using WordPress for free since 2012, so I suppose I should be grateful. But I can still get irritated at something that trivial.
Today has been an interesting day. Yesterday we went to see a doctor in Cullman to get our shots – Hepatitis-A, Typhoid, and Yellow Fever. We got them, all right. We also got the bill – $1200 for those shots for the two of us. I was stunned.
Then, since Ethel had the record for the shots, she went to fill out the forms for our Kenya and Tanzania tourist visas. Would you believe $600 for the two of us? For VISAS? For the privilege of coming to their countries and spending a whole, whole lot of money?
This left me not in the best of emotional conditions, and – as well – there seemed to be a good bit of physical backlash from the shots; I didn’t do anything else for the rest of the day. And then I couldn’t crank up my blog to complain about it in this diary, and that didn’t give me the happy, either.
I also mowed for the first time today since leaving Montana. I move, I buy a mower, I move again, I sell the mower, I move again, I buy a mower, I move again, I sell it, I move again, I buy it.
I also just tried to do my scales and my Hanons on the piano, and….and my fingers just aren’t moving right. It’s like they forgot the scales and Hanons just because I skipped one day.
What’s it going to be like after six weeks in an immobilizing sling?
Okay, well, obviously, I can work around the bug by rebooting the computer. And I can just live with the fact that the trip to Africa is still running up expenses. And they only way to get through the piano drills is just to go ahead and do the drills.
But at least Alabama is still defeated!!….no, wait….
Near the end of my first year of running recreationally – 1992 – I was hitting 5Ks in 18 minutes and change.
On Halloween of that year, I ran the Halloween 5K – probably in Huntsville, but I can’t find a record of the race, because it was the year before my spreadsheet started – and a 63 year old man named Malcolm Gillis beat me.
And he outran me while wearing a sandwich signboard that said “VOTE NO ON AMENDMENT ONE”.
I didn’t.*
I’m remembering that because today I did 30 minutes at just under 13 minute pace in the heat. Lo, how the mighty have fallen.
But at least I am “running”. I’m able to jog for a half hour – and on Sunday, I made it a full hour, although I was in the gym on a mill, and thus out of the heat.
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” I’m following Arthur Ashe’s triple maxim as best I can.
Malcolm Gillis, at age 63, could beat me at my best. I’m 64, and I am absolutely at my worst.
Now, that might make sense, had I spent the thirty plus years in question eating bonbons and watching my soaps. However, I’ve spent all those years in training. All of them.
And in a few weeks, I go to Africa, where I can’t train, and then I come home and go though surgery, after which I can’t train even more.
I will, of course, wind up accepting all this. But, right now, I’m having a quiet little tantrum. I don’t want to go to Africa or have surgery. But, then, I don’t want to be 64 years old, either.
*this is not the gentleman in question – I just happened to find a sandwich board generator on the Internet, and took necessary liberty with spelling.
This is a bag of Tostito’s Bite Size Tortilla Chips which somebody left at our Saturday Night Bama game gathering.
On Saturday, Ethel made her Rotel dip at lunchtime, and told me to go to the nearest convenience store and buy some tortilla chips. I drove the two miles to Cowboys, and the only tortilla chips that I could find was one of these bags of Bite-Size.
The price was marked at $6.49.
If six and a half dollars for a bag of chips isn’t one of the signs of the Apocalypse, then it ought to be.
I didn’t buy it. I told the clerk that I wasn’t about to take home a $6.49 bag of chips. She understood.
That evening, we had a total of 16 people over at the house to watch the game (which was, BTW, awful. Simply awful. One of the worst games that we can recall watching Alabama play). Apparently, somebody brought the above bag of chips, and left it here afterwards. They must have bought this bag at a discount store, or maybe they bid on it on Ebay, because it sold for only…..$5.99.
Had I taken a six dollar bag of chips, I’d have taken it back home, as well. In a crush-proof container.
I keep hearing about inflation, but that sounds completely crazy. I remember when a bag of chips this size would sell for two bucks – less than that, on sale.
In 1993, I paid $90k for our house in Sherwood Oaks in Decatur, about 20 miles from here. A few years ago, that house went back on the market, at $90k. It is now on the market for $280k. What happened in the last three years? And how is it happening?
Of course, I don’t know. But I’m not going to pay six and a half bucks for a bag of chips. I’ll eat Rotel dip with my fingers first.
So now I have to schedule the rotator cuff surgery.
Which means – I have to decide at what point I want to start to spend six weeks in this thing:
That looks uncomfortable, unwieldy, and un-fun.
I can probably ride on my trainer with that on, but it’s hard to imagine being down on the aero bars. I can sort of imagine running with it, although that sounds like a recipe for blisters. Perhaps I can get on the elliptical with it, but it’s still gonna get really sweaty in places I won’t be able to wash.
No way to play piano or type.
And I’ve been told that there are certain – concerns of hygiene, regarding trips to the water closet, that hadn’t occurred to me, since it’s going to be my right arm in the sling. I’ve even been told that I should purchase a bidet.
This is what I get for trying to get into shape 🙂
I certainly want to get it on, and off, before ski season, or there won’t be a ski season.
I might as well go ahead and accept it – I’m either going to do this, or I’m going to see if I can swim with it the way that it is, and then give up on lifting or doing pushups or suchlike ever again.
Those aren’t my words, by the way – that’s what the doctor said. There were twelve sites used in the biopsy, and only one of them had any cancer cells, and the amount and aggressiveness numbers used to describe that one site are the smallest numbers that they can use.
So if there were any less indications, they couldn’t call it “cancer”.
No treatment – we’re doing “active surveillance”, which means that we test my PSA every six months, and do one biopsy a year, until something changes – or we stop worrying about it, because I’ll die from old age before the cancer becomes a problem.
However – it does mean that I have to stop hormone therapy, because testosterone aggravates prostate cancer. So, I’ll wind up watching “Beaches” and crying a lot.
So the torn rotator cuff is, right now, a much bigger deal, because I have to have surgery. It won’t heal without surgery. And, after the surgery, I’ll be wearing an immobilization sling for at least six weeks, and three month of physical therapy before I can start working the arm again.
That means six weeks of no upper body workouts, typing, or playing piano. So I’m going to lose all fitness in my upper body, and I’ll really get set back on the Sonatina. And I won’t be able to post these blog entries, unless I start using “talk to text”.
In addition – since my doctor can’t do the surgery until October 9th, and we leave for Africa on October 8th, I won’t get the surgery until late October at least, so I’ll be losing fitness for six weeks before the surgery.
Okay. I’m not running the show.
On Friday, I didn’t do much. I sort of sat and brooded about this stuff, reminding myself many times that I was supposed to thank God for ALL things, including cancer and torn rotator cuffs. So I’m back up to almost-normal this morning.
Time to go get on the bike and watch Gameday, which is in Tuscaloosa today. We considered going, but before we considered it enough, Ethel had invited most of North Alabama over to eat mojo and watch the game, which meant that she has to spend the whole day here, cooking. Which means that we can’t go to Tuscaloosa this morning and see Joe Namath visit as the guest picker.
This last Thursday, we went to watch our grandson play football at the Decatur High Stadium.
This was rather strange for me, for many reasons. When I was “on” the Decatur High team, this stadium is where we trained – and where I got thrown off the team for smoking a cigar while wearing a team blazer.*
In addition, I should at least have some loyalty to DHS, but I was supposed to root for my grandson’s team – Hartselle – against Decatur High, so I did.
Grandson Jackson has not been playing football very long, so he’s not one of the starters, so he wasn’t on the field that much. But that doesn’t change a grandparent’s job one iota – we were there, and we cheered.
Two days later, six of us – including Jackson – drove down to Tuscaloosa to go to the season opener against Middle Tennessee State University. It was enjoyable enough, although fatigue was a factor by the time we got home – this is the day after, and we’re paying for it now. Bryant Denny Stadium is huge and impressive – and so is the crowding. We were there in the city many hours before the came, wandering around with the crowd and wearing ourselves out. We’re glad we did it, and we are in no hurry to do it again any time soon 🙂
As a result, we missed both meeting and church this morning. I managed to get my workout in very late, but now it’s rather difficult to summon any amount of gumption for anything else. I have, at last, decided that I have enough – if not mastery – competence at the Allegro and Andante, and have started the Versace. But the piano is sitting there with its power light on, staring at me, accusing me of the guilt that is indeed true. But I still have hopes of getting over there.
Meanwhile, I am considering going to Tractor Supply and buying a lawn mower. I think I have finally found the right one, and it’s not a bad price, with two batteries. I may wind up regretting this a whole lot – it’s going to take me two hours to mow by hand, vs. about 20 minutes if I bought a 60 inch zero-turn. But I want the additional walking, since I can’t run.
Full disclosure – this morning, I “ran” the first half hour of my planed hour of elliptical. I used quotes because I was “running” just barely faster than I walked the marathon of my first full Ironman. But it was a “running” motion. I finished up on the ellip. Let’s see what I can do on Tuesday.
Thursday looms; I have a 9 AM MRI for the shoulders, and Kim Puckett has a 10:30 DEXA scan, and then I have a 1 PM appointment with Dr Young to go over my biopsy. All of this, of course, is in Cullman. I don’t know how I can get my workout done in time to be in Cullman at 9 AM. And I have no confidence that, after going through all this, that I’ll have enough gumption to do the workout afterwards.
I guess we’ll just see what happens.
*let’s be honest here – were I any good, I suspect that I would have had some kind of warning or punishment. But football was one more thing that I wasn’t any good at. Full disclosure – the coach said that I “had a lot of potential”, but then, everybody told me that I had a lot of potential for all of the stuff that I failed at. As I’ve heard it said, it’s like they thought I was towing around a U-Haul trailer full of potential, and just any moment, I’lll pull all of the potential out and become a start at something. Stardom never happened.
Fat Charlie's Diary 