Hello.  I want to share something with you.  You may not like it; it might wear you out so that you have to quit, or you may not even look at it at all.  But I want to share it with you.

One day, my PSA level shot up a bit, and the doctor suggested that I get a biopsy of my prostate.  That showed that cancer was in it and through it, in every part of it.  I suddenly felt like that ultimate day had come.  We all know we are going to die, but it remains a kind of academic consideration if a consideration at all.  The flow of life just keeps moving, flowing. We are in the flow of it, preoccupied by our interests and preoccupations. But for me the flow stopped. It’s as if everything went silent, and in the stillness I realized that my own death was at hand. That is what it felt like.  Everything got re-arranged in my thinking.  I went a bit cold, finding myself still but suddenly smelling the fragrance of our land, the sound of the birds overhead and the wind in the trees, all the things I missed when I was caught up in the currents of my life.  My dogs seemed to look at me as if they knew.  I knew.  I was dying.

The doctor told me I could do radiation and keep the prostrate in or I could have surgery and get it out. I said, “Get that damn thing out of me!”  The pathologist’s report following surgery indicated it was likely that some of the cancer had escaped the prostate and was still in my body; so, I took a Lupron shot, and we scheduled radiation.  The lupron prevents the production of testosterone, which actually feeds the cancer, and the shot was powerful, supposedly lasting six months, at the height of which I would start three months or so of daily radiation (the stuff actually lasts longer than that). 

So, somewhere in the midst of all that, having come to terms with the idea that I might actually be dying and that I was not much longer in this world, I decided I wanted to take Linda and go see a live concert of the group called Hillsong United.  We booked it for the Pepsi center in Denver. We drove out there and along the way we stopped to see a friend from the gestalt world who lived in Cheyenne.  Sylvia was a character, someone I used to argue with a lot online about gestalt therapy, theory, practice, Christianity, and of all things George Bush. She was a Christian herself, but with a much more liberal take on theology.  She took us into her home, showed us her collection of art work and told us about her life in Cheyenne.  Then, a few months later she died.

My last two PSA levels could not detect any PSA.  Not dying quite yet.

The link below is of the concert that Linda and I experienced in Denver, only this is a video of their performance at Madison Square Garden in NYC in the same tour–as well as what it was like for them to have that kind of work to do.  I have to tell you that that concert, and these songs, and being with people in Denver (such as the contingent of Asian people right in front of us who were ecstatic and worshipping together) was like a soothing, reassuring friend who reminds you to just settle down and be at peace when everything around you seems to be suddenly disintegrating.

Here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a9xmHq1cxg&list=PL3deMd8-p5lcpmLmUBr0zziBPeZpQFy0g
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