Saturday
Then: Cabbageness
I began my first book in 2002 with the following...
I count my story remarkable for its unremakableness. What do I mean by this? The people in this story just happened to be my family, friends, doctors and healers. Sure, my doctors Utz, Zincke and Gaynor, my healer Jon MacRae and author Denis Boyles all have spent careers dealing with guys’ health issues. But they were the exception. Most of the ordinary people I write about here have rallied around others in peril before, as your friends and family would do if you faced a fatal illness. And when I say that I have taken indelible benefit from even the tiniest moments of concern and support from others, I’m probably echoing most others in similar situations. So, when I add up the unremarkable happenstances, to me the result is remarkable. That means I believe almost anyone else could follow a similar, easy path with their trauma and likely come out way ahead.
I still don’t believe I did much to wage my battle with prostate cancer other than to simply open myself up to let others wage it for me. The niches they occupied in their fight for me took many forms. For instance, just hearing the words “Oh, Man” spoken over the phone. Or a note arriving in the mail and sparking a new perspective on events of 20 years past.
I had the first of many ‘niches’ of clarity about what I’ve been through on a six hour drive in November, 2002 to a narrow lake bordering Canada and a secluded retreat called the Gunflint Lodge, founded in 1927, the year of my father’s birth. I was in the parking lot of all places, a Subway restaurant in Two Harbors. It was very brief, but it reminded me of so many moments over the previous year since my diagnosis. But moments are fleeting; niches is the better word because it conveys the permanence of memories and their take-aways. And I simply don’t like the word epiphany. Too high falutin’.
My niche of clarity was as simple as taking a breath in the Subway parking lot. With four hours of driving behind me and anticipation of my hermitage weekend, I was in a state of relaxation similar to what some healing hands had done to me in recent months. And that first conscious breath felt so good. I took another. And another.
Then I wheeled the car backwards out of the parking place and found my car on one side of local-boy Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 facing not 20 feet away the spindly gates of Lakeview Cemetery. With a chuckle, I cranked the wheel left onto Highway 61, and thought of Dylan..."Do you know where I can get rid of these things?…Yes, I think it can be easily done. Just take everything down to Highway 61."
I’ve still not brought myself to read a book or article by a prostate cancer survivor. Not until I know I’m as close to cured as possible. So with no models to guide me, allow me to explain how I am attempting to find my ‘center’ and reconnect puzzles pieces of the past.
My healer, Jon MacRae, prescribed this vision quest for finding the center of who I am to be from now on, and I knew that a tent in the woods, as Jon probably imagined, wasn’t the prescription for this fellow.
I’m going to start with the questions for myself. So, how have I changed after learning a year ago that I had advanced, aggressive prostate cancer? How do I feel that I could get access to Mayo Clinic and its top surgeons, about the only people in the country doing surgery on cases as advanced as mine? How do I feel about meeting the healer Jon MacRae who sent me on this quest?
And finally, why are many of the people you’ll read about in this book actually not as much in my sphere of life anymore, at least right now?
Let me sum up the answer to this question with one of my ‘bolts of clarity’ in recent times. My friends knew me pre-surgery as always having time for everyone. I don’t really watch TV anymore, but I happened to be clicking through the channels recently, and something made me stop on Bill Moyers’ NOW. He was talking to a woman poet about poetry. He said something like: “I’d like you to read my favorite of yours. I kept it on this piece of paper in my wallet when I was recovering from heart surgery and when people expected me to be the same person I was before surgery.” The poem is “The Art of Disappearing” by Naomi Shihab Nye. To protect her copyright, I urge you to search for the full poem on the Internet, but here is a selection with advice for those who, as my healer Jon MacRae says, "have not figured out how to get centered."
“When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second. Then decide what to do with your time.”
Here is a link to the Moyer's interview and the full poem.
Yes, for the most part since my surgery, I've been a cabbage as I work on shedding the crap from crappy people and getting recentered around who and what are important, now and from the past. So when I emerge from cabbageness, I know I will be back seeking -- maybe selfishly -- to reconnect with beams from some folks. I have to at least try, even if I come off as some wacko hanging out near the cabbage bin in the grocery store.
For those readers who might have trouble following my random and rambling, non-sequential order in the stories in this journey, here are the basics:
1. December 27th, 2001. Diagnosis of cancer too advanced for surgery at most leading clinical hospitals by Dr. Bill Utz in Minneapolis, with a prescribed five to seven months of drug therapy for tumor shrinking to be followed by surgery.
2. Late January, 2002. Second opinion confirming diagnosis by Dr. Horst Zincke at Mayo Clinic, with the urging that the surgery occur before five to seven months to reduce the risk of cancer spreading to the bones and brain.
3. Valentine’s Day, 2002. Appointment with oncologist Dr. Mitch Gaynor in New York with a prescription to begin taking 23 nutritional supplements, alter my diet to eliminate most fat and begin practicing guided imagery meditation.
4. Late February and March. Visits to a healing hands practitioner, Jon MacRae.
5. April 12th, 2002. Radical prostatectomy performed by Dr. Zincke at Mayo Clinic.
6. July and October, 2002. Post-surgery visits to Dr. Utz with news that while I’m not cured and will have a chronic disease the remainder of my life, I have outcomes from surgery that are in Utz’s words, ‘miracles.” ¶ 1:56 PM
I count my story remarkable for its unremakableness. What do I mean by this? The people in this story just happened to be my family, friends, doctors and healers. Sure, my doctors Utz, Zincke and Gaynor, my healer Jon MacRae and author Denis Boyles all have spent careers dealing with guys’ health issues. But they were the exception. Most of the ordinary people I write about here have rallied around others in peril before, as your friends and family would do if you faced a fatal illness. And when I say that I have taken indelible benefit from even the tiniest moments of concern and support from others, I’m probably echoing most others in similar situations. So, when I add up the unremarkable happenstances, to me the result is remarkable. That means I believe almost anyone else could follow a similar, easy path with their trauma and likely come out way ahead.
I still don’t believe I did much to wage my battle with prostate cancer other than to simply open myself up to let others wage it for me. The niches they occupied in their fight for me took many forms. For instance, just hearing the words “Oh, Man” spoken over the phone. Or a note arriving in the mail and sparking a new perspective on events of 20 years past.
I had the first of many ‘niches’ of clarity about what I’ve been through on a six hour drive in November, 2002 to a narrow lake bordering Canada and a secluded retreat called the Gunflint Lodge, founded in 1927, the year of my father’s birth. I was in the parking lot of all places, a Subway restaurant in Two Harbors. It was very brief, but it reminded me of so many moments over the previous year since my diagnosis. But moments are fleeting; niches is the better word because it conveys the permanence of memories and their take-aways. And I simply don’t like the word epiphany. Too high falutin’.
My niche of clarity was as simple as taking a breath in the Subway parking lot. With four hours of driving behind me and anticipation of my hermitage weekend, I was in a state of relaxation similar to what some healing hands had done to me in recent months. And that first conscious breath felt so good. I took another. And another.
Then I wheeled the car backwards out of the parking place and found my car on one side of local-boy Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 facing not 20 feet away the spindly gates of Lakeview Cemetery. With a chuckle, I cranked the wheel left onto Highway 61, and thought of Dylan..."Do you know where I can get rid of these things?…Yes, I think it can be easily done. Just take everything down to Highway 61."
I’ve still not brought myself to read a book or article by a prostate cancer survivor. Not until I know I’m as close to cured as possible. So with no models to guide me, allow me to explain how I am attempting to find my ‘center’ and reconnect puzzles pieces of the past.
My healer, Jon MacRae, prescribed this vision quest for finding the center of who I am to be from now on, and I knew that a tent in the woods, as Jon probably imagined, wasn’t the prescription for this fellow.
I’m going to start with the questions for myself. So, how have I changed after learning a year ago that I had advanced, aggressive prostate cancer? How do I feel that I could get access to Mayo Clinic and its top surgeons, about the only people in the country doing surgery on cases as advanced as mine? How do I feel about meeting the healer Jon MacRae who sent me on this quest?
And finally, why are many of the people you’ll read about in this book actually not as much in my sphere of life anymore, at least right now?
Let me sum up the answer to this question with one of my ‘bolts of clarity’ in recent times. My friends knew me pre-surgery as always having time for everyone. I don’t really watch TV anymore, but I happened to be clicking through the channels recently, and something made me stop on Bill Moyers’ NOW. He was talking to a woman poet about poetry. He said something like: “I’d like you to read my favorite of yours. I kept it on this piece of paper in my wallet when I was recovering from heart surgery and when people expected me to be the same person I was before surgery.” The poem is “The Art of Disappearing” by Naomi Shihab Nye. To protect her copyright, I urge you to search for the full poem on the Internet, but here is a selection with advice for those who, as my healer Jon MacRae says, "have not figured out how to get centered."
“When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second. Then decide what to do with your time.”
Here is a link to the Moyer's interview and the full poem.
Yes, for the most part since my surgery, I've been a cabbage as I work on shedding the crap from crappy people and getting recentered around who and what are important, now and from the past. So when I emerge from cabbageness, I know I will be back seeking -- maybe selfishly -- to reconnect with beams from some folks. I have to at least try, even if I come off as some wacko hanging out near the cabbage bin in the grocery store.
For those readers who might have trouble following my random and rambling, non-sequential order in the stories in this journey, here are the basics:
1. December 27th, 2001. Diagnosis of cancer too advanced for surgery at most leading clinical hospitals by Dr. Bill Utz in Minneapolis, with a prescribed five to seven months of drug therapy for tumor shrinking to be followed by surgery.
2. Late January, 2002. Second opinion confirming diagnosis by Dr. Horst Zincke at Mayo Clinic, with the urging that the surgery occur before five to seven months to reduce the risk of cancer spreading to the bones and brain.
3. Valentine’s Day, 2002. Appointment with oncologist Dr. Mitch Gaynor in New York with a prescription to begin taking 23 nutritional supplements, alter my diet to eliminate most fat and begin practicing guided imagery meditation.
4. Late February and March. Visits to a healing hands practitioner, Jon MacRae.
5. April 12th, 2002. Radical prostatectomy performed by Dr. Zincke at Mayo Clinic.
6. July and October, 2002. Post-surgery visits to Dr. Utz with news that while I’m not cured and will have a chronic disease the remainder of my life, I have outcomes from surgery that are in Utz’s words, ‘miracles.” ¶ 1:56 PM
