Tuesday
Then: Signing Off From Gunflint, November 2002
I prescribe the quiet of the north woods and a border lake to anyone – especially men -- seeking their centers. I think I got close to knowing how to grab my center now and again by sitting in that chair and just writing (doing no editing as I went). An escape from using the head to find the heart came from altering old pulp magazine covers to reflect modern terrors.
Jon MacRae, my healer, had told me that when I pursued a vision quest of quiet meditation, to expect the first two days to be hard, and then something would happen. I chose to spend the first two days starting to write this book, and at just about 2:00 pm on the second day, exactly two days after arriving, I suddenly stopped writing like Tom Hanks stopped running on the desolate highway in Forest Gump. I stared ahead quizzically, chin slightly raised, just like Gump.
My body was quivering. Not shaking. It wasn’t alarming. It was a quiver. Unable to write, I simply retreated to the bedroom with Morrie following and dropped into the bed on my back to contemplate the quiver. Then came the fog. Very similar to Jon MacRae’s healing hands triggered fog, I drifted away for maybe only five minutes, not through tiredness, but from somewhere else. And there were no lightening bolts, or sunspots, or light shows in the fog. Just fog. Nice fog.
Then I got up and returned to this recliner to continue writing until bedtime and for another day. Had I found my center in that niche of time? I don’t know. I do know that the quiver returns now and again, especially when I am intensely boring into the mind's beams around connectedness with those vital to me.
I wrote the following my last few hours at Gunflint:
It’s now Monday morning, and I know I have just a few more hours to finish this Gunflint quest. When I called home Saturday night, the day before my Gump-moment described above, I told Carla that Morrie and I weren’t coming back. I felt like the writing, once I discarded the awful writing-from-the head stuff of Friday afternoon and started on the heart stuff Saturday, had put me in an amazing groove to get to some new enriching place. But now it’s time to get serious about that notion and ask the hard questions.
Might I ask your patience, readers? What follows is going to be me talking to – and questioning – myself. Before I sign off, I need to feel my own pulse for the results of this weekend’s effort. It might be confusing (or boring) to you. But, here goes….
Let’s see. How many months ago did Jon MacRae draw the big circle on the easel board and point to the center where too few men live? I’ve just spent 30 hours writing around the circle about people and circumstances beyond me. I’m certain Jon’s prescribed vision quest was for hours stacked on hours spent inside my head in order to get into my heart. But maybe it’s back to the guyness and the laziness, because I just couldn’t see doing that. I take too much comfort in the belief that by opening my pinata mind and letting other people wage war for me, this was how I was to find clarity.
Did I brush over the possible long term ‘dinging’ of my own immune system by outside events? Were they really damaging dings, or did I turn into a dingbat and harm myself? When I write about people who I really didn’t enlist in my fight yet who remained in the circle of my encounters, am I shoving emotional pain aside and kidding myself that casual encounters like this were actually beneficial to my outcome?
My medicine bag is not with me, and I’ve yet to find icons of my demons and dispose of them. So, in a little while this morning I’ll bundle up body, hook up dog, and venture forth into this morning’s Arctic gray wind to pluck from the tundra some tiny sticks and shriveled sprigs of pine needles. Then I'll sit and flick them into my fireplace to go 'poof'. And when I stare at them writhing in flame, I will reach inside to poke at some pain ascribed to these icons of hurt. I may even speak some silly words to scold the devilish debris inside me. But, you know what, I really don’t know how nasty these psychic scars actually are anymore. With real demons in the form of whacked cells percolating down there, why should inchoate niches of memory matter that much?
So if not vague grimacing chinks of memory, what about something else occupying this space? What about the concept of my soul? Or spirits from afar waiting to open more niches of clarity now that I’m giving them a chance? Did Jon’s teachers atop the mountains in Peru signal me with the lightening bolts. Did finding Dr. Utz with his openness about prayer open me to actually ask people for their prayers?
Sitting here at Gunflint at 6:00 am, the ‘calm’ that occupies my torso from prostateless groin to slow breathing throat has to be a sign that my center is signaling me. And the signs are good.
But what about my most recent PSA. At three months past surgery it was 0.6, and with Dr. Utz we talked about it being in the right direction. We looked at two factors from surgery, negative lymph nodes and normal paired chromosomes (seen in only something like 10 percent of cases). I said that Mayo indicated these were huge positives. Utz said: “I’m more religious than they are. Those are miracles.”
Taking this information and looking at various data from Mayo on the Web, I came up with my own number that there is a 90-percent-plus chance of no fatal reoccurrence in the next 10 years. And I told myself – and others – that this data was based on past therapies. And that should I see the remaining cancer wiggle away from my drug therapy again, surely the marvelous new therapies in clinical trials would be ready to work for me. Especially encouraging was news of progress on vaccines to trigger the body's immune system to kill prostate cancer cells.
Then, at six months, the PSA, with my expectation of a score of 0.3 or lower, came back at 0.7. Utz said, with a shrug, not to worry. We’ll just be watchful of the scores every three months. If it climbs above 1.0, we’ll add another pill on top of the Lupron shots. Next, we’re looking at radiation. Or, he even talked about progress with chemo. Reassuring. But is he really that confident?
I’ve never told Carla until now, but still ringing in my ears is a call to Mayo to one of Dr. Zincke’s newest residents, name forgotten, right after this 0.7 score. I have no idea if he reviewed my case before the call, or what kind of doctor he is in his communications with patients. But, after giving him the specifics of the 0.6 going to 0.7, his exact words were: “I have to be honest with you. This is not good. You should be a 0.0. We need to watch this very closely.”
Also, what was at work that made me have to take the god-awful walk across the skyway to crummy Fairview Southdale Hospital again for bone scans and an MRI in October right before heading up here to Gunflint? Complaining of pain coming from the hip, another doctor ordered these tests to be certain that there was nothing alarming afoot like undected prostate cancer in the bones. There wasn’t. But, how often am I going to hear alarm bells like this in the future?
And what of my fall off the wagon? Why haven’t I ordered my supplements prescribed by Mitch Gaynor for weeks? Why did I stop juicing all the veggies like fresh beets, carrots and celery, and mixing up concoctions of green powers to drink? What about the multiple cups of green tea and other healing drinks like Yerba Mate that I am supposed to drink each day? I really haven’t done any of this healing immune-system boosting work since surgery. Have I listened to the guided imagery CDs with the hypnotic Tibetan bowls? Nope.
Am I back to old regular guy behaviors of laziness, knowing full well my surgeons had to leave some cancer in there, and that even one cell can thumb its nose at the hormone-blocking drugs and decide to spawn its way out of its cozy pod?
Do these behaviors mean that demons inside me are guiding me to flirt with this dangerous behavior? Go ahead Kim, eat that prime rib, have another drink of scotch, put off your colonoscopy another month. Hell, with what you’ve been through you deserve it.
What about these days at Gunflint spent posing these questions in black and white on a computer screen? Is this just another way to deceive myself that by doing this contemplative writing I am chasing away demons and opening my center to let in better forces? After all, putting these words on paper is in essence moving my altered new lifeblood to outside not just my center, but the larger circle that Jon MacRae drew on the easel.
Glancing at the clock, I see it’s almost noon here on Monday at Gunflint and I need to finish this portion of the journal. There are scores of other people to acknowledge in their fight for me, so I’ll add these later when I edit this document.
So, let me now take a pause from writing for a quick pulse check. Yes, the calm torso is still there. Yes, that breath in I just took feels like my breathing following a session with Jon MacRae. You know, I think these tiny but nice niches of time and behavior and their simple clarity are the only signs I can expect from my center. But they’re enough. ¶ 1:51 PM
Jon MacRae, my healer, had told me that when I pursued a vision quest of quiet meditation, to expect the first two days to be hard, and then something would happen. I chose to spend the first two days starting to write this book, and at just about 2:00 pm on the second day, exactly two days after arriving, I suddenly stopped writing like Tom Hanks stopped running on the desolate highway in Forest Gump. I stared ahead quizzically, chin slightly raised, just like Gump.
My body was quivering. Not shaking. It wasn’t alarming. It was a quiver. Unable to write, I simply retreated to the bedroom with Morrie following and dropped into the bed on my back to contemplate the quiver. Then came the fog. Very similar to Jon MacRae’s healing hands triggered fog, I drifted away for maybe only five minutes, not through tiredness, but from somewhere else. And there were no lightening bolts, or sunspots, or light shows in the fog. Just fog. Nice fog.
Then I got up and returned to this recliner to continue writing until bedtime and for another day. Had I found my center in that niche of time? I don’t know. I do know that the quiver returns now and again, especially when I am intensely boring into the mind's beams around connectedness with those vital to me.
I wrote the following my last few hours at Gunflint:
It’s now Monday morning, and I know I have just a few more hours to finish this Gunflint quest. When I called home Saturday night, the day before my Gump-moment described above, I told Carla that Morrie and I weren’t coming back. I felt like the writing, once I discarded the awful writing-from-the head stuff of Friday afternoon and started on the heart stuff Saturday, had put me in an amazing groove to get to some new enriching place. But now it’s time to get serious about that notion and ask the hard questions.
Might I ask your patience, readers? What follows is going to be me talking to – and questioning – myself. Before I sign off, I need to feel my own pulse for the results of this weekend’s effort. It might be confusing (or boring) to you. But, here goes….
Let’s see. How many months ago did Jon MacRae draw the big circle on the easel board and point to the center where too few men live? I’ve just spent 30 hours writing around the circle about people and circumstances beyond me. I’m certain Jon’s prescribed vision quest was for hours stacked on hours spent inside my head in order to get into my heart. But maybe it’s back to the guyness and the laziness, because I just couldn’t see doing that. I take too much comfort in the belief that by opening my pinata mind and letting other people wage war for me, this was how I was to find clarity.
Did I brush over the possible long term ‘dinging’ of my own immune system by outside events? Were they really damaging dings, or did I turn into a dingbat and harm myself? When I write about people who I really didn’t enlist in my fight yet who remained in the circle of my encounters, am I shoving emotional pain aside and kidding myself that casual encounters like this were actually beneficial to my outcome?
My medicine bag is not with me, and I’ve yet to find icons of my demons and dispose of them. So, in a little while this morning I’ll bundle up body, hook up dog, and venture forth into this morning’s Arctic gray wind to pluck from the tundra some tiny sticks and shriveled sprigs of pine needles. Then I'll sit and flick them into my fireplace to go 'poof'. And when I stare at them writhing in flame, I will reach inside to poke at some pain ascribed to these icons of hurt. I may even speak some silly words to scold the devilish debris inside me. But, you know what, I really don’t know how nasty these psychic scars actually are anymore. With real demons in the form of whacked cells percolating down there, why should inchoate niches of memory matter that much?
So if not vague grimacing chinks of memory, what about something else occupying this space? What about the concept of my soul? Or spirits from afar waiting to open more niches of clarity now that I’m giving them a chance? Did Jon’s teachers atop the mountains in Peru signal me with the lightening bolts. Did finding Dr. Utz with his openness about prayer open me to actually ask people for their prayers?
Sitting here at Gunflint at 6:00 am, the ‘calm’ that occupies my torso from prostateless groin to slow breathing throat has to be a sign that my center is signaling me. And the signs are good.
But what about my most recent PSA. At three months past surgery it was 0.6, and with Dr. Utz we talked about it being in the right direction. We looked at two factors from surgery, negative lymph nodes and normal paired chromosomes (seen in only something like 10 percent of cases). I said that Mayo indicated these were huge positives. Utz said: “I’m more religious than they are. Those are miracles.”
Taking this information and looking at various data from Mayo on the Web, I came up with my own number that there is a 90-percent-plus chance of no fatal reoccurrence in the next 10 years. And I told myself – and others – that this data was based on past therapies. And that should I see the remaining cancer wiggle away from my drug therapy again, surely the marvelous new therapies in clinical trials would be ready to work for me. Especially encouraging was news of progress on vaccines to trigger the body's immune system to kill prostate cancer cells.
Then, at six months, the PSA, with my expectation of a score of 0.3 or lower, came back at 0.7. Utz said, with a shrug, not to worry. We’ll just be watchful of the scores every three months. If it climbs above 1.0, we’ll add another pill on top of the Lupron shots. Next, we’re looking at radiation. Or, he even talked about progress with chemo. Reassuring. But is he really that confident?
I’ve never told Carla until now, but still ringing in my ears is a call to Mayo to one of Dr. Zincke’s newest residents, name forgotten, right after this 0.7 score. I have no idea if he reviewed my case before the call, or what kind of doctor he is in his communications with patients. But, after giving him the specifics of the 0.6 going to 0.7, his exact words were: “I have to be honest with you. This is not good. You should be a 0.0. We need to watch this very closely.”
Also, what was at work that made me have to take the god-awful walk across the skyway to crummy Fairview Southdale Hospital again for bone scans and an MRI in October right before heading up here to Gunflint? Complaining of pain coming from the hip, another doctor ordered these tests to be certain that there was nothing alarming afoot like undected prostate cancer in the bones. There wasn’t. But, how often am I going to hear alarm bells like this in the future?
And what of my fall off the wagon? Why haven’t I ordered my supplements prescribed by Mitch Gaynor for weeks? Why did I stop juicing all the veggies like fresh beets, carrots and celery, and mixing up concoctions of green powers to drink? What about the multiple cups of green tea and other healing drinks like Yerba Mate that I am supposed to drink each day? I really haven’t done any of this healing immune-system boosting work since surgery. Have I listened to the guided imagery CDs with the hypnotic Tibetan bowls? Nope.
Am I back to old regular guy behaviors of laziness, knowing full well my surgeons had to leave some cancer in there, and that even one cell can thumb its nose at the hormone-blocking drugs and decide to spawn its way out of its cozy pod?
Do these behaviors mean that demons inside me are guiding me to flirt with this dangerous behavior? Go ahead Kim, eat that prime rib, have another drink of scotch, put off your colonoscopy another month. Hell, with what you’ve been through you deserve it.
What about these days at Gunflint spent posing these questions in black and white on a computer screen? Is this just another way to deceive myself that by doing this contemplative writing I am chasing away demons and opening my center to let in better forces? After all, putting these words on paper is in essence moving my altered new lifeblood to outside not just my center, but the larger circle that Jon MacRae drew on the easel.
Glancing at the clock, I see it’s almost noon here on Monday at Gunflint and I need to finish this portion of the journal. There are scores of other people to acknowledge in their fight for me, so I’ll add these later when I edit this document.
So, let me now take a pause from writing for a quick pulse check. Yes, the calm torso is still there. Yes, that breath in I just took feels like my breathing following a session with Jon MacRae. You know, I think these tiny but nice niches of time and behavior and their simple clarity are the only signs I can expect from my center. But they’re enough. ¶ 1:51 PM
