Saturday 10 May 2008

Health Update

I haven’t been able to post anything on this blog for some time because I’ve been struck down with further prostate cancer outbreaks. This has left me exhausted and needing to focus solely on survival. Things have abated somewhat in the last week or so such that I have the energy to participate in external life once more.

This has come about because I’m back on a regime of nutrients plus a couple of pharmaceutical drugs to try to get my testosterone levels down to the point where I’m no longer killing myself with my own male hormones.

All has not been bleak, however, as I’ve discovered how much love and kindness there is for me among friends and family despite my being able to do nothing in return except moan and wail. This has been of major importance to someone brought up in a family where love and praise had to be deserved via good work at school or in the home. Nothing came as a birthright. It is hard for me to comprehend how wearing that must have been for the little chap I used to be and still am in the depths of my acquired self.

One of the bonuses of my strict regime has been that I spend about an hour a day every morning lying on my bed with a coffee enema up my bum. Despite the fact that this sometimes requires a distinct degree of attention so as not to have a mishap, I find these times highly rewarding. They seem to reduce my sense of self to the barest essentials such that I lie there as if there is nothing and no one here but being itself. Here seems to be all that is and from here the rest of the self I have accumulated over time floats away like islands I can visit if I want to but which distract me and seduce me very little. It may be that brushing with death helps to clear the illusions, the memories, the ambitions and hopes that normally occupy my mental time and space. It could also be that focusing peacefully on the lower bowel and prostate area encourages a very simple, pre-childhood level of awareness.

Whatever the reason, it all boils down to the greater clarity I always see as the fruit of attentive living. And I owe my cancer a debt of gratitude for helping me to become more aware despite my lack of childhood training and skills in that area.

Apart from dwelling in a state of uncluttered consciousness for several minutes a day, I have been focusing a great deal on my prostate and wondering why it continues to malfunction and cause havoc to my system. Is it caused by a chemical imbalance? Is it caused by some exposure to noxious food additives or hormones in the water I drink? Is it the result of some decision taken unconsciously in infancy that still controls how my endocrine system works?

All of these are possibilities and I’m taking steps to address them. Some of the steps are logical, other require a leap of faith that my family sometimes find hard to make. However, I am no longer willing to let conscious, scientific reason rule the roost all the time as it seems to do in our world and more especially in the world of mainstream medicine, where I am still regarded as a bit of a freak despite having survived for nearly four and a half years with advanced prostate cancer and very little conventional intervention.

So that’s the current state of play in as much detail as I want to go into it. I’m still alive and not as dying as I was a few weeks ago. Not out of the wood but able to distinguish individual trees rather that be lost in the density of the deepest forest.

To be continued……

1 comment:

Unknown said...

very interesting to read the whole story Bob. I now understand more of the history and from your own fingertips too.
This was better than face to face as my feelings always get in the way.
You're a pain in the arse.
I'm glad too that you recognise the love you get from our children who do love you so much. It's hard for them and at last you understand that too.