My husband is walking the dog
~ Where there’s life there’s hope. Stephen Hawking ~.
“Guess what?” My husband welcomed me home with the question.
“What?” I just came from Gianyar regency to see my parents, went there with my oldest sister this afternoon.
“Guess how much is my PSA now”, his eyes were sparkling.
“Like a thousand and five hundreds?” I teased him, mentioned the result of last November (2015) that had hit the highest number of 1589,15. At that moment, his blood became very liquid (only small wound on his lips and the blood kept dripping for 10 days, so that he had to be tranfused with blood to provide haemoglobin and also fresh frozen plasma to help the blood coagulated .
“No! It is 7, 79!” Our second daughter announced and held the lab’s result paper up.
“Wow! That’s wonderful”, I said, looked at my husband. “Your effort is bringing very good outcome. Really. That’s wonderful”.
I admire and appreciate his persistence of dealing with his advanced prostate cancer that has spread to the bones. He still takes the Chinese herbal capsules of Chang Sheuw Tian Ran Ling Yao (30/ day), still drinking pure carrot juice, using DR. Warsito ECCT blanket, still a vegan, still not having any kind of white sugar, still not eating white or refined flour, no cigarettes and alcohol drinks at all (he was a smoker before he was diagnosed with cancer).
My husband and Hugo, the Siberian husky.
It is easy to tell a patient (read: my husband) what to eat and not to eat, the efforts to do it faithfully are in his own hands. How he changes his carnivore life-style into a vegan, face the reality that he is surrounded by 90% of meat-eating people, including his own family (I had stopped the consumption of red meat a year ago and more choosing fishes or tempe or tahu/ tofu), but still I eat meat. Once, in a family celebration (held at his brother’s house), there was no vegetable based food served on the table, all were meat: Babi Guling (Balinese suckling pig), Betutu Ayam (Balinese roasted chicken), fried fishes, Ares (soup made of young banana plant) but it was mixed with duck broth. He withdrew himself from the dining room and went to the kitchen, fortunately, he found mixed vegetable with shredded coconut there. He told me, if there were no vegetable, he would prefer not to eat than have to eat rice with meat. I-admire-and-appreciate-his-persistence.
Although the Bone Scan (last May/ 2016) has revealed no cancer found on his neck, shoulders, ribs and backbone (only around the pelvis area), but we want to make sure by having a second Bone Scan as comparison to the previous one. Since in Bali, there is no hospital with Bone Scan facility, we are planning to go to Jakarta, probably next month.
Husband, Hugo and Amy by the beach
The lab’s tests all reveals good result. How does my husband feel? He feels good. Last hospitalized was in October 2015 (second blood problem) and hope we don’t have to go back unless for lab’s test. He can do activities like healthy people do. Go to the office, take our daughters to the schools, fix the leaky balcony with the worker, wants snack (fruits, boiled corn/ cassava/ sweet potato or fried banana), and every weekend does his exercise, sometimes takes the dog, sometimes not.
We have dealt with the advanced prostate cancer for a year, now (diagnosed last June/ 2015) and we do hope, what we have chosen to confront the cancer are the right ways.
Posted to join DPPrompt: Hope.
A Simple Note 