I told everyone here that I would be going into the hospital soon, but I didn't say why. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer 2 months ago. The last 19 weekdays I've been going for radiation treatment
Swal, I wish you great recovery. That's no fun and every man's nightmare. You're healthy and have a strong will so that will help you.
My dad passed about 3 1/2 years ago from prostate cancer. He was 2 months shy of 86 and had lived with it around 5 or 6 years IIRC. From what I remember, the doctors wanted to treat and watch before being more aggressive. They put him on a testosterone suppression regime, which basically put it in remission for about 3 years, before it broke through and started growing and spreading again. He did some chemo after that but he didn't bear it well and decided to just let it take its course. He lived another couple years but got weaker and weaker as it spread into is bones. He didn't suffer that much, from appearances and what he described, until more near the end and then it was mostly just lack of strength and he started to get more confused. He passed at home after a short hospice care phase.
My mom's dad passed of prostate cancer in his upper 80s. Her brother had it in his 60s but he had surgery and had it removed and is doing well in his early 80s. Besides my dad I don't know of anyone else with history of it on my dad's side. There could be, I just don't know.
I try and do what I can to keep the prostate "healthy". Daily selenium, Lycopene, and some other anti oxidants, and, while this is most important when you're younger, regular "bed time" activity to keep it cleaned out is recommended. (Especially when you're young, which I am not). Trying to convince the wife of this is a different story.
We'll see how I end up. I have otehr issues like weight and stuff that I need to do better at.
Speaking of which, I've been doing the intermittent fasting for years -- at first it was 13-14 hours between evening meal and morning meal and for the last few years I try and hit 16 hours between even meal and morning meal. When I moved to 16 hours, at first, I lost some good weight. I was also a bit more strict on diet but the fasting was the biggest change. However, the stress with the house, and now unemployment and bank issues with the house from that unemployment, and a lot of related stress, has brought the weight back and more. Besides stress (which causes the body to store fat in anticipation of lean times coming, which evolutionary-wise, (stress) was an indicator of coming bad times), the stress has led to bouts of bad eating discipline. Having said that, based on Swal's post about the fasting, I decided to do some.
This past Monday I ate breakfast, and until this morning had not eaten again except for a spoon or three of olive oil daily and my normal supplements, and lots of water. Yesterday I also took a large glass of an electrolyte mix called "Liquid IV" that we had -- my daughter has been using it with her swimming and water polo training. I've gotten in good walks two days but on yesterdays walk was feeling a lot weaker and less energetic than the day before and than normal and I don't want to get low on electrolytes.
Today I ate a breakfast though a bit smaller (a couple bites of sausage my son cooked, a couple bites of cheese, half an Apple, a few Spanish olives, and my non-sugar high raw cacao powder and ceremonial cocoa based hot cocoa (good for the circulatory system). I won't eat lunch but for supper I'll eat an avocado and maybe a tomato as we have a bunch that need to get eaten. And a spoon of olive oil. Tomorrow I will fast again, just drinking watermelon all my normal supplements, and a little olive oil, and Saturday I'll go back to my normal regimen of intermittent fasting, trying to be super strict on simple carb/sugar avoidance. For spiritual and religious reasons I've been fasting every Sunday (Saturday evening meal to Sunday evening meal) so I will do that again and then my normal regimen will start. But in a couple weeks I may try a fast-week again like I did this week. So far I am down about 7-8 pounds from where I started at the beginning of the week. A lot of that is the bowels and the whole bowel system getting empty and loss of water weight (when you're only drinking water it goes through you fast -- I've never peed so much in my life). But a couple pounds of it is probably real fat loss from the lack of eating calories and the walking increasing calorie burn.
Overall this week I didn't feel much hungrier than I do normally with the intermittent fasting and it's not hard to just ignore the feelings and they go away.
Anyway, that's the report on this side.
Sticks out like a sore thumb, but whaterya gonna do? Just to take a photo of all of them, the Military Walther P99 is in the left bottom corner just sitting on the grip and back of the slide. That one isn't for display, it was just to see them all together at once.