Hismones 6/6/26

"Passing gas, at an impasse." I'm definitely experiencing mixed emotions this morning. I'm thrilled but anxious to have only two more weeks of Orgovyx/hormone deprivation therapy medication to complete, but radiation proctitis is literally "kicking my butt" and the most promising treatment I'm hoping to start soon is something my body may not accommodate. Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBO) involves lying in a sealed (transparent) chamber for almost two hours during which pressure is increased to 2.5 atmospheres and you're breathing 100% oxygen. This "hyper-oxygenating" your body acts like putting your healing system on steroids and making healing possible where there seemed perhaps little hope. A longtime friend underwent this treatment for a leg wound that refused to heal, with excellent results, and it's been shown successful with radiation damage, as radiation kills both cancer and healthy tissue. The issue is endurance: the occasions that I can "go without going" for two hours are rare and unpredictable. From 4 A.M. -10 A.M. daily, I'm off and on the toilet 3-4 times, and each time gives me a warning of less than a minute. I'll be walking briskly through the house passing "wind"(as Benjamin Franklin called it in his "Fart Proudly" essay https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/to-the-royal-academy-of-farting/ ), trying to be seated in that little room in time. Often enough, there'll be another instance around lunchtime and usually one before bed. I've chosen to sit while urinating because there's no guarantee that urine will be the only substance passed. Each time I'm propelled toward the bathroom, I'm reminded of the belching scene in the movie, "Elf." Oddly enough, sometimes I can attend church Sunday morning without interruption or exercise at the "Y" or shop at Walmart but there's no guarantee (I've been interrupted multiple times), and once you're fully into a pressurized session of HBO, even an emergency takes 10-15 minutes to emerge (like a diver coming up from being really deep) without dangerous effects. I guess my next conversation will be with my gastroenterologist to ask whether I may take Lomotil (a controlled substance) while in these treatments, because my alternatives are not doing this, trying to pick the typically "quietest" early afternoon hours but, in either case,likely wearing a diaper. I survived those doses of Paregoric (also a controlled substance) I was given as a kid for diarrhea. I tell my wife that this condition to me is "nursing home behavior," but she encourages me that this status is "now but not forever." I hope she's right. Being confident while social isn't something I can do at this point. So I guess I'll stop here and write my gastroenterologist. Right after I go to the bathroom.