What's After Work?

How I look in the RapidArc machine. I'm two weeks into my nine week treatment for prostate cancer. So far it has not been too bad. The process leading up to my treatment was worse than the actual treatment. The biopsy and having gold markers placed in my prostate were invasive to say the least. I guess if I am ever abducted by space aliens I can tell them "been there done that"! Even though the actual treatment only takes about 4 minuets. If everything goes smoothly I am in and out of the office in about 10 minutes.  The preparation for the treatment takes quite a bit of time. I start the evening before with stopping drinking anything at about 7:30 PM.  The next morning I get up early, for retirement, at about 6:00 AM to start my morning routine. I start that early because I need to have all liquids I drink to clear my system by 9:00 AM when I start my bladder filling. I started this adventure drinking the requested 32 oz. of water in 15 minuets. Try it, it is difficult. 

The summer time flag is flying at the Bliss household. It's a nice day today and not a cloud in the sky. I hope it stays that way till this afternoon so I can take a bike ride. We get to do something a little different today which is going to the Peach Truck .  Last year they came to Florida and the Tampa Bay area and Jan sent me over for a box. This is from a post on Facebook at the time and you can see it is a lot of peaches. Lats year we made several different kinds of peach jellies, jams and preserves.  Plus eat a lot of peaches when they get ripe, and they all get ripe at the same time.  

I knew going into retirement things would be different. Not just sleeping in and going places but also trying new things.  As you all have read in an earlier post Jan and I did go to Hawaii soon after my retirement and that was fun. But at about the same time I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. That was not one of the "new things" I wanted to try but at least I now have the time to deal with it. And 9 weeks is the time it will take. I started radiation therapy on June 3, 2020 and will continue for nine weeks 5 days a week. No missing treatments! The doctors office is not far from my house so travel time is not bad and once I get into the groove of things I think each visit will only be about 20 minuets.  I've had 3 treatments so far and the radiation technologists, nurses and staff at  West Florida Radiation Therapy  are all very nice and caring. They have quite an efficient system there for treating a bunch of old guys with prostate cancer.  Dr. Micheal Galloway is my