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Well, I saw the haruspex and had the entrails read. My entrails, that is. The signs are hard to read and I won't have a complete picture until I see him again in April or May, but early indications are that the Radiotherapy I had, in December, worked as well as it possibly might. Thanks be to God. It was all a little tiring. I slept through much of Christmas and for a while my foot was numb, but that seems to have passed, and now I am in the full bloom of health. Or, at least, as full a bloom as a 68 year old bloke with stage 4 prostate cancer can be. There are some clear and accessible options ahead for me, so that with continued good medical advice and the watchful and prayerful support of  my family and friends, I can reasonably expect to lead a life as rich and full as the last ten years have been.

Four times a year I go into one of the Southern Medical Laboratories offices and have a sample of blood taken. Someone in a lab somewhere then measures my levels of cholesterol, blood sugar and uric acid. And they look for the one I am really interested in: my levels of Prostate Specific Antigen. PSA is produced only by the prostate gland, and seeing as I have had mine removed, if there is any PSA in my bloodstream it can have come from only one source: prostate cancer cells that have drifted off through my lymph system and are now lodged and growing in some unknown part of my body. About three years ago my PSA levels, while still comparatively low, were increasing alarmingly, doubling every four months or so in a pattern which, if not  dealt with would have proven imminently fatal. My urologist started me on a course of hormone injections which reduced the levels immediately to zero, where they have stayed since. While the hormones deal to the overwhelming majo...

Part of the farm attached to Living Springs campsite. I brought a camera but didn't use it for any of the more typical bits of the week's activities. This shot will have to do.  This past week was spent at Totara Springs, near Matamata, attending the international conference of The Order of St. Luke . I was there to deliver a keynote address and lead a workshop on meditation. The OSL has as its raison d'etre the promotion of the ministry of healing, an aim with which I have developed a considerable sympathy over the past few years. I had been a member many years ago, but let my membership lapse. Back then, in my thirties, I had found my fellow members to be a decade or two older than me and their ways of doing things a little too highly regulated for my taste. When Archbishop David Moxon moved to Rome and could no longer attend the international conference I agreed to take his place in the programme. Coincidentally, the invitation to attend and speak came at about the ...

Photo courtesy http://www.facebook.com/pages/Damian-and-Nicky-on-974-MOREFM/83550471126 Yesterday I took part in the Relay for Life , the cancer society's annual fundraising and consciousness raising event. I arrived early, saw the teams from the Diocese of Dunedin, and from Anglican Family Care, and went to the official tent to collect the purple sash which marked me as a cancer survivor. Clemency wore a green one, given to those who have supported loved ones through cancer. The event this year was held in the Forsyth Barr stadium, so it was weatherproof. It's a great event with a sort of carnival atmosphere. Organisations and businesses raise teams who commit themselves to walking for 24 hours in relay. A small entrance fee is paid and the teams raise money through sponsorship, so a considerable sum is accumulated to pay for cancer research and for the excellent supportive work of the cancer society. Each team sets up a little headquarters and the members are inclined to...

Advice on diet and health is not hard to come by. The books flood the market places and the fads come and go: they come because we worry about these matters and they go because most of the advice on offer is utter bollocks. We get told to cut out carbs or sugars or fats or we get told to eat more carbs or sugars or fats. There are odd little snippets such as tomatoes preventing cancer or peanuts causing it that do the rounds, so that when everything is weighed up, especially us, it's hard to know what to do. Not that it matters, as the regimes in most of the health books are completely unsustainable in the long term and therefore, at best, will only make temporary changes in our ability to run up stairs or observe our private parts without a mirror. Below this cacophany of voices though, there is a constant quiet refrain of advice that all appears to be from people singing from the same song book: eat lots of whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables and lay off the animal fat. It...

I'm glad to say everything is excruciatingly, boringly ordinary. Like a lumberjack I sleep all night and I wake all day, which is a welcome return to normal service. I'm walking most days, except for ones like today when the forecast high is 6 degrees. I have a very neat but nevertheless impressive scar which is rapidly learning an invisibility charm. I know which muscles to flex before I sneeze and mostly I remember. I'm on sick leave for another ten days: that looks about right. I expect to be back at work on Monday 4 August.