Fishrocks.  The Return of the Rock

Hi everyone!  If you are a Facebook friend of mine and you just saw this post come up on your timeline, you are not seeing things, Fishrocks is back. If you are one of those weird people who get this wonderful piece of a blog delivered directly to your email, first off, what is wrong with you?  Just kidding. I actually find it very humbling that some people follow my blog directly, and I thank you for your support. The world needs weird people like you more than ever right now, as things have gotten way too serious over the last couple of months. Sometimes humans need to take a step back, take a deep breath, and realize that the earth is not a horrible place to live and most people are good. Hopefully, this blog will help you realize that. Unless you disagree with me and my views. If that’s the case, you are clearly wrong, imbecile, and you must be punished. The punishment?  You have to push the follow button on this blog and have it sent directly to your email. That’ll teach you.

My Health

To address the rather large pachyderm in the room, let’s get this one out of the way. In the last few episodes of this blog, I told you I recently stopped the hormone treatments for my prostate cancer. I described the reasons in my blog No Mas. It has now been about 4 months since I stopped taking the drug Xtandi, and about 9 months since my last Lupron injection. How do I feel?  The short answer?  Fantastic!  I have way more energy, my overall strength is starting to return, and my general outlook on life is much improved. I’ve started to do a little jogging with Zoey on our walks, and my goal is to start running again soon, with a 5k race sometime in the future. I would love to do one more Riverbank Run before I pass from this earth, but, that race is a 25k, and it seems a little too daunting of a task for me right now. So, I will continue to jog a little with Zoey, and increase my training as time goes by. Baby steps.

There are a couple of things that have happened in the last 3 weeks that have really made me realize that I’m getting stronger.

1.  I can climb stairs again without pulling myself up with the handrail. I have replaced the screws a couple of times over the last six months in the bannister on our stairs because I was using it to pull myself up the stairs because my legs were so weak. I literally yanked the screws right out of the wall. But that has changed. I have a tendency to leave my coffee cups and water glasses all over the house. Yes, I can be a bit of a slob. So, the other day I was carrying various things up the steps and both my hands were full of cups and plates because I’m a slob and I also watch Game of Thrones in my mancave, where I drink coffee, water, and the occasional adult beverage, and every once in a while even a slob needs to clean up and I realized when I got to the top of the steps that I successfully climbed my stairs without the use of the handrail. Wow, nice run on sentence. Fishrocks is back!  So, my legs are getting stronger now that I’m off the treatment. 

The real reason I took a break from blogging. Winter is here. 

( A quick veer off here, and what would a Fishrocks blog be without a veer off?  One of the reasons I stopped blogging for the last month or so was because I totally went nuts binging on Game of Thrones. Sorry there is not a more substantive reason for the hiatus. There are a few other things  I could have said as a reason for the break. Like I was working on “Fishrocks-The Musical”, complete with songs and choreography and starring Nathan Lane as myself, (now THERE’S some creative casting,). Or, I was working on marketing my blog by coming up with a t-shirt that has The One Poop Rule on the front and Fishrocksblog.com on the back,but, alas, the real reason for the break was I was binge watching a TV show. Now, a lot of people read trashy novels on the beach in the summer, but I work in an unairconditioned factory, so I retreated into a cool dark basement to watch one of the greatest TV series of all time. Don’t judge me. There will be an upcoming Fishrocks blog on GoT, and I don’t care if only 6 people read it, I’ve got a few things to say about the world of Dani and her dragons. Anyway, back to the blog.)

Fishrocks-The Musical starring Nathan Lane as Dan Cole. Yeah, probably not. 

2.  The other thing that has happened to me that made me notice I was stronger is that my attitude towards work has changed. In my blog, The Spoon Theory, Fat Gills and the Food Police, I talked about a day that had me taking over 21,000 steps, which wiped me out completely. I’ve had quite a few days where I’ve worked alone in my work cell in the last few weeks and I have exceeded that number more than a few times. In fact, in a recent week I averaged that many steps everyday. And I felt great. No fatigue, no depression, nothing. In fact, everyday felt like a challenge that I was ready to take on. It feels awesome to work hard again.

A big day that didn’t kill me. Feeling stronger everyday. 

Coming Attractions 

My friend Mark Bradford once called me “the funniest cancer blogger on the planet.” Now, while I very much appreciate the fact that an accomplished blogger such as Mark finds me funny, when I read that I had to ask myself,”Am I a cancer blogger?”  So I looked back at the blogs that I wrote, and yes, most of them were about this disease I’ve been dealing with for the last 7 years. But that was not really the original intent of Fishrocks. I originally set this thing up so I could write about anything and everything, from politics to sports to whatever I found interesting. I need to get back to that. So, trigger warning, I’m probably gonna write some stuff that some people won’t agree with. Politics is a powder keg right now, but I have a few things to say about that too. Just remember, you have the ability to just scroll on by my posts if you don’t want to read them, but I hope you do because I’m always interested in feedback and maybe my views will surprise you. Things have become so polarized in this country, but I think most people are tolerant and somewhere in between the extremes.

Wow, how incredibly optimistic of me. Yet another sign that the drugs are starting to wear off. Stay tuned for more sunny, happy posts!!

Thanks for reading.

Peace.