Of This and That: Thank God I’m Glad to be Back

My Radiation Treatment

Today was February 22, 2025, my eighty-first birthday and I spent the afternoon with nine members of my family at Peter Luger’s steak house in Great Neck, Long Island. In addition to celebrating my birthday, my reasoning for hosting this luncheon was to celebrate the ending of my radiation treatment for prostate cancer, a 28 daily ritual that consumed my life from January14th to February 21st. (Weekends and MLK Jr. Day off.)

God only knows what these doses of radiation have done or will do to my body, but I followed doctor’s instructions in an effort to cure my prostate cancer. Sometimes I wonder…you know what I mean…what if?

Let me share with you the major daily preparations I was required to perform in order to actually receive each dose. Nobody told me about these requirements until the chief radiation technician at my facility, Ben, explained it to me. In order to protect other organs in the vicinity of the prostate gland, I had to arrive every day with an empty bowel and a full bladder. To achieve the first goal, I drank a cup of prune juice and a large cup of extremely strong coffee every morning. By George, it worked, but over time, too well. As the days went by, the results took on a life of their own. Caution became the better part of valor except for one accident that I will leave at that.

My bladder was another story. Ben told me to consume two 16.9 bottles of water every morning from 9:15 am to 9:30 am to ensure a full bladder at 10;30 am, the schedule of my daily dose. Thankfully, I was able to fulfill this every day although the time it took me to drink this amount of water increased from fifteen minutes to forty minutes.

Ben, and his assistant, Larry, were angels and did all they could to make every day, a success. Fortunately, I completed my treatment in the scheduled amount of time. This despite warnings of five separate snow storms, two that fell on weekends, one that went out to sea and one that turned out to be rain. Praise the Lord!

To celebrate, I made those reservations at Peter Luger’s and the good times rolled again.