Despite the metabolic havoc wreaked by hormone implants, I was delighted and relived to find out this week that my HbA1c remains in the ‘normal’ range (34mmol/mol, 5.3%). I was concerned that the weight gain caused by the hormones had messed with my type-2 Diabetes ‘in remission’ status; happily, it has not. I’m also happy to report a weight loss of 1kg (2.2lbs) over the past few days, so perhaps that is on the turn.
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I found a passing mention of a book called Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy published in 1973, based on his PhD thesis. The book reprints articles and news items from Jackson County, Wisconsin, primarily from 1885 to 1900. The book also includes photographs by local photographer Charles Van Shaike and the articles are primarily from the Badger State Banner as well as records from the local mental hospital.
Unfortunately, the book is now quite expensive, however a film adaptation was made for the BBC’s Arena, broadcast in 2000, narrated by Ian Holm. The film is very much available to view in excellent quality on BBC iPlayer and in lower quality on YouTube (links below). I watched the film twice, enthralled. It is very dark (and some may find it upsetting), the more so because the stories are narrated straight without commentary. And the music choices are excellent.
I found the objectivity of it very affecting, especially the many, many human tragedies. I had a powerful sense of the fragility of life and a dissociation from the usual internal narrative of what it is to be human. I sometimes get this in Family Tree Research which, at its most basic, revolves around a narration of birth, procreation and death. Some of that was on my mind when I had my initial cancer diagnosis although it also helped reconcile me to the diagnosis and informed my determination to live life to the full while I’m here.
Wisconsin Death Tripadded something else, a feeling of the shallowness of so much of life, of the wasted potential of our species that has such a high opinion of itself.
In his 1962 novel The Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick explores competing narratives in which characters, believing one thing to be true, catch glimpses of another perspective from which and in which the opposite is true. The text plays with the reader’s understanding of narrative and the fictive ‘truths’ that are told.
I often think of the novel when looking at the present situation in the USA and the competing narratives of ‘reality’ in play. In this context, I was interested in something Joe Biden said on 27 January about Minneapolis. He said (on X of all places),
What has unfolded in Minneapolis this past month betrays our most basic values as Americans. We are not a nation that guns down our citizens in the street. We are not a nation that allows our citizens to be brutalized for exercising their constitutional rights. We are not a nation that tramples the 4th Amendment and tolerates our neighbors being terrorized … Violence and terror have no place in the United States of America, especially when it’s our own government targeting American citizens.
What fictive reality is he living in? How can he claim that America is ‘not a nation that guns down our citizens in the street’ in a society that has accepted massacring children in schools and adults in churches? How can he talk about not brutalising citizens for exercising constitutional rights when that is precisely what American authority does, especially to citizens who are not straight white men? Violence and terror in and by America is something understood and recognised instantly across the world.
There is a narrative told within the part of the American demographic that leans Democrat and regards itself as ‘progressive,’ a narrative that reduces to ‘this is not who we are,’ and yet this is a nation the re-elected Trump in the full knowledge of what he is while a significant proportion of the electorate could not be arsed to vote either way. It is a nation in which, at the time of writing, somewhere between 39 and 41.5% (depending on whether you read the Economist, New York Times or Nate Silver) approve of Trump’s actions with perhaps another 6% who are ‘not sure’ – so say something around 45% are OK with what the current administration is doing.
Trump is not an aberration, he represents a deep and abiding strand in the American polity. Biden’s statement is at best aspirational and the Dems and progressives who wring their hands and wail this is not who we are have the same energy as men who stand outside a domestic violence refuge and say not all men. Aspirations and good intentions won’t cut it. Obama gets that, I think, but he is too intoxicated by the lure of extended rhetoric to state it clearly and succinctly (something familiar from another SF novel, Doris Lessing’s The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire, 1983, in which characters end up in a specialist hospital for rhetorical diseases.)
There is already a civil war underway in the USA; it is a war of narratives and the ‘progressives’ are losing.
It was a year ago today that I had my first PSA test and got the phone call to say that it was high (24.8 ng/ml). Naturally, the first thing I did was to go online and find out what the number meant and what it meant was that I probably had prostate cancer. It took several more months of tests to confirm that I do have cancer, for a long time the consensus was that the high PSA (it had stabilised at circa 20 ng/ml last time it was measured) was a result of an enlarged prostate and a prior UTI; an MRI was inconclusive.
Be that as it may, the possibility of cancer triggered a week of wrestling with the idea of a somewhat more imminent encounter with mortality than I expected.
What was a surprise, and, surprisingly comforting in its own way, was the realisation that I was OK with it: not happy, but accepting. It also triggered an extended period of self-reflection through all of 2025 which shows no signs of letting up.
I’ve made a series of changes in my life since as I figured out what is important to me and what isn’t: it’s why I stopped watching and reading the news as there’s no point in getting caught up in things I can’t control. I am more appreciative of family and the mundanities of living. Also, I read and enjoy a lot of poetry, something I’ve neglected for decades.
One particular consequence was that I began an occasional journal for what I loosely call ‘spirituality.’ I say loosely because the focus is on Self and Being (and by implication Non-being) rather than anything overtly religious. The theme is to question the essence of the ‘I’ is who is writing this. I haven’t put any of it online yet – although hints have surfaced – because there isn’t a lot to upload and I am wary of uploading woo, but I do hope to do something with it eventually, perhaps here. Aside from the risk of woo, the other danger is that clichés lurk behind every sentence that I might write, and it isn’t as though life and death and being and nothingness have not been themes of human thought and writing for as long as they have existed. I don’t presume to originality, but, cliché alert, however early caught and however treatable, cancer concentrates the mind on life, the universe and everything and, me being me, I write about it, longhand with a fountain pen.
And I have other things to do, a novel to finish in draft, heaps of family tree research to write up and one or two other odds and ends.
I’ve been blogging since September 2002 (my first post on this site was in June 2009 though I’ve since copied in one or two earlier posts from the old site); what appears here is mediated, of course: I choose what to publish and what to keep to myself. Over the years, my choice of what to publish has changed, not least because for most of that time I was working and I was conscious that employers would have a view. I’m no longer under that restriction and the ‘inner’ me – what Chris Jary at the old Civil Service College called ‘the real Ian’ or ‘the whole Ian’ – is likely to come to the fore. I’m not sure if that is a threat or a promise.
Next week I have a final scan prior to radiotherapy starting at the end of this month. I mentioned previously that the main impact on my daily life of the hormone implant has been weight gain; I’m also aware of getting tired more easily and last week in Glasgow Kirstin asked why I was walking more slowly than usual. I get my second implant next week too. I’m trying to keep life as normal as possible while all this is going on. I’m not sure how frequently I’ll be writing here but I do intend to use this as a central point for news.
Earlier today on a WhatsApp group, chatting about UK politics, a friend commented that it was 3 1/2 years to the next general election and a lot can happen in 3 1/2 years that will impact on us here. Being a cheerful sort I jotted down some of what might plausibly happen. My list, lightly edited, was:
A change in US president before the next US election;
Consolidation of Chinese trade hegemony;
Collapse of AI bubble delivers another global financial crisis;
Ukraine forces Russian retreat from Crimea;
UK starts talks re EU accession;
Change in monarch in UK or effective withdrawal of Charles from public life for health reasons;
Arrest and conviction of prominent Reform politicians on information supplied by the security services;
Major hurricane damage in southern US States and up the Eastern seaboard of US coupled with removal of disaster relief funding and infrastructure ramps up probability of, or triggers, US civil war;
Major flood damage in England forces climate change seriousness;
‘Black Swan’ event(s) – eg major volcano eruption, North Korea does something unfortunate.
I dare say there are other things I could think of but I’m more likely to put them in a notebook for future stories.
That was a rough couple of days. I was a little tired from the hormone implant, I wasn’t sleeping properly because of a heavy cold and then, yesterday, I had a COVID shot. Usually I don’t react to vaccinations but this season’s COVID shot (mRNA) hit me for six last night and this morning, though I seem to be coming out of it now.
***
I’ve started up an occasional Substack for snippets about writing and self-publishing. Some of this is recycled from earlier attempts but brought up to date where appropriate. The difficulty with these things is always keeping up a pipeline of worthwhile material. I probably have enough to run through to the end of November and into December but that buys me time to put some other things together. It’s free, so feel free to read and comment and share if you feel so inclined, or not if you don’t.
Some weeks ago I was collating some random thoughts that occurred in the wake of the initial cancer diagnosis, a diagnosis that focuses the mind even if it’s caught early. I make no claims for the thoughts except that I thought I might expand them into posts here. In fact I have mentioned implementing some of them recently, notably to do with cutting back on news and social media. Most of them play one way ot another into my long-standing notion of reinventing yourself every decade or so.
Social media detox: what is important and why?
Analogue living
Focus on the now
If it’s toxic, leave it. Don’t fret, don’t worry, just walk away.
Drift, don’t plan. Focus on life not artificial ‘life goals.’
Walk; write.
Health not faux fitness.
Don’t consume what is pushed: pull what is interesting or entertaining or both.
Obviously it is a rough list, perhaps a naïve list, but it sums up where my head is just now, especially drifting rather than planning, by which I mean following my interests and my whims.
I wrote here a while ago that I have significantly reduced my consumption of what I grew up regarding as ‘News’ – typically TV and newspapers (I haven’t listened to the radio for a long time.) That doesn’t mean that I don’t follow news, just that I focus on hyper-local stories and niche things and let other stuff wash in on the tide. What I’m picking up anecdotally is that other people are doing the same. That is something touched upon in an interesting discussion with Jim Waterson of London Centric:
I’m managing just fine without the endless stream of stories and opinions coming from what, for the sake of a name, I’ll call the legacy press. I don’t think I’m any less informed about the big stories but I do think that I get more signal than noise. The same is true with cutting back on the noisier end of social media.
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Since my last post I have turned 66 and have started on my prostate cancer treatment. In the end I selected hormones plus radiotherapy and have begun taking the hormones. The radiotherapy runs from the end of January through February 2026. I’d say so far so good but I’ve also had a heavy cold that has masked any reaction.
The hormones have been 3 weeks of pills (Bicalutamide) and the first of four implants (Leuprorelin) under the skin of my stomach. The latter stung because the needle was thicker than normal; the nurse suggested the doctor should prescribe a numbing cream before the next one (January) which made me wonder why they didn’t for this one.
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Although I have had other things on my mind, I have kept on with the writing, even if only a sentence or paragraph or two per day (sometimes more of course). In many ways, at 40,000 or so words into it, it is still taking shape. I’m keeping an open mind about how long it will end up being. It’s the second draft that makes it coalesce, this first draft just gets it down.
More importantly, I’ve removed the Amazon exclusivity on the ebook versions of all four of my books. That cuts of a trickle of Kindle Unlimited income, but it is only a trickle. I’m making the eBooks and, shortly, paperbacks available from a variety of platforms, though most of the variety is in North America. In purely commercial terms it probably won’t make any significant difference, but I did not want to stay locked into the Amazon exclusivity. I’ll put links to the other vendors here and elsewhere in a week or so.
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