{"id":575,"date":"2010-10-18T16:41:34","date_gmt":"2010-10-18T23:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/?p=575"},"modified":"2013-03-07T13:19:56","modified_gmt":"2013-03-07T21:19:56","slug":"im-going-to-live-until-i-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/im-going-to-live-until-i-die\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m Going To Live Until I Die"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In the spring of 1996, my doctor, Todd Arnold, sent me for some tests.\u00a0 The normal range for the PSA is .0 to 4.0. Mine was 19.0\u00a0\u00a0 Dr. Andreou, an urologist and like Dr. Arnold, a human being, arranged for me to go to the outpatient clinic of Surrey Memorial Hospital for a biopsy of my prostate.<\/p>\n

The terror of hospitals began.\u00a0 Only once since my birth had I been in a hospital and that time I was unconscious for twenty-four hours after an automobile accident.\u00a0 As I sat in the special waiting room, my imagination went to work.\u00a0 Strip, and put on this hospital gown.\u00a0 We are going up through your rectum and….\u00a0 Your chances?\u00a0 Six months at best.<\/em><\/p>\n

We were five men in the room in the labyrinthine basement of Surrey Hospital, all of us pretending nothing was going on.\u00a0 We acted as if were dressed in blue hospital gowns because our regular clothes were in the cleaners.\u00a0 We read Macleans and Sports Illustrated and stared into space.\u00a0 I pretended to read a book about creative writing, Bird by Bird<\/em>, by Anne Lamott.<\/p>\n

But deep in my mind the terror continued.\u00a0 Remember twenty-three years ago, Ed, when your mother died of cancer?\u00a0 Remember her crying for more painkillers, for a spoonful of water?\u00a0 Remember how she died in the middle of the night by herself and the hospital aides stole her gold fillings?\u00a0 Remember?<\/em><\/p>\n

And then, in the cold hospital waiting room, an angel appeared.\u00a0 She was just walking by and I called out to her. Nurse Lee Beliveau was one of my creative writing students.\u00a0 She was an RN who wanted to be a writer.\u00a0 She wrote about her life as a nurse, the pain and the joy, the death and the life.\u00a0 She wrote poems and articles that said, \u201cYes, I\u2019m a nurse, but first I\u2019m a human being.\u00a0 My patients need medicine, but also they need love and understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee sat down next to me and started making jokes with me and the other four.\u00a0 Soon we were all brothers.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t say to me, \u201cYou\u2019ll be fine;\u201d rather she told me I had a good doctor.\u00a0 I thought she must be busy, so I said, \u201cYou needn\u2019t stay.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the wisdom born of love, she ignored me.<\/p>\n

Finally Dr. Andreou came into the waiting room and called my name.\u00a0 I, who never touch anybody, grabbed Lee\u2019s arm.\u00a0 I was scared.<\/p>\n

Two days later, on May 10, I had an appointment to find out the results.<\/p>\n

To prove to myself that I was healthy, I rode my bike to his office, a good hour ride.\u00a0 As I pedaled along, I reflected on how well things were going.\u00a0 I had just been hired as an adult teacher of English as a Second Language, a job I loved.\u00a0 I knew that new immigrants would learn not just English from me, but my view of Canada and even of life.<\/p>\n

Doctor Arnold works hard, going from patient to patient through long days, but he always knows when to slow down and talk to his patients. On this day, May 10, 1996, he talked to me. His face appeared very serious.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have prostate cancer.\u00a0 The kind you have is not the best, but it\u2019s also not the worst.\u00a0 If you have to get cancer, this is one of the better ones to get.\u00a0 If the cancer is confined to the prostate, chances are it can be cured.\u00a0 There are three basic treatments.\u201d<\/p>\n

I heard nothing after the word, cancer<\/em>.\u00a0 I had cancer.<\/p>\n

I will never see the tulips come up out of the ground again.\u00a0 My wife, my son, my daughter — this can\u2019t be happening to me.<\/em><\/p>\n

I was going to die.<\/p>\n

I was no longer Ed Griffin, husband, father, writer, organizer and the teacher who the men said, \u201cbrought laughter to Matsqui prison.\u201d\u00a0 I was a victim of cancer.<\/p>\n

The first person I met at home was my daughter.\u00a0 Kerry was twenty-one, a Simon Fraser student, a lover of English literature.\u00a0 Pity the poor girl, but the gods had made her my clone.\u00a0 She thinks like me (but she\u2019s smarter), she eats like me, she laughs like me.<\/p>\n

I stood by the refrigerator in the kitchen and told her I had cancer.<\/p>\n

No tears, no desperate hug to keep me from falling into the grave.\u00a0 She took my hand and asked me to sit down and tell her all about it.\u00a0 We talked — rather I talked — it came pouring out.\u00a0 She listened.\u00a0 She made me a cup of tea.\u00a0 She knew all about the prostate. (Hell, until that spring I had no idea where the prostate was.)\u00a0 She said her generation would face a lot more cancer because of pollution.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat am I going to do?\u201d I pleaded.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are an eagle,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cThe eagle knows something is wrong with its body, but it knows more, that it is still an eagle and it flies on, above the trees.\u201d<\/p>\n

I got up and hugged her.\u00a0 She hugged me back.\u00a0 She loved me.<\/p>\n

I gave her a keepsake booklet parishioners gave me thirty years ago, when I was a priest in Cleveland Ohio, to thank me for my marching in Selma.\u00a0 After all, I might die soon.<\/p>\n

My wife came home.\u00a0 We\u2019d been married for twenty-six years then.\u00a0 She was my opposite, she, the quiet one; me, the party person.\u00a0 She loved a simple evening at home and I was off to meeting after meeting.\u00a0 When I was a priest, I used to get up in the pulpit on Sunday and tell people what love was.\u00a0 But it was when I left the priesthood and married Kathy that I found out what love was really<\/em> all about.\u00a0 I told her what Doctor Arnold had said.\u00a0 She cried.\u00a0 That big word CANCER seemed to hit her, like it had hit me.\u00a0 Her husband was going to die.<\/p>\n

She hugged me.\u00a0 Then she got mad.\u00a0 \u201cWait a minute.\u00a0 I\u2019m not putting up with this.\u00a0 You have a problem; we\u2019re going to take care of it.\u00a0 We\u2019re going to fight this cancer thing.\u00a0 This is Friday and we go out to dinner on Friday, so let\u2019s go.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next day my son, Kevin, called.\u00a0 He was twenty-three at the time and locked in the struggle of his life, a recruit in the US Army.\u00a0 He was in the middle of boot camp at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri and having a rough go of it.\u00a0 He had to get up at four in the morning, run two miles, do sixty sit-ups in two minutes and shout out, \u201cYes, Drill Sergeant, SIR.\u201d<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t need to worry about me.\u00a0 Besides, it was very important to me that he succeed.\u00a0 He told Kathy and me how he had to climb a forty-five foot tower, swing over to a rope and slide down.\u00a0 \u201cI got half way up, and I stopped.\u00a0 I knew if I looked down, I would panic.\u00a0 If I looked up, I would panic.\u00a0 So I just looked straight ahead and climbed the tower and slid down the rope.\u201d<\/p>\n

What an inspiration to me.\u00a0 Don\u2019t look back, don\u2019t look forward, just look straight ahead.\u00a0 Don\u2019t think about the past, don\u2019t think about dying, just look at this moment.<\/p>\n

My whole family rallied to my support.\u00a0 My mother-in-law prayed for me, my brother-in-law sent me an article from Time<\/em> about prostate cancer, my sister said she was coming to see me.<\/p>\n

Despite this strong family, I still didn\u2019t get the healing message.\u00a0 I was no longer a human being.\u00a0 I was a PSA of 19 with a Gleason rating of 7.\u00a0 My training in theology and in social work was gone.\u00a0 I had lost my soul.\u00a0 It had washed down a big medical sink.<\/p>\n

On Monday I had to teach a class.\u00a0 There were two women in the class who were using creative writing to help them deal with the pain of arthritis.\u00a0 Even though I admired these two women, I said nothing about the shameful disease that had hit me.\u00a0 How can a man say anything in public about his sex organs?<\/p>\n

On Thursday I taught another class.\u00a0 One woman wrote a story about how she came up with her novel.\u00a0 \u201cI had cancer,\u201d she wrote, \u201cand the doctors were testing this and that.\u00a0 I let the doctors worry about my symptoms and I wrote the novel.\u00a0 That was twenty years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wrote to a good friend of mine, one of my students from Matsqui Prison.\u00a0 I told him about getting prostate cancer. He said, \u201cIt sounds to me that you are one of the lucky ones with an early diagnosis and a good chance of treatment successfully. So come on, Griffin, get a grip, or I will have to send some of the boys over to tune you up.\u201d<\/p>\n

I laughed. A moment of brightness in a gloomy time.<\/p>\n

Almost immediately after diagnosing the cancer, Dr. Arnold and Dr. Andreou ordered a bone scan for me.\u00a0 That afternoon, the man who gave me all the bad news, Dr. Arnold, called me at home.\u00a0 His voice was high, excited.\u00a0 \u201cThe bone scan was clear, Ed.\u201d<\/p>\n

I signed up on the Internet for a newsgroup about prostate cancer.\u00a0 Three or four times a day I got a digest of all the e-mail going back and forth in the newsgroup.\u00a0 It was too much.\u00a0 Much of it was high tech debate about the most effective drugs etc.\u00a0 It was not a warm place where human beings gathered.<\/p>\n

The Canadian Cancer Society had set up a prostate support group that met the fourth Saturday of the month at Surrey Hospital Annex.\u00a0 I went to the Hospital Annex on the last Saturday of May and for a while, out of shame, I contemplated saying I was looking for the loading dock, but then I faced up to it and went into the meeting.\u00a0 Instantly I felt at home.\u00a0 Here were real human beings, men who were fighting cancer.\u00a0 They talked about surgery and radiation and sex and catheters and spiritual healing.\u00a0 In many of them I sensed a deep level of spirituality.\u00a0 Many of their wives attended as well. The group helped at first, but the urologist who volunteered to come and speak at every meeting made mistakes that my urologist, Doctor Andreou, never made.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, yes,\u201d this doctor said in answer to a question, \u201ca Gleason 7 and a PSA above 15 doesn\u2019t look very good. The cancer\u2019s probably spread. Not much hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doctor Andreou never predicts the future.\u00a0 He always lays out some new hope, a new treatment or a new strategy.<\/p>\n

I was, in medical terms, a Gleason 7 and a PSA of 19. According to the doctor at the prostate support group, I should throw in the towel.<\/p>\n

But I didn\u2019t.\u00a0 June 11th<\/sup> and the CAT scan came.\u00a0 I went to Surrey Memorial Hospital in the morning.\u00a0 Off with my clothes and on with hospital blues.\u00a0 Lie down on a gurney.\u00a0 Nurse Lee came by again and she and I and the prep nurse, named Roz, started talking.\u00a0 \u201cAttitude is everything,\u201d Roz said.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve beaten cancer and I did it through my attitude.\u00a0 Get a book called Love, Medicine and Miracles<\/a>, <\/em>by Dr. Bernie Siegel.\u00a0 You can get a copy right next door at the Fraser Valley Cancer Centre.\u201d<\/p>\n

Suddenly it all started to click.\u00a0 For over a month Kathy had been telling me she and I were going to beat this cancer thing.\u00a0 But no, I\u2019d been moping around feeling sorry for myself.<\/p>\n

As I waited for the CAT scan, I realized I was in some trouble.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t in charge of my life or my illness anymore.\u00a0 I resolved to change.\u00a0 Roz led me into the CAT scan room, which was very high tech.\u00a0 Another nurse took over and told me to lie down on a table.\u00a0 She was all business and I wished Roz had stayed.\u00a0 At one point I had to hold my breath for forty seconds.\u00a0 As I got off the table I told the new nurse, \u201cThere are only five screws holding that ceiling apparatus up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you know that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause checking something out was the only way I could make it through forty seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n

She laughed.\u00a0 I had made someone laugh again.\u00a0 I must be getting better.<\/p>\n

The next challenge was to walk in the door marked \u201cCancer Centre,\u201d even though it was right next to the hospital.\u00a0 If I went in there, I was either delivering something or I had cancer.<\/p>\n

\u201cExcuse me, I\u2019m a cancer patient.\u00a0 Could you tell me where the cancer library is?\u201d<\/p>\n

The receptionist showed me and I got Siegel\u2019s book.\u00a0 I felt pretty damn good about publicly identifying myself as a cancer patient.<\/p>\n

I read Siegel\u2019s book and, strange to say, even the results of my all-important CAT scan faded in importance.\u00a0 I was a person.\u00a0 I was going to take charge of my life.\u00a0 My life did not go up or down based on medical tests.\u00a0 Siegel quoted Hippocrates, who said he would rather know what sort of person has a disease than what sort of disease a person has.\u00a0 In other words, did the person take charge? Did they despair? Did they whine or did they fight?<\/p>\n

Two days later my faithful Dr. Arnold called me.\u00a0 Again his voice was high and excited.\u00a0 \u201cThe CAT scan came in fine, Ed.\u00a0 As far as we can tell, there\u2019s no spread to the lymph nodes.\u201d<\/p>\n

That afternoon, Dr. Andreou suggested surgery to remove the prostate and set the date for October 1.\u00a0 It was the best news I could have heard.\u00a0 Even though there are often problems of incontinence and impotency following surgery, it was the recommended way for men to get rid of prostate cancer, at least it was in 1996.<\/p>\n

I found out that a good practice was to shrink the size of the cancer before surgery.\u00a0 This was done with hormone therapy.\u00a0 I had an article that showed how the treatment led to a more successful surgery. I went to the doctor who had seen me at the cancer agency.\u00a0 She refused to prescribe the hormone therapy.\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s a new practice that\u2019s not proven yet. We won\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

A terrible confrontation was coming for me. I had always followed doctor\u2019s advice without question.\u00a0 I took a deep breath and asked, \u201cCan I see the head doctor here?\u201d<\/p>\n

She shrugged and gave me his name. \u201cHe\u2019s in today. You can go see him.\u201d She gave me directions, I went to his office and he said no, too.<\/p>\n

So I went to Doctor Andreou and gave him a copy of the article and told him about being refused twice.\u00a0 He glanced at the article, gave me a small smile and said, \u201cYes, I know about this.\u00a0 It\u2019s correct.\u201d\u00a0 He ordered the treatment for me.\u00a0 At that moment, in my mind, Doctor Andreou ascended Mount Olympus, the home of the Greek gods.<\/p>\n

Since it was testosterone that was spreading the cancer, the hormone treatment suppressed it until surgery.\u00a0 \u201cOf course,\u201d Doctor Andreou cautioned, \u201cduring the surgery, before we remove your prostate, we check to see if there\u2019s lymph node involvement.\u00a0 If there is, removing your prostate would not do much good.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sword of Damocles, immanent danger, still hung by a thread above me, but wasn\u2019t that the way of all life?\u00a0 A year before I would have slapped my hands together and said, \u201cWell that\u2019s the end of prostate cancer.\u00a0 The doctors will cut me open and scrape the stuff out.\u00a0 Now I can get on with my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

I would have been Joe Casual.<\/p>\n

But I was humbler now.\u00a0 Deep down I always felt I had everything figured out.\u00a0 No more.\u00a0 Now I had cancer.\u00a0 I was very human.\u00a0 I understood other people were very human.\u00a0 I was more sympathetic now.<\/p>\n

As I waited for surgery, I got in touch with what I liked to call the doctor inside me. <\/em>\u201cThings are going, great, Ed,\u201d my internal doctor said. \u201cYou\u2019ll survive the operation fine and the cancer will be gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

The most amazing change came to my wife and me.\u00a0 At that time we\u2019d had twenty-six busy years together, raising two children, being involved in politics, starting our own business, moving to Canada.\u00a0 The busy years had build some walls and cut off some forms of communication.\u00a0 But this cancer experience had made us like young lovers again.\u00a0 We wanted nothing more than to be around each other.\u00a0 It made no difference at all that our lovemaking might change after surgery.<\/p>\n

I wrote about my experience with cancer.\u00a0\u00a0 I produced two articles, the first one called Curing the Spirit<\/em> and the second one called The Doctor Inside<\/em>. They were positive articles that painted a picture of a person who could face cancer and live with it.\u00a0 I polished and polished these articles.\u00a0\u00a0 Now all I had to do was live up to the character I had created on paper.<\/p>\n

I hesitated to send what I had written to the local paper.\u00a0 Writing had helped me personally.\u00a0 Writing had helped me figure things out and made my new attitude seem more real.\u00a0 But why go beyond that?<\/p>\n

Besides I didn\u2019t want people treating me special, feeling sorry for me.\u00a0 But on the other hand, I had lived my whole life in a circle of friends.\u00a0 Everywhere I went, I tried to build community and the community helped me.\u00a0 So why not now?\u00a0 Why not tell my friends I was fighting cancer? \u00a0Maybe the collective will– or is it prayer?–would save me.<\/p>\n

Near the end of September I sent my first article to the local paper. It was very well received.<\/p>\n

Dr. Siegel\u2019s book suggests each person draw a picture of themselves and their disease.\u00a0 I drew a picture of myself surrounded by mobs of people.\u00a0 I think they were singing and dancing.\u00a0 Whatever they were doing, the cancer was falling out of me.<\/p>\n

October first came, the surgery date.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t scared at all, even though it was major surgery.\u00a0 Before I knew it the operation was over and I saw my wife coming toward me in the recovery room.\u00a0 Deep down inside I smiled.\u00a0 I was indeed healthy<\/em>, as the doctor inside had diagnosed.<\/p>\n

As I recovered in the hospital, there was no time for noble thoughts.\u00a0 Life was dealing with pain and trying to go to the bathroom again.\u00a0 My prostate was gone and hopefully so was all the cancer.<\/p>\n

I went home from the hospital.\u00a0 I had a big stack of books to read and articles to write, but I was very weak.\u00a0 All I could manage to do was watch the World Series, which wasn\u2019t such a bad way to spend my time.<\/p>\n

Ten days after surgery I went in to see Doctor Arnold for the results of the pathology report following surgery.\u00a0 As I sat in the waiting room with my wife, I touched base with the doctor inside.\u00a0 He was smiling.<\/p>\n

Doctor Arnold came into the room.\u00a0 \u201cThe cancer has gone beyond the prostate and it\u2019s a worse kind of cancer than we initially thought.\u00a0 I\u2019m sorry, Ed.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Damn you, Doctor inside.\u00a0 Why did you lie to me?\u00a0 I\u2019m not healthy.<\/em><\/p>\n

I went home and turned off the World Series and read more Bernie Siegel, his second book and his third.\u00a0 My whole life had been upset again.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t cured.\u00a0 I still had cancer.<\/p>\n

The students I worked with in the English as a Second Language program sent me get well notes.\u00a0 \u201cThe big thing and important thing that you need curing your spirit.\u00a0 You said on newspaper: \u2018Don\u2019t look back.\u00a0 Don\u2019t look forward.\u00a0 Just look straight ahead.\u00a0 Don\u2019t think about the past, don\u2019t think about dying, just look at this moment.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Here were my students quoting me<\/em> back to me<\/em>.\u00a0 How could I resist their call?\u00a0 I had created a hopeful, courageous, positive spirit in writing and now I had to live up to it.<\/p>\n

After surgery I had absolutely no control over my bladder.\u00a0 I had to wear pads and change them every few hours.\u00a0 Here I was, just turned sixty, and I was back to age one.\u00a0 \u201cRelax,\u201d the doctor inside said.\u00a0 \u201cDo the exercises the doctor gave you and just take it easy.\u00a0 Give it time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sure enough, on January 1, 1997 I put away the pads.<\/p>\n

The end of January came and Doctor Andreou suggested I go through a series of radiation treatments.\u00a0 The rule was that I had to show up with a full bladder.\u00a0 This kept the bladder out of the way of the radiation.<\/p>\n

Thirty-three times I lay on the table.\u00a0 The technicians placed me in exactly the right spot, left the room and shut the thick, leaden door.\u00a0 I lay there and looked at the ceiling waiting for the first of four rays to shoot into me.\u00a0 I had to go to the bathroom.\u00a0 The doctor inside came up with a novel idea.\u00a0 \u201cWhy don\u2019t you pray?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPray?\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t prayed in years.\u00a0 Besides, I hate those selfish prayers, like \u201cGod, cure me of cancer,\u201d or those un-spiritual prayers like, \u201cGod, help us win our baseball game.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d the doctor inside said, \u201cjust talk to God.\u00a0 Find out how She\u2019s doing.\u00a0 Mention the struggles in your life.\u00a0 It\u2019s a conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know where the doctor inside went to medical school, but I was pretty impressed with his advice.<\/p>\n

I tried prayer.\u00a0 It was very peaceful.\u00a0 It was not at all like \u2018I\u2019m going to die, so I better start praying.\u2019\u00a0 God and I talked.\u00a0 It seemed okay for me to ask for help for others, but not for myself.\u00a0 I asked for help for people I met in the cancer clinic, like the young mother who turned her baby over to Grandma and went in for chemotherapy.\u00a0 I thanked God for the caring staff, mostly young people.<\/p>\n

The funny thing about this newly rediscovered prayer was that I used to be a professional pray-er.\u00a0 I was trained for twelve years to be a priest and I served as such for five and a half years.\u00a0 When I left the priesthood–poof.\u00a0 Prayer disappeared.<\/p>\n

The radiation itself didn\u2019t hurt, but after a while I was confined to the bathroom and ended up with hemorrhoids.<\/p>\n

By the end of March, 1997, the radiation was completed.\u00a0 My PSA stayed in the acceptable range for three years, then it started to creep up.\u00a0 Doctor Andreou put me on a hormone treatment to slow the cancer down and that worked well until 2009, when my PSA went up, hormone treatment or no.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are we going to do now, Doctor?\u201d I asked, fearful that the end was coming soon.<\/p>\n

Doctor Andreou was all about hope.\u00a0 \u201cEd, I want you to participate in a study.\u00a0 There\u2019s a new drug–it may help you.\u201d I started on the new drug or a placebo–I wouldn\u2019t know which for six months–and I consulted the doctor inside.<\/p>\n

He sat me down for a good talk. \u201cThere\u2019s living to be done, my man,\u201d he said. \u201cYou should be grateful that you\u2019ve lived thirteen good years with cancer.\u201d\u00a0 He paused and gave me a stern look.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve got three rules for you.\u00a0 Number one: pay no attention to statistics.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWait.\u00a0 You\u2019re not a statistic; you\u2019re a human being with free will and determination.\u00a0 And remember those statistics were gathered years ago before they had some of the medical advances they have today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s the second rule?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLive until you die.\u201d<\/p>\n

What was this doctor inside?\u00a0 A song writer?\u00a0 But it was good advice.\u00a0 Stop worrying about how long you\u2019re going to live and just live.<\/p>\n

While I was focusing on my cancer, life was going on all around me–in my family, with my writing students, and with my students in jail.\u00a0 It was time to get back to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the third rule?\u201d<\/p>\n

The doctor chuckled. \u201cI\u2019m going to quote you to you–\u2018Writers write.\u2019\u00a0 Keep writing. You\u2019re sort of an avaricious guy.\u00a0 Writing is your way into a more spiritual world.\u00a0 Keep at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Writing saved me.\u00a0 My wife couldn\u2019t figure out how I went through all this stuff with such a good spirit.\u00a0 But it was because I made a new me on paper.\u00a0 And now I wanted to be that new me.<\/p>\n

The new drug didn\u2019t work, so it was off to the cancer agency for ten rounds of chemotherapy in the spring and summer of 2010.<\/p>\n

Again, I found the young nurses who administered this treatment to be full of hope.\u00a0 There was a nurse who had the word \u201cIntegrity\u201d tattooed on her arm.\u00a0 I asked her about it.\u00a0 She said she took care of her father when he was dying and he was a man of great integrity.\u00a0 When he died, she decided that she wanted to live her life that way, too.\u00a0 So she had the word tattooed on her right arm, in big letters, so she would always try to make decisions \u201cwith integrity.\u201d\u00a0 I was deeply impressed.\u00a0 She gave me chemo three out of ten times.<\/p>\n

The nurses\u2019 positive attitude brought the doctor inside back to the surface.\u00a0 Fourteen years he\u2019s been with me.\u00a0 And so today, with the help of the doctor inside, I jump back into my life.\u00a0 I teach, I write, I go for a walk every day.\u00a0 I laugh a lot more than I used to.\u00a0 I try to look fear in the face.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s my prognosis?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 Who can predict their future?\u00a0 Smart people don\u2019t sit around figuring out their prognosis, they live their present.\u00a0 That\u2019s what I have to do–live right now.\u00a0 The hell with my prognosis.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to live until I die.<\/p>\n

About the author…<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ed Griffin teaches creative writing at Matsqui Prison, a medium security prison in Western Canada.\u00a0 He taught the same subject at Waupun prison, a maximum security prison in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

He began his professional life in 1962 as a Roman Catholic priest in Cleveland, Ohio.\u00a0 There he became active in the civil\u00a0rights movement and marched in Selma with Doctor Martin Luther King.\u00a0 Removed from a suburban parish for his activities, he served for three years in Cleveland\u2019s central city.\u00a0 His years in the Roman Catholic Priesthood are the subject of his\u00a0 book\u00a0 called, ONCE A PRIEST.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe book chronicles my life and shows how even after I left the Catholic Priesthood, the ideals and the methods of being a priest stayed with me.\u00a0 After I left, I never talked about God or religion in a public setting, yet I always tried to deepen the spirit of people I was with.\u00a0 This held through my career in politics, in business and in teaching. You can take the man out of the priesthood, but you can’t take the priesthood out of the man.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After leaving the priesthood in 1968 he earned a masters degree at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and was elected to Milwaukee’s city council in 1972.<\/p>\n

Griffin and his wife, Kathy, opened a commercial greenhouse in suburban Milwaukee in 1976.\u00a0 They lived where they worked and shared the joys of raising children and growing flowers.\u00a0\u00a0 In 1988 the family, Ed and Kathy, Kevin and Kerry, moved to British Columbia, Canada, where Griffin helped establish a dynamic writing community in the city of Surrey.\u00a0 He is the founder of Western Canada’s largest writer\u2019s conference, the Surrey Writers\u2019 Conference<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He has published books, poetry, plays, short stories and a newspaper column.\u00a0 His writing has won several awards and the American Humanist Society has honored him as the teacher of a prize-winning inmate writer.\u00a0 Griffin believes that all the arts, including writing, should be encouraged in prison.\u00a0 “As Aristotle said, ‘art releases unconscious tensions and purges the soul.'”<\/p>\n

Website: http:\/\/edgriffin.net\/<\/a><\/p>\n

email: ed@edgriffin.net<\/a><\/p>\n

Back to Stories<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the spring of 1996, my doctor, Todd Arnold, sent me for some tests.\u00a0 The normal range for the PSA is .0 to 4.0. Mine was 19.0\u00a0\u00a0 Dr. Andreou, an urologist and like Dr. Arnold, a human being, arranged for me to go to the outpatient clinic of Surrey Memorial Hospital for a biopsy of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,22],"tags":[24,126],"class_list":["post-575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-thriving-2","tag-cancer","tag-health"],"aioseo_notices":[],"views":16311,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thriveinlife.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}