7400 miles, 13,000 elevation gain last week, the Zero Prostate Cancer Virtual Summit, and a few words from a caregiver

 Scott had an enormous week of climbing (over 13,000 elevation gain) and the most spectacular scenery between mountains and coastline of northern California. Yesterday he had what he termed a “legendary ride.”  Beautiful but extraordinarily challenging!

The last few days I was able to take in the virtual prostate cancer summit presented by Zero. I always prepare before every Mayo session, through frankly I try to stay on top of it on an ongoing basis. We are fortunate as our doctor, Dr Eugene Kwon, is a great educator. He presents lectures on PRCI that are excellent. Please see this link to a recent lecture he shared on YouTube. This is one of the many things I do to try to be helpful to Scott.  With our next appointment coming up soon it was wonderful to have the benefit of the virtual conference. We are so happy that we chose Zero as the non-profit to support as they continue to do important things to support those with prostate cancer.

I was recently motivated (for some unknown internal reason,) to share a few words on Facebook about a caregiver’s perspective for how I cope. Now I have been encouraged to share that same post here, for those that are not on Facebook.  So here goes:

A caregiver's perspective: I am frequently asked how I cope, knowing Scott's cancer is growing again, knowing it is stage 4 and knowing that it is now castration resistant metastatic prostate cancer. (i.e., it metastasized a few years ago to bones, lymph nodes and hormone deprivation therapy is not working to control it any longer.) The answer to how I cope: I rely on faith. I turn it over and let go. I focus on the gift of each day. I lean on family and friends - and I do this milesformoney.org mission with Scott Freitag. He is an amazing example of living a positive life. You cannot always control what happens to you, but you can control your reaction to it. Thus, we do this journey, this mission to do our part to do good. We focus on gratitude for our many gifts. (Today it is being back in the camper, good weather and beautiful surroundings!). In a few weeks we are back at Mayo for the next pet scan and treatment. That is always an "anxious" time for anyone going through this - and we have gone through it for 6 years now. So, for all our friends out there going through things, as everyone does, we encourage and support you too!

 

Scott and Katy Freitag, milesformoney.org

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