NOW: 12/26/2012 CANARIES IN THE MINE

CANARIES IN THE MINE
Each of these entries draws from a place of struggle as well as from attitudes of defiance and hopefulness and optimism, a strong rebel strain. Eileen calls me the "Bad Boy." I smile at that.
I awake early usually, this morning at 2:30 a.m., concerned about the pending winter storm, worried about a potential power failure in subfreezing temperatures, now at 15 degrees Fahrenheit. I felt a hives attack coming on, too, so took an antihistamine.
The hives attacks have been radically frequent since this round of Lupron injections, and I noted this to my urologist during the testy exchange we had when I questioned the need to continue these since my latest PSA reading showed the decrease mentioned earlier, from a rising 2.3 to a low 0.17, considered a level that indicates remission from prostate cancer.
Other things on my mind include at the moment the intermittent flow of well water that comes through our new plumbing to the sink and toilet I just installed and the previously installed shower and hot water heater in our rustic rural cabin. I understand the possible causes from this erratic flow but fixing them involves help from the contractor who installed the plumbing itself as well as the hot water heater.
We get by with this problem, though. It's a matter of patience, of waiting for the flow to fill what needs to be filled. Our first shower here with the new plumbing came in spurts of fortunately hot water. We understand the luxury, too, both from our own lives and our human-rights humanitarian travels. The same is true with the pending storm. The cabin is protection from the storm, whatever the plumbing problem.
What lacks though in this industrialized and technologically astute culture is adequate protection from the toxins and contaminants in our environment and food supply, some that have a causal or an associated relationship with cancer. And speaking of water and plumbing, the natural gas pipelines that run through this region transmit shale gas, the subterranean supply broken loose by horizontal hydraulic fracturing whose drills need a high-volume supply of toxins and truck-transported water that are later left in supposedly safely lined ponds. Yet this "fracking" blasts through water tables too.
There's no question the contaminants filter into these supplies. Where's the protection?
The points for me are these: What is the relationship between the contaminants injected and spewed into our habitats and prostate cancer?
Are we who have been afflicted by this cancer and others the canaries in the mine?

(draft version)