161. Queer Bodies: Navigating Illness, Identity, and Intimacy (with Mickie Kennedy)

Snarky Opener (0:00)

Mickie Kennedy

The prostate cancer has been a gut punch. You know, I think it would have been less so if I was a bottom, but I'm not.

Episode Introduction (0:27)

Rob Loveless

Hello, my LGBTQuties, and welcome back to another episode of A Jaded Gay. I'm Rob Loveless and, today, I am a non-jaded gay because I feel like I've finally come out of my summertime hibernation.

I feel like throughout all of July, I was just kind of locked away in my house, doing house projects and homework, and preparing things for the podcast.

And I really hadn't seen like any of my friends since the Fourth of July. So last night, I went out for a friend's birthday. It was great to see him and his boyfriend and a few of their friends.

Today, I'm having a few people over my house as well for a little wine night.

So, it'll be good to have some social time, especially after what feels like a summer of isolation.

Navigating Illness (1:07)

Rob Loveless

Anyway, from navigating isolation to navigating illness, today, I am very excited to welcome a special guest who will be talking to us about health and navigating illness as a queer person.

You know, we've talked in past episodes about how our health is really important, but unfortunately, not all queer people feel safe seeking medical treatment just because of the history of discrimination.

So, we're going to be diving into all that. But before we do, you know the drill. Let's pull our tarot card.

Tarot (1:36)

Rob Loveless

So, the card we drew today is the Five of Cups. As you'll remember, Cups is tied to the element of water. It's feminine energy, so it's asking us to meditate and reflect.

And Cups is tied to our emotions, which you can think of as flowing freely like water. In numerology, five is tied to change, instability, and loss, and it's sometimes referred to as the conflict card.

And when we draw the Five of Cups, it's signifying that we may be experiencing grief and sadness.

And with this card's feminine energy, it's really important that we allow ourselves to feel this and let ourselves grieve.

By taking the time to reflect on our sorrow, we can process these feelings and also understand what we need to move on.

Do we need to forgive ourselves or forgive others? Do we need time to cry it out? Or do we need to plan a new path forward for ourselves?

By asking these questions, we can deal with our grief and sadness in a healthy way without falling into the trap of excessive self-wallowing.

And while our cup may be half empty now, it will be full again someday. Remember, no pain lasts forever, and there's always a way out of this.

Guest Introduction (2:38)

Rob Loveless

And with that in mind, I am very excited to welcome our special guest. Before we do, though, I would like to give a quick disclaimer.

Obviously, we'll be talking about illness and medical treatment, but I'd just like to clarify that neither myself nor a special guest are medical experts.

So don't take any of this as medical advice, and always consult your PCP or a licensed medical professional before making any medical decisions of your own.

Anyway, getting right into it. He is the author of Glandscapes. Please welcome Mickie Kennedy. Hi, Mickie. How are you today?

Mickie Kennedy

I'm good. Thanks for having me.

Rob Loveless

Thanks for coming on today. I was just, we were talking before we started recording. You have an amazing, vibrant, colorful background, a beautiful built-in bookshelf.

A blue painted fireplace with a very colorful wood block painting above it, so it looks like a very cozy recording spot you're in.

Mickie Kennedy

Oh, thank you. Yeah, it is. I enjoy it. It's a little brightness.

Rob Loveless

Definitely need that. Well, as I touched upon in the intro, today, we're going to be talking all about navigating health as a queer person. So, I'm really excited for you to be on the show today.

We'll be talking about your experiences, navigating your health journey. Also, your book Glandscapes, which really is just, you know, it's all like you said before, it's all out there.

So, we're really gonna get into the nitty-gritty. And I think it's really important that we're not afraid to talk about those sensitive topics and really be authentic, because while it might be awkward or confusing, it's really helpful that, you know, other people are probably experiencing it too.

So, our words and our experiences, publishing those and putting them out in the world, can really help others. But I know I'm getting ahead of myself. So, before we get into all that, I definitely want to turn it over to you.

Can you introduce yourself to the listeners? Tell them all about you, background, pronouns, career, all that fun stuff?

Mickie Kennedy

Sure. So, my name is Mickie Kennedy. My pronouns are he/him, and I live in Baltimore County, Maryland. I work in PR, but I've always had an interest in poetry.

And 30 years ago, I got an MFA in creative writing with an emphasis in poetry, and then transitioned to work for 20-some years, and then started writing poetry again a few years ago.

Rob Loveless

And I like to ask all my guests today, are you a jaded or non-jaded gay, and why?

Mickie Kennedy

I would say non-jaded. I'm pretty open, I'm pretty optimistic about our future. I see a lot of different members of the community that are writing and sharing different and new experiences.

There's so much stuff coming out that's like needed in the trans world, especially that I'm just so energized by, and I just appreciate all the new stuff that's out there coming.

Despite the political climate that we live in.

Rob Loveless

Definitely, it seems like in spite of that all, there is still so much more representation and more diverse, authentic representation that's coming out here.

So, no matter how loud people are yelling at us, we're not going away.

Mickie Kennedy

Absolutely.

Rob Loveless

Well, let's dive right into it. You touched upon your career and your work, writing poetry, getting your MFA.

So, can you tell us a little bit about your journey, both as a writer and as someone navigating prostate cancer, and how did those paths intersect?

Mickie Kennedy

So, it's funny, because I I had colon cancer, I guess around that would be, it would be eight years, oh, gosh, in September. And that happened so suddenly. I was just very faint all the time.

And I went to my doctor, and she said, oh, you just have this blood pressure thing that when you stand up, your blood pressure plummets. And I was, like, any blood work? Nah, we're good.

And I was like, Can I do anything about it? She's like, nope. And then for six months, I just continued to, like, near faint all the time.

And then at one point, I was getting a very minor procedure done, and they said, well, technically, this is a surgery, so we need to get a physical.

And when they the blood work came back, the nurse called and said, your hemoglobin is deadly low. She says, go to the ER, right now.

And I did, and they tested it because they said, we don't think it's that low. You wouldn't be conscious. And it was actually that low.

And they said it must have been a slow bleed, and I just never noticed it. And as a result, I was conscious at a level that the average person wouldn't be. I immediately was in surgery.

Woke up the next day, third of my colon gone, and it wasn't much of an adjustment. Other, you know, I didn't get to process it, and so not much of any poetry came out of that.

Oh, and it was mostly like I had a little PTSD around it, but I didn't have anything to process. And over the years, I get lots of scans and lots of checks.

And one of the scans, two or three years ago, said, hey, the PET scan detected calcification of your prostate. And I said, What's that?

And they said, well, it's basically where you know it's beginning to calcify. It's often a signal that it's going to go cancerous. And I was like, what can we do about it?

And they said, Nothing, except continue to watch it. And of course, after the next two years, my PSA started going up, and they're just like, yeah, we, you know, we're going to do a biopsy, and it came back that, you know, as in the very early stages of prostate cancer.

The doctor said it wasn't aggressive. Take a year to figure out what you want to do, research it, and everything like that. But he recommended I have the prostate removed.

And everything I researched online said at my stage of cancer, that was you would have the worst outcome if you did that. Both, you know, sexual health, even cancer.

The recurrence of cancer is higher, cutting in there and removing it. And so, he said, well, the reason I recommend this is because my partner doesn't have a lot of work right now, and he's the surgeon.

And I was just like, that was the last time I saw that doctor. I immediately switched doctors. But I just, I just couldn't believe that.

And when I went to the new urologist, he's like, so you were diagnosed by the other doctor, but you switched. And he goes, why?

I said, because he recommended a prostate removal, and he pulled up my chart, and he said, at your stage? And I said, yeah. And he goes, Yeah, I would switch doctors too.

He goes, That's, he goes, That's malpractice, in my opinion. And I never say that about doctors. And so that was just the start of my experience with the medical community.

You know, one of the things I went through the entire radiation was what I ended up choosing. And I went through that.

I also went through hormone, hormone depletion, where they took my testosterone to zero, supposedly for six months, but it lasted for 13 months, where I was zero testosterone.

The nurse told me, when she gave me the shot to suppress my testosterone, she says a lot of people experience joint pain. It's very common, but it goes away.

And as I was visiting my urologist, I would tell him about my joint pain. And at the year visit, he said, I don't know why you keep bringing this up, and you just don't go to a rheumatologist.

I don't treat arthritis. And I said, Well, it's joint pain because of the shot. And he goes, what? And I said, Yeah, your nurse warned me that the shot can cause joint pain.

And I looked it up, and about two-thirds of people get joint pain, and you know of that, about half of them can be severe. And I would say mine's been pretty severe.

And he goes, I didn't know that because I guess I have a good nurse. And so that was another ding in the system.

At no point did the doctors ever dress address my sexual orientation, whether, hey, you know, I could have been married to a 21-year-old woman and planned on having kids.

At no point did they say this treatment is going to make you sterile. But I had researched enough that I knew that. I just found the whole thing really strange.

And I did have someone tell me, well, you signed something with the when you did the radiation that does, you know, mentioned all that and absolved it. And I said I never signed anything.

And my partner, who took me, said, Yeah, I was there every visit. He's never signed a thing other than handing a credit card for the copay. And so, I just find that very interesting and strange.

And, you know, in addition, you know, recently, when I saw the radiation oncologist, I had mentioned to him that, you know, ED has been a big problem since, but he had recommended, you know, keep trying to to work things down there, because he says, if you don't use it, you'll lose it.

And in a couple of years, you will rebound to some stage. And so, I told him, I said, well, you know, I didn't realize you would never ejaculate again. And he's like, he's like, Oh yeah, that's one of the things. 

And I said, but I do orgasm. And he said, What? And I said, I do have an orgasm. He goes, whoa. He goes, That's rare.

Again, would have been nice to know, you know, during the whole treatment, that this is something, you know, the general outcome is that that that part of you is lost.

And I found lots of things throughout the whole process like that. You know, I realized that when I had my fiducials surgically done, you know, by looking on Reddit, that gay men, especially, shouldn't have anal sex or use toys or anything for six months.

No one ever said anything to me about this. So, I don't know if it's just malpractice or a lack of information and communication for everybody, because, again, I don't think they, well, maybe they knew, because my glasses are always bright and colorful, but I don't know that they knew whether I was gay or straight.

But I just found it very strange that there was just so many things that if I hadn't researched it, I wouldn't have known going into it.

And I, you know, but you know, I processed it. I took almost a whole year figuring out what I wanted to do and trying, you know, first, you know, some things that people recommended that were more alternative help, and I didn't see my PSA going down or anything.

But in this case, I found poetry very useful because it was something I could log during this. It was a way of being like my diary and sharing and processing and all of these little things that we're going through. 

And it, you know, it helped me make it to the other side of the treatment.

Masculinity & Healthcare (12:50)

Rob Loveless

There's a lot to unpack there. One of the first things I want to address, earlier on, you're talking about after your colon cancer diagnosis and surgery, you said that you didn't have really a lot of time to process, and you kind of just felt like you were sitting were sitting with some PTSD.

And I think there's often a societal pressure on men to be tough and strong and not ask for help or not really talk about the feelings of these things going through it.

And because of that, historically, men have been more likely to avoid seeking medical attention. So instead of asking for help or seeking treatment, they push through the pain and assume it'll just go away. 

And it sounds like going from your colon cancer diagnosis to then going through the prostate cancer experience, you weren't afraid to kind of hold back and have the awkward or uncomfortable conversations, especially because, like you said, it seemed like the medical attention you were receiving didn't really factor in sexuality, one for just anyone, but especially too a gay man.

So, kind of going off of that whole concept of men trying to be tough, avoiding seeking medical attention, and trying to push through the pain, how did your diagnosis really challenge that notion?

Mickie Kennedy

I think that for me, you know, the diagnosis, I came out gay very late in life. I came out gay in, I think, my senior year of college, and then went to graduate school doing my MFA.

And I was in the Northern Virginia area in graduate school and DC, and it was a vibrant, great time in one respect, to be out, and it was a scary time because of AIDS.

And I saw what, you know, what was happening to people, and I did get into a relationship and caught the person cheating, and I just decided at that point, I'm, I'm going in the closet.

I am going to just, you know, sequester myself. And I had my best friend in graduate school, and that's the person I ultimately married and had children with, with medical intervention.

And you know, she was the one who also urged me, I guess, about 12 years, to just go out. She's like, AIDS isn't what it used to be. You should go out and find someone.

And so, she encouraged me to do that. And still my best friend, and we still, you know, are great, but I just cut that part of my life off for, you know, a couple of decades, and, you know, to come out and have a sex life and be vibrant, and then, boom, you have this and everything shut down.

It feels like it feels like a door slamming, when, you know, when it feels like I just opened so recently, and so it's, it's been difficult, but I also feel like it's, you know, I did get to come out.

I did get to find my partner. I did get to, you know, establish ourselves, and we have an intimacy that, you know, is beyond the physical, and you know, we'll get around this or through this, and you know the way that we do, but it has been hard.

It has been hard processing this, because I I haven't seen other people really talking about it, outside of, like, small little Reddit groups online and things like that. There's a lot of lack of discussion about it.

You know, someone in California mentioned, didn't you join a local prostate cancer group? And I went online and looked and called around. There wasn't any.

They go, oh, we have them for, you know, just, you know, people suffering different types of cancers. And we also have some that are just general cancers.

But she says, I don't think anybody with prostate cancer actually goes to those. And I was just like, huh, it's like people, you know, I think colon cancer, prostate cancer, people just sort of don't talk about it very often or do much.

And in the case of colon cancer, for most people, it's one of the most easily treated types of cancer, and so I encourage people to go out and get a screening. You never know.

And in my case, I wish the doctor had done the blood work six months earlier, when I originally went in. 

But it is one of these things that I think that there needs to be more openness and more willingness to talk about things like this. It's it's not, it's not, there's no finality that I thought there would be.

I thought, you know, prostate cancer meant the end of my sex life, and it meant the end of my relationship and all this stuff. And it isn't, it's it's just different.

And things are not ideal, but they're not bad. And, you know, and navigating that, especially if I had a community to talk to, I think would be better.

And I I, I've, since, I've been so out and open about it, I've had lots of people tell me, oh, yeah, my dad had that.

And my neighbor has that, and oh, you know, and it's like all these people suffering, and no one really knew outside their close-knit family. And they're not, you know, they processed it alone.

And I know that what I went through, I get to share it through poetry, and I got to process it through my words.

And I fear and feel for the people who have just processed this themselves and with their, you know, children and spouses, and that's it.

Rob Loveless

Taking it a step further, how did your identity as a gay man shape your experience with illness, and in what ways did it challenge your understanding of masculinity?

Mickie Kennedy

Well, it was, it's the prostate cancer has been a gut punch, you know. I think it would have been less so if I was a bottom, but, you know, I'm not.

So, you know, it has, it has been, you know, it's made me feel insecure in myself. And I have to get over that, you know, but I think that, I think that's, it's allowed me to appreciate what I do have.

It's allowed me to also make efforts to, you know, get the word out to other people. I've been surprised at some of what I considered risqué poems that have been picked up by very big, large journals, poetry journals, and literary journals, that they're willing to take a chance on stuff that is just so in your face. 

And, you know, it's about a subject matter, and the way I approach it often with a lot of humor. I've just been surprised how open it is, and I've gotten a lot of great responses from people you know about it. 

And I feel like it's something that nobody else that I'm aware of is writing about it or talking about it. And so, I kind of feel like this is my this is my purpose now, a little bit, to communicate around it and get people to know that it's okay to discuss this. It's okay to talk about it.

You know, I'm also going to make sure that my urologist that I currently have, and my radiation oncologist, get a copy of the book and a letter, you know, and just say, hey, you know, as a gay man, this has been my experience, and you know, we can do better.

And you know this isn't an indictment on you personally, but I think that them being men also makes it difficult for them to bring up topics and talk about things.

But I kind of think it's necessary. And I think that, you know, people should be better informed going into this.

Gay Men & Health (20:24)

Rob Loveless

And what do you wish more gay men and men in general understood about prostate cancer and their general health?

Mickie Kennedy

I don't know how true this is or not, but one of the things that the doctors told me is, you know, during the calcification of my prostate.

They said, this is not due to your colon cancer, but fortunately, the scans are picking it up. You know, have you ever taken vitamin D?

And I'm like, Yeah, taking it for 30 years because I was told I had low vitamin D. And they said, are you taking it with vitamin K? And I said, No.

And around three years ago, I noticed everybody's now putting vitamin D and Vitamin K together, and one of the doctors says that if your vitamin D is low, taking vitamin D helps, but your body doesn't know where to put the vitamin D.

That's what vitamin K does. It directs it. And they said vitamin D without vitamin K, the vitamin D doesn't know where to go, and it often can accumulate in certain organs, especially the prostate, and cause calcification.

I've looked online, I haven't been able to confirm that. But that's what one doctor told me. So, anybody out there taking vitamin D, make sure it's got vitamin K.

And fortunately, when I looked recently, almost all of them do, but for 30 years, you know, I took it, and I don't know if that led to it. But also, you know, someone 53, 54 is very early to get prostate cancer.

You know, maybe I probably still would have gotten it in 15 years or 10 years, but at my age, it's very early. And so, it is possible that just taking vitamin D, without the vitamin K, you know, went to it.

But, you know, we don't know. I also saw a couple people saying, this is a theory online, but there's no studies, because there's no there's no magic patented pill that will come out at the end of it.

And so, it's just one of these things that makes sense, that we know we're putting vitamin K in it today, so that will direct the vitamin D.

And I was like, well, you know, obviously, if it's not directed, it the theory that it is accumulating in organs makes sense.

So, I don't know if there's something to that, but, you know, I feel like there's a lot of research that, you know, continues should be done. Young people are getting colon cancer like crazy now.

It used to be that they wouldn't even, you know, recommend a colonoscopy until you were much older. 

And you know, there I was at the time, I guess I was 47, and, you know, I was at an age where they wouldn't recommend it.

And I had colon cancer, and I'm seeing other people in their 30s, and other people, you know, part of that may be diet, part of it may be chemicals that are in our foods and stuff like that.

But I would just say, you know, I know gay men. There is a part of the gay culture that is very aware of fitness and muscles and stuff like that.

But I also think that there's an aspect of supplements and nutrition that we have to be sort of careful about and mindful of going into and, you know, just, you know, sometimes I wished I hadn't taken vitamin D for 30 years. But, you know, you can't go back.

LGBTQ+ Healthcare (23:39)

Rob Loveless

And seeking healthcare can also be intimidating for queer people due to the fear of being discriminated against. So, what were your experiences like with that?

Mickie Kennedy

So, I don't feel that I was ultimately discriminated against being gay, but I also felt like at times I didn't know the lack of communication and being informed whether it was something that they were derelict in for all their patients, or just me, and I hadn't shared with the urologist or the radiation oncologist that I was gay. It just didn't come up.

But, you know, at the time, I think I was wearing my rainbow glasses, these are pink ones, so I still think that it was probably obvious, but maybe not.

But, you know, I just feel that, you know, you never know but, but I suspect that based on what I hear from other people, everybody's sort of being misinformed, and that a lot of people aren't being told what to expect and what the outcomes are.

Rob Loveless

And switching gears a little bit, you had mentioned that there were some online spaces, like Reddit forums, that provided a little bit of community or more specific information regarding what a queer person could experience while going through this.

Did you find that queer spaces held room for conversations about illness and men's health? Or did you feel the need to create that space through your work?

Mickie Kennedy

I felt I had to create it through my work. I didn't see it online. I did a lot of searches, especially when someone in California had mentioned, hey, join a local prostate cancer group.

Didn't find any around here. And so, I did a lot of searches, and what I found was, you know, there was talks in Reddit.

But again, you know, it was usually led by three or four people and probably about a dozen people commenting and stuff like that. So, it wasn't a big, giant, vibrant community.

And some of the things were years old, you know. So, it wasn't also like, it was timely, like, these are people talking today in a very current chat, but I'm very thankful they're still there.

And you know, I was able to find the information.

Glandscapes (25:49)

Rob Loveless

And that kind of is a nice transition into your project, Glandscapes.

Can you tell us a little bit more about that, and what was the moment that inspired you to begin writing landscapes? And when did you realize that poetry could hold the weight of this experience?

Mickie Kennedy

So, I was writing about it just as it was happening. It felt necessary. I've been writing poetry for the last five years regularly, and I just found it was I could not write about it.

It was the most pressing thing on my mind. It was the anxiety. What am I going to do? I did so much research online.

I looked at so many studies and the outcomes of studies of, you know, treatments at certain stages of cancer, and deciding, you know, what to do.

I went to a lot of doctors and talked about different options and things like that, and explored them.

And I guess at the end of the day, I did feel empowered, you know, because I did research it, and I did kind of suspect what I wanted to do, but I still wanted to talk to other people and get other people's opinions and stuff like that.

I didn't feel any pressure from anybody. And like I said, the doctor had originally told me you could take a year with this, and the second urologist agreed. He's like, Yeah, it's not an aggressive prostate cancer. 

Those are usually pretty rare, but you know, you have to decide sooner rather than later. It doesn't get better. And so, I, you know, I felt like having so much time was a luxury, but it was also a constant worry. 

And I also think that that looming worry helped me stay and process and write and continue to share my journey.

I think that if I had just gone from diagnosis to treatment, we again would have had the PTSD without the processing.

And I do think it was a gift that I had that year, that year, to spend with my lover and, you know, explore each other physically, knowing that, you know, things were going to be different.

And I also got to write about it. It was a beautiful period. It was also a very anxiety-driven period, but it allowed me to write the book and put it together, and, you know, sort of lament and grieve for what I was going to lose.

And you know, also share what was happening and what the outcome was.

Rob Loveless

How did writing about physical transformation experienced through your illness impact your relationship with your own body, and did your identity as a gay man offer a different lens on that?

Mickie Kennedy

I think that, I think that it did. I mean, but not in the way that you would expect. I, I knew that they said you're going to gain weight when the testosterone was completely suppressed to zero.

You know, women still have more testosterone than I had a year later in their blood work. I didn't realize women had testosterone. But yeah, and, you know, of course, no sex drive with that. Gained weight.

I was also a little depressed and anxiety ridden, and so I gained 70 pounds from February of 2024 to to to now, which was the period of I was treated with radiation in February 2024, and that's when they gave me the shot that ended up lasting a year instead of six months.

They have a one-year shot. I don't know what would have happened if I'd gotten that, but my testosterone in February of this year was still nil. It's coming back now, and I definitely can feel I'm better. 

My joints don't ache and hurt like they did, but, you know, and I've, I've, you know, in February of this year, I said, you know, enough feeling sorry for yourself.

You, you, you put, you packed on some pounds that you were going to with the testosterone going down, but a lot of this was you feeling sorry for yourself.

So, I started being mindful of what I was eating. You would think, as you're being treated for cancer, you'd eat your best, and I didn't.

So, in February of this year, I started eating more mindfully, and I'm down 50 pounds, and I still have a little ways to go, but it, it was a time where I was grieving and I was sad and I turned to food, and, you know, it, it was, it was part of this journey as well.

It's not something I've written about, the the eating and and stuff like that. I find that just a very difficult to process on the page, because I have a very complicated relationship with food, you know, yo-yo dieting and everything else over the years, from a pudgy little kid on up.

But, you know, there's probably poems around that at some point that I'll process and write as well. As far as my identity as a gay man, I don't know that it, it's changed. I think that I'm more informed now.

I feel I'm more appreciative of, you know, people, processing things, and going through things. I also, you know, look at people, and I don't jump to conclusions as much as I used to.

If someone you know is having a bad day or snapping at you, you don't know what is going on in the back end.

And I recognize that because I lashed out a little bit, you know, during my treatment and my processing. 

And you know when, when I apologize to people and said, I'm just going through some stuff, they had no idea. They said, you look, you know, you look fine. I didn't know you had this.

And I was like, Yeah, I didn't put it on Facebook. I didn't put it on LinkedIn. I didn't share to the world that, hey, I've got cancer and I'm processing this, and all my joints ache and hurt, and every day feels like a struggle, but, you know, I went through it, and so I think I have a little more grace towards others now, and a little more appreciation for for people doing, you know, going through things.

My grandmother had terrible arthritis, and I never really appreciated it, until this past year of my joints aching and hurting so bad.

I felt a real kinship towards my grandmother during that period, because I remember at times her elbows would hurt so much, she would just lean into herself and just wince.

And I felt those moments, and I felt very close to her, and I wished I was more, I wish I had known what that was like at the time, because I think I being a child and seeing that, I didn't respect it or appreciate what she was going through, and I didn't give her, probably the love and, you know, the care that I probably should have given her.

Rob Loveless

Obviously, prostate cancer is a heavy subject, but in spite of that, your poetry also provides moments of unexpected humor. So, what role do you believe humor plays in confronting mortality?

Mickie Kennedy

I think humor is sort of a necessary thing. I think that you know cancer and mortality, and you know, even the you know, the the fact that you know this may not be death, but death is there all you know, lurking at all times.

I tell people, are you worried about the prostate cancer? It's like, no, I wasn't worried about the colon cancer, wasn't worried about the prostate cancer. I'm worried about the next thing you know?

I feel like I, don't know if there's another one in there waiting to emerge, but, you know, I am continuing to get monitored, and hopefully, if something happens, we'll see it.

But I do worry about that, but I feel that humor allows you to to deal with it. I mean, sometimes things are so awful and terrible. The healthiest thing you can do is sort of poke fun at it.

And, you know, there's a bit of absurdity in these terrible things. And I feel like humor, humor is a tool that I didn't know you could put in poetry. And I discovered it during the pandemic.

There was a poetry anthology that came out, and I discovered this poet, Dorothy Chan. She was funniest poet I ever heard, and she talked about these, you know, things that are just like, you know, as you know, being bisexual and dealing with, you know, family and all these other things where you go through these terrible things.

And, you know, she just had such a sense of humor about it. And it felt real, and it felt like an honest reaction. And I just, I just said, this is what I'm going to use as a tool talking about cancer.

I don't want to have this book be a woe is me book. This is a book that both grieves and deals with the heavy stuff, but it also deals with it in the way that also has celebration and humor and life and optimism.

And I think that it's it's something that is complicated, and I think humor plays an important part for me in processing it, and I think that's also a very natural way.

Family & Health (35:24)

Rob Loveless

And earlier on, you mentioned that you're also a father. So, what conversations about identity, family, and inheritance came up as you navigated your health journey?

Mickie Kennedy

So, I think the big thing is to, I told my children, you have to be in charge of your health. You know, I had a doctor dismiss me near fainting, and I just accepted it without blood work.

And, uh, you know, as a patient, you can insist on, on blood work. You could go to the urge care, but I didn't. I just felt like I didn't have the agency to do that.

So, I've told my children, yeah, and I've told them, hey, when it comes to colon cancer, it's in your genetics now. You know the don't wait until you're in your 50s to get treated.

There's things you can do before then that you know maybe aren't a colonoscopy, but you know, you you should do things like that.

And I think that, you know, empowering them around their healthcare is really important, because at the end of the day, the one thing I've noticed about it is, if you don't pick up the pieces and dot the i's and cross the T's, they're not going to do it.

And otherwise, if I had just been as passive with the first urologist, as I was with my primary care physician who dismissed my fainting, I would have had probably my prostate surgically removed, and probably been at a higher recurrence incident rate of prostate cancer because of it, and all because there was a doctor, a surgeon, in his practice, who has hours to fill and probably maybe a boat payment to make, I don't know, but it was not, you know.

And so those are the types of things I've also, you know, talked to them about, you know, the fact that, you know, we never know how long we've got, and you just have to, you know, don't put everything off. 

If you have dreams, go ahead and do them now. Don't be afraid to put yourself out there and be vulnerable.

You know, you know their, their dad is writing about prostate cancer in a book, and he's writing about his sex life and stuff like that. And, you know, that's like, whoa.

I mean, they're adult children, but I think that, you know, I know that other parents are enjoying that, and so that they're seeing a world that is a little bit different because of me, and hopefully they're not going to be as isolated and hopefully more willing to talk about these types of things as they come up in their life.

Navigating Illness as a Queer Person (38:03)

Rob Loveless

And what advice would you offer someone in the LGBTQ+ community who's navigating illness?

Mickie Kennedy

I would say research as much as you can. You know, there's all so much medical research, and I found a lot of studies that I couldn't read, but I did ask doctors, and they were able to get them for me.

And so, you know, if that's the route that you want to take, because I was really all in with alternative health at first, and I had a doctor who was able to get me some studies.

And there was one with, gosh, what is that? So, this people take melatonin study that looks so promising for hormonal cancers, of which prostate was.

And so, I did that for a few months, very high doses melatonin. And people were like, you don't fall asleep? And it turns out melatonin only works when the lights are out that you get sleepy.

And so, I would take 3,000, 4,000, whatever the dosage was, in the morning. And despite the promising results in a very small clinical study, it didn't work for me. But, you know, I was very informed.

I took probably the most active role I've ever taken in anything. And, you know, and I knew what the treatments were, and I knew what treatment I would do if the, you know, the melatonin treatment didn't work.

And, and, you know, unfortunately, I don't know that there will ever be a bigger study than that one for melatonin, because at the end of the day, it's melatonin.

It's something we could just buy over the counter. And unfortunately, our medical research world is mostly fueled by patents and drugs and pharmaceutical companies that can turn it into millions of dollars and things like that.

So, and that's also a little sad disheartening, because I think that we will not know in a lot of cases about more natural and treatments and alternative health treatments, because I just don't think the clinical studies will ever get done.

But that one was a decent study that had been done on it and looked promising. It worked really well with what is it? I think it was ovarian cancer.

But the assumption was that prostate cancer, being hormonal, the results would be similar. But for me, it didn't. But, you know, it it?

There is, there's different things out there that people can do, but absent that, you know, at the end of the day, medical intervention is sometimes needed.

And I'm not, certainly not one of those people that's against that. I just wanted to try everything I could, short of of, you know, basically terminating the prostate.

Episode Closing (40:56)

Rob Loveless

And connecting it back to the tarot, the Five of Cups. Again, this card signifying that we're experiencing grief and sadness, and it's important that we allow ourselves to feel those feelings.

Especially with the card's feminine energy, we really need to take the time to look inwards, to see what we need for ourselves.

And in doing so, that prevents us from falling into the trap of perpetual self-wallowing.

Like Mickie talked about today, there was a lot going on at sometimes he did not have all the time he needed to process, and he sat with some PTSD almost.

And he learned that wallowing and feeling sorry for himself wouldn't help him in the long run, and he was really able to reflect inward, to see what he needed and turn that sadness and grief into a beautiful, creative project.

And in doing so, he's fostering authentic and extremely vulnerable conversations that I think a lot of us could benefit from, because even though these might be topics that people don't typically talk about, they are still things that people are experiencing.

So for any grief we may be feeling in our own lives, whether that's through a medical diagnosis or breakup or just a general hardship, it's important that we're in touch with those feelings and that we give ourselves time to grieve and time to listen to what we need, so that way we can find that healthy path forward to move on from the sadness and try to find the optimism in life.

Because remember, no pain will last forever, and we can move on to brighter days ahead.

Excerpt from Glandscapes (42:08)

Rob Loveless

Well, Mickie, thank you again so much for coming on today. This was a great episode. As we're coming to the end of this discussion, can you read us an excerpt from Glandscapes?

Mickie Kennedy

Sure, this one is kind of an elegy for someone I lost during this. It's called When I Heard of Your Death:

“When I heard of your death, the sky folded, clouds stacked like white towels. I sat on the ledge of a rocky outcrop and stared at the Pacific's dull vacancy until my eyes hurt and I thought of you.

You back then, when we were dead together, chancing our hands in the dingy theater in the shopping center where your mom bought her fancy cannoli. Safe in the dark, new to lust.

Later, when we stumbled inside your room searching for mouths for more, I opened my throat to tell you something, a trumpet in a black plastic case against the wall.

A week before, you were dead; you looked dead already. Your skin peppered with dried sweat, the texture of delicate paper, the color of Stingray.

Now, my blood no longer obeys my heart, moving with the moon's tidal pull, and my heart isn't a heart. A fist of gristle.

When I'm dead, a call will go out, and you will recognize the static, and we'll speak as the dead speak. Two corpses colliding in the lit dark, not old men, not quite young, our bodies roiling with rot and stink. 

The mat of my arm fused to your gelatinous back, the cursed sweat lump of us. And what was once my throat will open, and what was once your ear will listen, and we will turn our wasting flesh into a death cottage.

And in the cottage, I will read Rimbaud in bed, and you will reach out to smooth my cheek, what used to be my cheek.”

Rob Loveless

That was an excerpt from Glandscapes by Mickie Kennedy.

Connect with Mickie (44:05)

Rob Loveless

Mickie, thank you again so much for coming on today. I really appreciate this and your openness and authenticity.

As we're wrapping up here, can you tell all the listeners where they can learn more about you, where they can purchase Glandscapes? Please plug all the things.

Mickie Kennedy

Yeah, sure. So, on socials, I'm @mickiepoet, and it's M-I-C-K-I-E. And my website is Mickey Kennedy, M-I-C-K-I-E, Kennedy, K-E-N-N-E-D-Y.

And you can get to Glandscapes by just going to gladscapes.com and it's landscapes with a G at the beginning. It's a play on glands and landscapes.

And again, that's glandscapes.com, and they'll take you to where you'll be able to buy it through Button Poetry.

Rob Loveless

And all that information will be included in the show notes. So definitely check it out once you're done listening. 

Connect with A Jaded Gay (44:50)

Rob Loveless

And you know the drill. For any questions or feedback, please reach out to me rob@ajadedgay.com. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Five stars only. I greatly appreciate it.

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Mmm-bye.