C A N C E R. Cancer is a disease that other people get. At least that's a fact I tried hard to convince myself of this summer. It's a scary thing, in part because it is so many things, and none of them are good. It is the disease with the bad ending - every - single - time. From brain to blood to bone and every piece of human real estate in between, cancer can take root anywhere and lay there quietly plotting the demise of its host. Sometimes though Cancer does not win. This is one of those stories. It did put up a decent sneak attack and it did not go without some lasting damage. For me, it all started around Father's Day. My daughter cheerfully recommended "hey Dad, you should go get one of those $49. heart scans". I've always had good blood readings on my annual physicals but I love a bargain and that sounded like a bargain. I scheduled one for the following week. I was given the results not long after the scan....as expected my heart is in pretty good shape. I'm not at risk of heart disease. I felt a little smug. My grandmother lived to be 99...I've got the stuff to meet or beat her record. Then about 3 days later a letter arrived with more information about the scan. Something else had been observed....something in my left lung that I should see my doctor about.
My family doctor ordered a chest Xray and made an appointment with a pulmonologist for me. More Xrays and tests followed, and eventually, a lung biopsy and the nature of the suspicious blob seen on the scans was revealed: "well-defined neuroendocrine tumor". Tumor, that was a word I latched onto for a while....if you say tumor then you don't have to say cancer. Tumor sounds less threatening, especially when it is measured in only a few centimeters.
With that diagnosis I was passed off to yet another doctor, this time an oncologist, again if I use that word I don't have to say or think cancer but it is getting harder since her office is located in the Lafayette Cancer clinic and it isn't like I don't know what an Oncologist does. It was getting harder for me to avoid the word.
It's now full-blown summer, I feel fine, I can't be sick, if I had cancer I'd feel sick. I'm taking long hikes in the State park with dog and camera in tow, proving I feel healthy. Showing my wife that there's nothing to worry about. Assuring everyone that everything is fine. I'm not worried, you shouldn't worry either.
The oncologist described the nature of the tumor and the treatment. Of course she didn't have any trouble calling it cancer but said the treatment of choice is surgery, you just cut the tumors out. If they have not spread then the operation to remove is the extent of the treatment. She's an oncologist, now I need a surgeon.
So another new face, another appointment, more talk about cancer....although I'm still avoiding the word as much as I can. I like this guy, he explains things, he invites questions, he does not avoid hard questions. I asked him to describe the actual surgery....he did so in great detail....he did fail to mention one thing, but he caught me up on that item just before the operation two weeks later.
The morning of surgery I'm sitting on the edge of the operating table watching all the prep going on around me. Wow, there are a lot of people in here doing stuff. This was the first time I've ever been that alert for that length of time upon arrival in an operating room. The anesthesiologist was administering an epidural prior to beginning general anesthesia when he let me know that "this" operation is ranked as one of the top three "most painful" you can have and that was the reason for the epidural. Oh Boy....the surgeon had wisely left that tidbit out of his description of what was going to happen when we chatted 2 weeks earlier....and that was the thought that went through my mind right then....I would have remembered if he had told me that. Five hours of unconsciousness later, or thereabout, I found myself waking up with a mouth and throat that felt like the Sahara had settled there. My first word was a feeble "water".
For the next 5 days, with the help of a lot of nurses, aides, and others my healing began. They were all exceptional. Things were progressing wonderfully and the doctor was going to send me home in two more days. That evening something unexpected happened. Very, very unexpected.
I had been checking in at Facebook a little bit, but mostly just reading what friends and family were doing. First I see that a friend who is being treated for cancer was having difficulty with his insurance company over a test or treatment and I made a supportive post. Then another friend posted a little blurb about being a grandparent "I can't promise how long I'll be your grandparent, but I can promise I will love you every second of that time..." I reposted it to my own page, I am after all a grandparent 7 times over and now a great grandparent x3. Then another friend posted that he might have ended up adopting a stray kitten....just another little life event of a friend, insignificant in every respect to my own life....but unknown to me it was the next to the last piece of code that was going to unlock something from my heart that I was not expecting.
Finally, the loss of a cherished pet cat by another friend. I remember thinking I need to say something to him, losing a pet is every bit as traumatic as losing any other member of the family but my mind wasn't able to form an idea of what to say, instead, at that second something sort of like a massive chain reaction series of rear-end crashes, or Like what happens when 100 cows try to leave the pasture at the same time through a gate designed for 1 at a time was happening. Thoughts, emotions, words, faces, 70 years worth of memories, more emotions, all crashing around inside the limited space of my skull. Then the taps got turned on and my breathing changed and I was taking big gulps of air that sounded like sobs. Just like big, loud, chest heaving sobs.
Mercifully I wasn't left in that state for very long. The day nurse and the night nurse entered my room, as they did every shift change and they both asked if I was all right, maybe fearing that some terrible medical emergency was in progress. I had to pull myself together enough to explain to them that no, there was no medical issue, that I was just "having a moment". So now I know what happens when you push all your fear and emotion out of view from June through September.....it always does find a way to surface and tears really do wash our eyes and give us a clearer view of life.
It was anti-climactic but the next morning the surgeon told me that the final biopsy results had been returned and that none of the surrounding tissue or lymph nodes that he had removed showed any cancer cells. I really am cancer-free. I absolutely understand that I am extremely lucky, very blessed, or both and that realization makes me feel very, very humble.
1 comment:
Glad you made it through
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