"...the best kind of cancer!"

By now in my treatment, I am still walking around hunched over, living icepack to icepack.  My mother-in-law brings me the mail, mainly because my one trip alone to the mailbox resulted in groaning in bed for the next four hours.  Being recently laid off, I open a letter from my previous employer.  The letter states that they never received my severance agreement (that may or may not exist, by decree of the alleged severance agreement I am not allowed to divulge if there was one or not) and my insurance has been canceled.  This is exactly the kind of news you want to received when trying to recover from cancer surgery and enter into treatment.  Basically, this means all but one day of this whole ordeal is not covered.  Luckily (and purely by chance) I happened to be at one of my former employer's largest benefactors when I decided to send in the severance agreement (if in fact it exists, which I can't say) and since it required a witness, one of their employees signed it before I sent it off.  I think that was my only saving grace, that to deny that I sent it in would be to call your largest funding source a liar.  That would not make very good business sense.  Luckily I had all the supporting paperwork to prove that I sent something that I am supposed to deny exists if asked, and they worked hard to push it through and get the insurance reinstated.  I will admit, I did slip in that I was trying to recover from my cancer surgery when I received the letter.  I am not above using cancer pity when it is required.  

The other pit in my stomach that day was waiting for the biopsy from the fugitive testicle.  The doctor had told me he would try to get the results to me Friday, the day after my surgery, but at the latest Monday.  It's four o'clock on Monday and I still hadn't heard.  As I seem to be saying all the time, the hardest part about cancer is the constant hurry up and wait.  And I still have my neighbors "advice" that it may not be cancer after all.  With the pain I am in and the asymmetrical scrotum I now possess, it had better be cancer.  I don't want to have gone through all this for something that could have "hung around" for the rest of my life with no harm to me.  I call the doctor's office and leave a message.  Five o'clock, six o'clock all pass with no news.  

Another thing I find myself doing since I was diagnosed is looking for signs or signals to what is going on.  I saw the nurse practitioners face go white when he realized he misdiagnosed me the first time.  I was trying to read my nurses face during the ultrasound when she finally said, "Don't go by my expressions because I am tired and I had a bad day."  Not exactly what you want to hear from a nurse, but at least I know she wasn't necessarily frowning at my ultrasound.  I was trying to figure out what it meant in the recovery room when they said I wasn't keeping my oxygen levels up high enough.  And now, I am trying to read what it means that the doctor hasn't called on the day he said he would.  Is the news so bad he wants to tell me in person?  I will see a limousine pull up in the driveway, he will get out with two bodyguards to tell me it's super-ultra-mega-cancer, and it was pointless to take it out, because no matter what you do you die?  I don't know what to think, but my mind is running through every possible outcome, most of them negative.  

Half past six the phone rings.  It is my surgeon's nurse stating she got my message and that the doctor will call me tomorrow.  Not much consolation, but at least I know that I have been heard.  Five minutes later, the doctor calls.  He said the biopsy has come back as seminoma.  "It's the best kind of cancer!", he says.  What, the biggest payday for you?  Should I be celebrating and jumping up and down and saying "I'm number one!  I'm number one!  In your face all you sucky sub-par cancer people, I have the BEST cancer in the world!!!"  OK, I knew what he meant, but it still sounded odd being put that way.  He meant that it was very survivable with minimally invasive treatment.  He said, I can just watch things for the next ten years or I could do radiation and not have to watch as close, as well as have some peace of mind that whatever rogue cancer may be floating around is gone.  However, that is IF my CATscan comes back clean.

Here we are again.  Another hurry up and wait.  It seems like all good cancer news comes with a caveat.  The big "IF" that is constantly in every sentence that comes out of the doctor's mouth.  My wife and I discuss things, and we will both sleep better if I do the radiation and know we kicked any hidden cancer's butt.  I set my mind on that.  Psyche myself up for radiation.  Read all I can.  This is going to be a piece of cake!  All I have to do is get a clean CATscan.  That's no big deal though.  I just lay in a tube for a few minutes and it's over.  I couldn't be more wrong!  That, I will discuss tomorrow.