What NOT To Ask The Urologist...

After my recent setback at the oncologist office, I was not looking forward to my urology visit.  OK, no one ever looks forward to their urology visit, not even the urologist (I mean, who wants to look at that all day long?).   However, I was looking forward to it even less this time.
For anyone that hasn't had a urology appointment this is how a typical urology visit goes.  No matter when you have been there last, there will always be an additional 312 pieces of paperwork to fill out, most of them involve digging through your wallet for various insurance cards, IDs, addresses of estranged relatives, etc.  Right in the middle of the paperwork, they will call you back up to the counter and give you a cup.  This is not for drinking out of, even though it is already personalized with your name on it.  So then, you have to figure out what to do with all the contents of your billfold that are spread on the seat next to you to fill out page 188, paragragh H, subsection 22.3.1 of the form verifying that you read the Paperwork Reduction Act, while you go off to fill the cup.
Once in the restroom one of two things will happen.  It doesn't matter how much you have "studied" for your urine test, there will still only be these two options.  Option one, you stand there awkwardly with the cup in one hand, and..."it" in the other, like two gunslingers at high noon staring down each other, neither one willing to draw first.  You will stay like this for 30-45 minutes waiting for the flow to begin, which will happen precisely when you hear the nurse out in the waiting room calling your name.  Or the only other possibility is you start going immediately and your volume of output is approximately the  same gallons per minute rate of Lake Erie flowing into Niagara, which is all well and good, until you realize you are holding a cup with the capacity to hold the juice from a single grape.  At this point you have to decide, are you going to overflow on your hand or spray all over the room trying to set the cup down midstream.  These are the only two outcomes to the second situation.  Don't try to be a hero and think that you can pull off some great acrobatic move to save the sample and also keep the floor dry.  That kind of cavalier attitude will only result in wet clothes and/or soggy paperwork.
Once you have been called back to the doctor's office, you will remain sequestered there for roughly two and a half hours.  Around you will be pictures of kidney stones resembling medieval weapons...except with more spikes, disgusting diagrams of every genital malady known to man (and some animals), and cutaway anatomical models of sex organs that will make you never want to have sex again.  You will sit here alone in the Office of Horrors until you finally get the urge to pee because you drank too much water for the "cup" and as soon as you pull out your phone to try to get your mind off of your situation, the doctor will walk in and assume you are taking pictures of the plastic cutaway penis.
It is at this time, the doctor will ask you questions having nothing to do with why you are there. "Do you have to urinate more frequently at night if there is a full moon?  Have you ever tried to scratch the back of your knee with your elbow?  Do penguins sweat?  Do you like gladiator movies?" And if you are lucky, you drop your pants, get a quick slap and tickle, pull up your pants, and get charged a couple hundred dollars.  However, I am going to issue a warning!!!
If you have a serious concern, by all means, now is the time to ask the doc about it.  After all, it was my own insistence, after the nurse missed my cancer initially, that resulted in my cancer diagnosis.  Other than that I have found the best thing to do is DO NOT ASK THE UROLOGIST ANY QUESTIONS!!!  See, if it's time for a prostate exam, it's an important part of a male's health and we all need to unpucker and endure it.  However, any added information or question for some reason results in a bonus prostate exam.  I don't know if they get paid more per violation, or all the doctors have a bet, or what, but every question results in a buttsploration.  "Doc, is it normal for your urine to be a little darker if you have been sweating a lot on a hot day?" DROP YOUR PANTS AND BEND YOUR KNEES!  "Doctor, is just waking up once a week in the middle of the night to pee excessive?"  HERE COMES THE BIRDIE!!  "How's your golf swing coming, doc?"  KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR BALL AND GET READY FOR THE FOLLOW THROUGH!!!!
It was for this reason that I decided NOT to ask when I would be done visiting him.  After all, every other time I had been asked, I was always told that I would have to see him for the rest of my life, and the next thing I would hear is the snap of a rubber glove behind me.  So as I my freshly lubricated buttocks swished their way to the front desk to make my next appointment, I was pleasantly surprised to be told that I wouldn't need to come back unless there was a problem!  After all, I had already been devastated by the news a couple months earlier that I was not being released by the oncologist when originally planned.  It seemed that following months of bad news from doctors, I finally heard something I wanted to hear...even if I was walking funny.
Now I just want to clarify one thing here, testicular exams and prostate exams are very important, and there is a peace of mind that one has after clear test (well, that comes after the initial shock).  And even though I was released from my urologist I will continue to do self exams (testicular self exam, I am not flexible enough for the other) and will still be getting the scheduled exams from my family doctor, oncologist, dentist, butcher, and anyone else with a white coat on (at least it seems that way sometimes).  But for now I can relax...without being told to relax and bend over...and celebrate graduating from one doctor and hopefully being that much closer to being a considered a cancer survivor and not a cancer patient.

PTSD and Cancer?

Having recently completed a trip that I had planned for a while, one of my bosses asked me how it went.  I told her how the trip had special significance to my cancer fight and how it took on a new meaning after not being released from oncology as I hoped, and I talked to her about how the trip affected me.  I made the comment to her (also someone who fought her own cancer battle), I said "It's weird the way certain things trigger these memories and feelings, it's almost like PTSD."  She replied "It is PTSD!"
Her words struck me as odd.  I know people with PTSD, and some of them have a lot more to worry about than I do.  After all I was basically disappointed that I have to keep going back to the doctor, that I'm still a cancer patient.  That's all.  Yes, there are certain triggers, certain things that cause memories to come flooding back, but that's just life.  That happens with lots of things right?  Every time I smell cow manure, I get flash backs to the county fair and start look for deep fried anything.
Later on that day, I just Googled "PTSD" and "cancer", thinking I would find a few anecdotes here, or casual observations there.  What popped up on the page astounded me.  Studies, LOTS of studies on the subject.  And they all came to basically the same conclusion, it's not just in our heads...well it is, technically, I guess...but a lot of us are experiencing it.
There were tons of articles but the same results seemed to be popping up in every study.  One out of every three of us experience this.  It only shows up AFTER active treatment, usually when patients are in their monitoring stage.  It can start as soon as 6 months after active treatment, but many experience it at about the three year mark.  And the trigger to cause the onset of the effects doesn't necessarily have to be cancer related, but it brings back the cancer thoughts.
Before I go any further, I don't think I have "post traumatic stress disorder".  As I mentioned, I know people that have PTSD, and I wouldn't even begin to compare my problem with theirs.  However, I do have SOMETHING going on.  And the research shows that clearly a lot more of us do too.
That's when I started getting a little angry.  Further reading on the studies shows that very few oncologists even realize that this is going on.
For those that haven't been to an oncology monitoring appointment it goes like this, you sit in a sterile waiting room (literally, because chemo knocks out your immune system).  You look at the pile of old hard candy (because chemo also dries out your mouth), trying to decide if you are desperate enough to get a piece.  Then the phlebotomist calls you, puts you on the scale while you try to claim that your shoes weigh 50 pounds a piece, takes your vitals, and sucks out about 4 gallons of blood for various tests, spells, and incantations.  Then, before they shuffle you off to wait in the oncologist office, they ask where you are on the pain scale, physically and mentally (you know that little scale of various emojis before they were emojis, ranging from happy face emoji to frowny crying face emoji).  That's where it dawned on me when the breakdown was.
Going into my last oncology appointment, I was excited.  I had my monitoring extended once, but had been told by everyone...except the oncologist, that this would probably be my last appointment ever.  When asked where I was psychologically, I picked a "3" out of "10" ("10" being the most stressed).  After I was told to continue monitoring I was absolutely devastated.  Had anyone stopped me on the way out the door and asked me to give my number on that scale again, it would have been an "8" or a "9".  This was the failure.  This is where no one is paying attention.  And I don't necessarily blame the oncologists.  Like many of the studies discovered, oncologist are trained to fight cancer, not delve into one's psyche. Most doctors aren't cross trained.  You don't go to the vet, have them spay or neuter your dog, then ask them if your own tooth has a cavity...well I know one person that might, but she's the exception.
One in three is a pretty significant number.  That is what surprises me.  How can 33% of us be ignored and forgotten about?  If I handed you and ice cream cone and said it's $5 and there is a two in three chance it will taste delicious, but a one in three chance it will taste as bad as a rock concert restroom smells, you probably wouldn't do it.  There is a 67% chance you will have fun on this roller coaster, but a 33% you will get seriously hurt or killed...are you going to wait in line?
Although, there is tons of research, when I went to the major cancer resources to find out what help there was out there, the websites had surprisingly little information.  The research is out there.  It all basically says the same thing, but no one really seems to know what to do with that knowledge.  And in the mean time people are falling through the cracks.  I haven't thought about harming myself, but the studies do have morbidity rates that are higher than people not going through it.
As in many things with cancer, we need to start educating each other, and passing along what helps us, and that its a normal feeling, and how to get help.  We've always been good about warning about cancer insomnia, scanxiety, and chemo brain, but not this whether it truly is PTSD or whatever it is.  Maybe it's because it happens after most of us have left our support groups or no longer get the longer talks with the oncologist and their team.  But we have to make a change somewhere.  We have to get the word out.  We have to help each other.  We have to do something.

PRS Guitars, the Cure for Cancer...

For anyone that doesn't know, right before I had gotten diagnosed with cancer, I had saved up to buy a new PRS guitar.  I had sold various things and was finally ready to make my new purchase.  When getting ready to go to the store, I saw two separate ads for people selling used PRS guitars and another brand I was wanting to try as well.  I realized if I bought used instead of new, I could get TWO guitars instead of one.  And we all know, two is twice as good as one.  I bought a PRS and the other brand.  Later when one of the other sellers finally got around to contacting me back and offered to sell me the other PRS.  I was enjoying the one I had, and still had a little bit of money saved, so I bought it as well.

As luck would have it, my surgery limited the amount of weight I could lift.  Those PRS guitars I bought were just under the weight limit and were how I passed much of the time recovering from surgery and chemo.  I decided to sell some more stuff I wasn't using on ebay (like parachute pants and a disco ball) and get a nice PRS guitar after I got well.  I didn't get the chance.  For the first Christmas after Chemo, my whole family got together and bought me one.  It was a gift I never expected to get and one of the first pics of my son were taken with him holding it.  A few days after Christmas, I walked into the music store with what little money I had been saving for a nice PRS (not nearly enough) and there sat the guitar that I had originally been saving up for in the first place, marked down drastically because it literally fell off of the back of a truck and chipped some paint.  Although, not nearly as nice as the one my family had just gotten me, I had just enough cash to cover it, and decided to make the PRS story come around full circle by buying the one that made me start the journey in the first place.

Two years ago, I had the opportunity to meet Paul Reed Smith and had gone over in my mind everything I was going to say and thank him for what was basically a coincidence, but it meant a lot to me.  All I managed to get out when I met him was my first name and I got too emotional to carry on any further.

Now I would say this is all review to my regular blog readers, but I can't imagine that anyone would actually come back to my page twice, it's really not that good, so that is what you have missed in the past.

As I said on my last post, I was expecting to be done with oncology visits and therefore done with cancer in May.  The nurses this past November told me it was customary to schedule something big to celebrate breaking free of the cancer stigma.  Paul Reed Smith was opening up the doors to the factory in June, just a few weeks after I was to be released, so that is the trip I planned for.  That is the trip that would bring everything full circle.  I started my cancer journey with PRS guitars, I would end it with a tour of the factory...except that didn't happen.  I didn't get released.  I got sentenced to an unknown number of years of continued monitoring.

I rolled into Maryland and on the PRS campus with a bittersweet feeling.  This was supposed to be a celebration of being free, instead it was a reminder that I am still going to oncology visits.  I am still a cancer patient.  I am still living under that threat that I am not free and clear.  

Now here is the thing.  Paul Reed Smith is an actual guy, not just some made up brand.  He's just a guy that likes playing guitars and tried to make a great guitar at good price.  He doesn't know any of this is going on.  And all I really wanted to do was say "thank you".  My wife came with me to a private event that was essentially for the PRS "fan club".  Paul was being very cordial and walking around to everyone talking to them, signing autographs, answering questions.  He was working the room and making his way over to us.  My wife was wanting him to come over, but I knew I wasn't ready.  It wasn't the man that was making me emotional, it was the whole process, the whole history.  I have had those PRS guitars for only about two weeks longer than I have been dealing with cancer.  The two are linked in my mind for eternity.  I can't separate the two.  One helped me survive the other.  I feel silly because it's just a hunk of wood and a little bit of metal, but that's where I spent my time and worked through my problems.  

As Paul got closer, I knew I couldn't say thanks this time either.  When you have had cancer, there are just certain things that trigger you memories and take you back to that time.  It could be a food, a phone call, a doctor's office whatever.  For me the flashbacks sometimes take me back to PRS guitars and or back to the urologist office when a guy I have just met asks me to drop my pants and starts playing with my ball.  Luckily that only happens in doctors' offices (or what I was led to believe was a doctor's office.  Fool me once...)  So as Paul got closer, and as my wife got more excited to tell him what I hadn't been able to, I just had everything flood back into my memory.  The cancer, the chemo, the celebration that didn't happen, and the seemingly endless years of monitoring.  I couldn't take it.  I walked out.  No explanation, I just walked around to the side of the factory where no one could see me.  I squatted in the grass.  I walked by the pond.  I messaged a good friend.  I did everything to try to distract me from what I was feeling.  It didn't work as well as I wanted.
I had decided I just needed to go through the factory alone.  My wife decided to get something signed by Paul for our son, since ultimately the PRS guitars will be his one day.  Cell service was non-existent in the factory and as soon as I emerged, my wife called me and asked where I was.  She had gotten the autograph for my son and told Paul that I wanted to say thanks.  Paul had recently had cancer affect people in his life and told her he knew exactly what I was going through and started searching for me.  She said she would bring me back to him.
She found me, and took me in the tent.  Paul had a line of people seeking autographs and I didn't want to interrupt.  All of a sudden, he looks up and sees my wife, whispers something to his assistant, and made a beeline for us.  I tried to keep it together.  All I needed to say was thanks, I knew I could do that much.  That is when he put his arm around me, told me what the people in his life had been through, and I broke down as he shared his pain.  I did manage to say thanks, but that was about it.  But that is what I needed to do.  I may have shown up for the wrong reason, but I still accomplished the original mission.  A week later, I watched Paul put on a presentation at another show.  I no longer had to say thanks.  I didn't go up to meet him with everyone else.  He knows my pain, I know his, and I finally got to say thanks.  Now I just need to learn how to play guitar halfway decent before the oncologist kicks me loose and everything will be complete.

Goodbye, Oncologist...Oops, Not Yet

Last month I was excited to go to what I was led to believe would be my last, or next to last oncology appointment, either way 2015 would be my final year.  The visit before the phlebotomists asked me what I was going to do to celebrate my release.  They said it was tradition for most cancer patients to celebrate finally being free with a trip or a big purchase.  So, I already had my trip scheduled and booked, I had everything ready to go.  On the big day, I took my three year old to see the nurses.  They had heard so much about him I wanted him to be able to say "goodbye".
When I was first diagnosed, I was given the option after surgery of doing CT scans approximately every other day (or at least that is what the schedule they presented me with seemed to be) or do a round of chemo and have hardly any CT scans and be done with monitoring a lot sooner.  Well...doctors have a tendency to lie to get you to do what they want you to do.  I did the chemo, which seemed to be immediately followed by a CT scan.  I am not so sure I wasn't getting a CT scan during my infusion.  So anyway, that was the first clue that things weren't going according to the schedule I was initially presented with.
The bending of the schedule continued until my three year mark, which is when I distinctly remember originally being told I was going to be cut free.  Then the oncologist said it would probably be good to monitor until the five year mark, but we would do less CT scans...then he immediately sent me for a CT scan.
You never know when you are no longer a "cancer patient".  I mean the cancer was cut out eight days after we found it. Was that the end?  Was it after my chemo infusion?  Was it after my chemo brain fog left?  When?  I will admit, there are advantages to being referred to as a cancer patient.  If you get a Diet Pepsi instead of a Pepsi at the drive thru, normally, they would just give you a Pepsi to make up for the mistake.  If somehow you can work the words "cancer patient" into why you were devastated to get a Diet Pepsi, you get your Pepsi AND an ice cream.  But still I was done being the cancer patient.  I was hoping that the Oncologist Code said they could only lie about continuing monitoring one time, then they had to go back to lying about CT scans.
There is a stigma about being a cancer patient.  Among cancer patients there is the joke that you always here "you look good" out of a person's mouth first.  No one really knows what that means.  Do we look better than death?  Is that what they were expecting?  There are many colleagues that I see a few times a year with whom I used to have normal conversations, ever since my diagnosis they start off the same way. "How are you feeling?"  It's just front and foremost on some people's minds.  Which in turn, makes it front and foremost on my mind.  I was looking forward to being able to say, "I'm finally done with oncology so we can go back to talking about guitars, cars, or some sport that you care about and I don't."
My son and I walked into see the oncologist.  The phlebotomist had already said "bye" certain that I was being cut loose, just shy of five years.  I did my first and what I expected was my last introduction between my son and the oncologist, when I got the news...maybe it's still too early to cut me loose.  Maybe we should monitor tumor markers and CBC for a few more years, BUT no CT scans!  I expect to get an order for a CT scan in the mail any day now.
I didn't want to let on to anyone, but I was devastated.  I had been looking forward to being released, well, since the day I was diagnosed.  The nurse practitioner thought sure it would be today, the phlebotomists thought it would be that day, everyone in that office thought it would be that day...except the doctor.  Luckily, I had my son with me so the only things I was allowed to focus on were pancakes and Legos...not at the same time though...well OK, he did mention that we needed to buy more Legos while eating his pancakes.  I sent messages out of the news to those that were wanting to know.  Almost all wished me congratulations that I didn't have to do CT scans anymore and that it was good news.  Only one person asked me how I felt about that.  And the truth is I hated it!  I wanted to be done.  I wanted to be free.  I wanted to get on with my life.  I wanted to be able to say that I was a "cancer survivor" and not a "cancer patient".  I wanted to be free of the stigma.  I wanted to be free of the "How are you feeling?"  I wanted to walk out from under that cloud and finally be done. But now I have to let the cloud follow me around for a few more years.
So that's where life left me that day.  Still a cancer patient.  I had a special trip booked that instead of being a celebration of being done with cancer it's become a reminder that I am still a cancer patient.  And there I found myself, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, with a cloud still over my head, a bandage from a blood draw still on my hand, and a three year old giggling while he stabbed and ate the "eyeballs" off his pancake and demanded Legos.  Well, I guess life ain't all bad.

Another Lump? I'm Running Out Of Balls... Or The Nutless Wonder?

For better or worse, going through testicular cancer once makes you a little gun shy.  Losing one testicle isn't too bad, but you quickly run out of testicles to lose after that.  I have sometimes wondered if having to carry a personal cell phone AND a work cell phone may have put out too much radiation and caused my cancer.  So to be safe, I wear cargo pants all the time and carry the phones lower.  My friends make fun of me, because I am still being exposed to twice the radiation of one phone it's just on my leg now, but I remind them that I still have TWO legs.
Anyway, at my last urology appointment, I mentioned I found a lump.  Having the health issues I have, I regularly see five different doctors, four of whom have a great sense of humor and I can joke around with.  However, my urologist, who is a great doctor and ultimately responsible for saving my life since he caught the cancer when a nurse practitioner dismissed it as nothing, he is all business all the time.  No joking, nothing but the facts.  I mentioned the lump to him, and kneeling down for my yearly check he was able to locate it as well.  He stated he was fairly certain that it was nothing, but if I wanted to get an ultrasound done to rest easier, I could.  I stated, I was probably just scared from finding the lump the first time (that ended up being cancer) and was paranoid about finding lumps now.  Still kneeling down and checking out the lump, he looks at me with a serious look on his face and says "When you feel something, I want to feel something."  Now, I know what he meant by that.  He meant, no one knows your body better than yourself, so if you notice a change you need to report that to your doctor.  It just seemed a little funny to me hearing that with someone kneeling down and holding my testicle in his hand.  And knowing that this very good doctor would not see the humor in what he just said, made the whole moment funnier.  I felt like a kid sitting in class in grade school trying not to giggle at "Guess what?  Chicken butt!"  I came pretty close to biting a hole in my tongue to suppress the laughter.
Fast forward six months later, and I kept feeling that lump with my regular checks, and it kept making me more and more nervous that it was "something".  I finally called the office when I could take no more to schedule an ultrasound.  The day they found my first lump, my ultrasound was scheduled for as soon as I could drive to the other office.  Last week's scheduling took days.  When the scheduler finally did return my call, she said, "When did you want to come in?"  I just told her, "Tomorrow!"
I went to the office and was relieved to see the same old lady that had performed my ultrasound last time.  Now there is probably more than a few males that would read this that are thinking to themselves, "Old lady?  No!  I was some hot young thing fresh out of college!"  And those males haven't thought this through all the way.  While the testicle may feel like this finely crafted orb, it is kept in the most hideous, unattractive container.  I am not much on trying to figure out what the fairer sex finds attractive, but I would imagine that is pretty low on the list of alluring male body parts.  And you are going to force someone to be up close and personal with it for some period of time since, to do it right, they have to scan the area from two different angles.  You want someone that you aren't trying to impress, that knows what they are doing.  You want to walk out of that office with some peace of mind.
And speaking of peace of mind, I explained to the lady where I felt the lump and she felt the area too.  This is where years of experience come in, because not only did she find the lump, but she described the area better than I could, which made me comfortable that we were both focused on the same spot and that she would get good images of the area I was concerned about.
First, she went ahead and checked "lefty" and put me at ease by saying, no matter what they found, he was going to stick around because the lump was not affecting him at all.  That was my main concern, I admire the "flatbaggers" because their journey is much more difficult with testosterone replacement therapy and other issues.  I didn't want to go down that road.  I did mention to her that last time, I could tell it was cancer, even though we had to wait for someone else to read the images, just by the look on her face.  That was a mistake.  She put on her best poker face this time, making sure I had no clue as to what she saw on that screen.  Do NOT play cards with that woman!
Feeling confident that at least I would get to the bottom of things so to speak, I went home to wait for the news.  Unfortunately that was Friday, so I had to wait through the weekend.  Each night, scanxiety was a little worse, and I slept a little less.  Finally, last night (night four), I think I slept for all of about an hour.  My wife had enough.  She told me to call the doctor.  I told her I was going to wait, because they were supposed to call me.  In my mind, if you call too much and irritate the doctor, they make the incisions twice as long, make you wait longer in the waiting room, or leave the blinds open during your screening.  She said "OK", then went to work and called the doctor anyway!  The good news is, apparently it's no big deal.  She didn't find out what it was, because she just wanted to hear it wasn't cancer so that I would quit tossing and turning all night long.
So, what is the moral of the story?  I don't freaking know anymore.  How about, when in doubt check it out!  Yeah, that works.  But seriously, there are two reasons for checking out anything you find suspicious.  First it could save your life (like it did the first time I noticed an odd lump) and second, you will be able to relax because you aren't worrying about it anymore.  And remember the words my doctor said to me, that if you feel something, he wants to feel something.

Testicular Cancer Top 10....or I Am Not A Doctor, But You Are Still Going To Tell Me About Your Nuts...

In the breast cancer community, there are a lot of sources for finding information on how to do self exams, what treatment options are, and how to cope afterwards.  And while there are certainly many sources of information and non profits for so called "men's cancers", we aren't as open about discussing them.  It is ironic that the same ones that like to boast about being so well endowed that they make donkeys jealous are the same ones afraid to ask anyone how to do an exam.  I am not real sure what the reason for the disparity between the sexes is.  Maybe it's because breasts are right up front where you can see them and testicles are hidden, except in European bathing suits.  Or maybe how the great masters would always view breasts as these perfectly formed pieces of art that they would spend days sculpting into marble, while at the same time, the artists would make a guys junk look like a wadded up piece of paper with some concrete slapped on it.  At any rate, the public perception about the two are not the same.
After I went through my fight, and if you have read any of my posts you know that I have no shame in discussing what one experiences with testicular cancer, I cannot tell you how many times friends, colleagues, and random strangers have pulled me aside and asked, "How did you  know?"  I certainly don't mind answering that question.  I can explain how I found mine and then I usually refer to a website like http://www.testicularcancersociety.org/testicular-self-exam.html to get a more clinical and better explained way to do exams.  Then the feeling of dread comes over me, because I have been through this enough to know what is coming next.  The person will then describe, in great wrinkly and hairy detail, why they are asking me that question.  So far, they have always stopped short of actually showing me, and I would like to keep it that way.  Let's face it, they are not a very attractive piece of anatomy.  One of the few good things about having a nutectomy (orchiectomy, if you want to get technical), is there is one less of those ugly things that you have to look at in the shower, and bump into random stuff with...oh, and you can do your self exams in half the time.
So in the spirit of changing the stigma of testicular cancer and breaking the silence, I will post before and after pictures of my...OK, not really, but I will answer some of the questions here, that I normally get asked in a hushed voice in the corner of a crowded room, or outside around the corner out of ear shot of the smokers, or in late night phone calls with heavy breathing...OK, that person never actually says what they want, but always hangs up after I tell them to do a self exam.

1. How to do a self exam?  There are several sources for how to do a self exam including the one from the Testicular Cancer Society I mentioned above.  Some places even offer shower cards just like some breast cancer foundations do. There are two things to remember.  First do exams consistently.  You will notice something changing down there long before anyone else will.  I don't care how often you go to the doctor or what odd pastimes you may have, you will still notice first if you do regular exams.  And the earlier you catch it, the less it spreads to other parts of your body.  Second, we all know about shrinkage, so the boys have to be warm to get a good exam.  That is why it is generally suggested during a bath or shower, rather than right after taking the Polar Bear Plunge.  After all, you want things loose to feel details, cancer starts small and grows, you don't want things cold and shriveled like trying to feel two acorns stuffed in a leather wallet.

2. What if I find something?  It's probably nothing, but do you want to take that chance with your life?  Go to a doctor to be sure.  You would be amazed of the things that hang out with two nuts such as hydroceles, spermatoceles, cysts, drummers (sorry, musician joke), most of which don't hurt anything.  In my case, harmless hydroceles were found, but the issue is they can mask cancer, so I was taught to do an illumination test, where basically shining a flashlight behind the boys GENERALLY causes the harmless stuff to glow and the bad things to be dark.  However, let your doctor determine that for you.  That is not always the case and if done wrong, you can have cancer growing for months without realizing it.

3. If it is cancer, will they take my ball(s)?  Most likely yes.  That is why you want to catch it early so you only lose one.  But ultimately, what is the big deal?  I assure you that in the almost four years since "rightie" was removed, no one has noticed.  I get just as many compliments down there as I always have.

4. Will my testosterone levels drop with only one nut?  Maybe, but probably only slightly.  My doctor put it to me this way, if you lose one lung or donate a kidney it doesn't mean you are running on half power.  Usually both don't work at full power anyway, so the remaining one just works a little harder than before.  My testosterone numbers are well into the normal range.

5. Will my sperm count drop?  See above.  The fun part is with testosterone testing you give a blood sample,  but with sperm count testing there is no needle but there are dirty magazines.  Even if you drop in half, you will still more than likely have enough to get the job done or get you in trouble, however you view that situation.  Just a word of caution, I don't think the girl downtown offering to check your sperm levels for $5 dollars has had any medical training whatsoever.

6. Will I be able to have kids?  God I hope so, because I had one, so if you can't then someone has some explaining to do!  Yes, either the natural way or with frozen guys.

7. What is the first thing I should do after being diagnosed?  Ask all of your hot female friends if they want to say "goodbye".  OK, obviously that is a joke and probably wouldn't even work.  But I would call an organization like livestrong.org especially if you are interested in having kids.  They can tell you about certain grants that will pay for collection and storage of frozen guys, but the catch on some of them is you have to apply BEFORE you go to get the collection done.

8. Can the cancer come back?  Yes it could, but that is why you talk to an oncologist to see what your options are.  I opted for chemo for the peace of mind of not having to worry as much about it returning.  A few weeks of feeling sick was more attractive to me than a lifetime of worry.

9. Do they just slice open the bag and take out the groceries?  No!  They go in from around your waist so they can take all of the plumbing too, just in case it has started spreading.  So you can show people your scar without being obscene...unless you want to.

10.  Do you miss it or have any phantom pain like an amputee would?  No, and the good thing is, say hypothetically, you have a two and a half year old that runs at you full speed with a plastic Mike the Knight sword, the chances that he will hit your tender spot have now been cut in half (although he still manages to get me on the tender side EVERY SINGLE TIME!  I am throwing that damn sword in the trash!).

So there you have it.  The top ten (legitimate) questions I get asked in whispers and darkened corners.  If you have anymore (legitimate) questions I will answer them like I did here, based on my own experiences or direct you to a trusted source.  I am in no way a doctor, and I in no way want to see pictures, diagrams, or even very accurate descriptions.

Old Feelings Die Hard

Four years ago this week, I first noticed my lump.  My wife had went on vacation with her mother and I stayed home alone to take care of work projects and watch the dogs.  The past three years, I never really paid any attention to this date.  After all, it's the date I just noticed something.  It wasn't the date I was diagnosed.  It wasn't the date I had my surgery or went through chemo or anything.  But that is the weird thing about cancer, it seems you are never really completely free.
This year we had planned to take my two year old to my parents to watch fireworks for the 4th of July.  From their house, they can see most of the fireworks.  And we thought if we take him there, and he doesn't like the loud noises, or the bright lights, or he just starts being...well, a two year old, we could just take him in the house and not have to deal with traffic or crowds or that one guy that has to describe every firework loudly.  After we had made these plans, my job made other plans, and my wife offered to take my son without me.  It was a plan that was seemingly perfect, my son could experience the fireworks for the first time and I could keep skittish dogs company in the country.
That is when it hit me last night.  I have been passing my scans without any problem, and my scanxiety has dropped to almost nothing.  I only have to go to the oncologist twice a year now  Even my dermatologist told me that she could tell I was really making a good effort to avoid skin cancer.  So I haven't been thinking about cancer much at all.  But last night was different.  I was back to that place four years ago, just me and the dogs.  The weird thing is, I didn't feel a lump, but I did have that feeling, a feeling I can't explain.
Most of us when we are diagnosed, aside from the shock of the "C" word, you get this "icky" feeling that something is growing inside of you that wants to kill you.  The surgery can't come quick enough, you just want that stuff out today.  That is the feeling I had last night.  The feeling that I was all alone again.  The feeling that something icky was going on.  What made last night even freakier, was without thinking, I picked up that PRS guitar I bought four years ago today to play with while they were gone.  It's not one I normally play, but it's what I grabbed last night.  The only one that was light enough for me to play after my surgery.  The one that got me through cancer.  Just as my mind flashbacked to the bad time four years ago, I also subconsciously reached for the one thing that helped me get through it too.
As I approach what I consider my fourth cancerversary, I have been thinking about when I am done.  Is it five years?  Is it ten?  Is it when you quit going to the oncologist...I hope it's not that one, because I think he has been saying "just a few more years" since my second visit.  As far as my health is concerned, I think I am done.  I have been getting clean scans.  I have finally been dropping the weight I gained while I was sick.   And for the most part, I feel better than before any of this happened.  But I guess it's harder to gauge the feeling that we are done mentally being affected by cancer.  Because last night, I sat alone and scared and realized I wasn't as done as I thought I was.  Or maybe I am, because I grabbed that PRS, just like I did after my surgery, and played until I didn't have cancer anymore.

Cancer Flashbacks With Paul Reed Smith

I am well aware that it has been a while since I last posted on here.  I do have a reason.  Trying to type with a toddler in the house means most of your writing looks like this "aklsjoun   saiolkjdfslak  klafjl;a".  And even if he were not "helping" me on the keyboard, it is hard to concentrate on writing when you have a two foot tall individual that moves just shy of the speed of light, that you are yelling things at like "get your fingers out of the dogs' eyes", "no, the remote control doesn't belong in the toilet", "we can't blow bubbles outside right now, it's 14' outside, and dark", "get your fingers out of the dogs' eyes", "where did you find that, get it out of your mouth", "get your fingers out of the dogs' eyes", "no, the table lamp is not a toy", and "get your fingers out of the dogs' eyes".  (In case you were wondering, learning the parts of the face was a very challenging time for our dogs' vision.  Maybe we will have to find them a "seeing eye person".)

So, because of the delay, I am writing about an incident that happened in June.  I think we have all been in a situation where a sound, or picture, or smell has brought you back to something in your past.  For instance, every time I smell VapoRub, I think back to that time as a little child that my great grandmother rubbed it into an open wound.  It still brings tears to my eyes.  Well, for the most part I feel I am over this cancer stuff.  Sure, I still have a few more years of CTscans, X-rays, blood tests, and all of the other monitoring.  I am not exactly sure how many years, because asking an oncologist how much longer you need to see him, is similar to asking your parents on a road trip "are we there yet?".  I think the answer has always been "4 or 5 more years" (for the oncologist visits, not the road trip...it just seemed like it took 4 or 5 years sometimes).  Other than the endless doctors' appointments, I really don't have much to do with cancer.  Oh there is still the solemn tone from friends you don't see very often asking "How are you doing?"  But for the most part, I am living my life.

I love playing guitar.  I play like I play golf, I don't play particularly well, but I don't take it too seriously and I enjoy doing it.  When I had my surgery, I was restricted in what I could lift.  Luckily, just before I was diagnosed, I had found some cheap used Paul Reed Smith guitars.  They were the lightest guitars I owned, and were pretty much the only ones I could lift and play for a long time.  They were the one thing that was able to get my mind off how bad things were for an hour or so at a time.  When I finished my chemo, my family all pitched in and bought me a nice Paul Reed Smith for Christmas.  The guitar means a lot to me for so many reasons.  First I just like the guitar!  But it symbolized closing the door on cancer.  It meant a lot for my family to pitch in and get me something like that.  And it was something I spent a lot of time with during my "chemo brain" months.  So, a coincidental introduction to PRS guitars, ending up having a pretty significant impact on that period of my life.

Which brings me to what happened in June.  Every year, Sweetwater Music has what basically amounts to "musician porn" at their campus in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  Literally hundreds of manufacturers are there showing off all their new toys, letting you play with them, and they bring in dozens of endorsed artists (some more famous than others) to trick you into thinking that if you just had that equipment, you could make all those amazing sounds too!  Well, Paul Reed Smith was on hand.  Not just the company, Paul Reed Smith the actual person.  In my past, I worked for a record company, regularly hanging out backstage and on tour buses of multi-platinum and even diamond selling artists (diamond is ten million copies).  I was never nervous or star struck hanging out with rock stars, but being the geek I am, I was excited to see a guy that designs guitars.  

One good thing is, I was right at home with my fellow geeks, because there was a full auditorium of us waiting to see him (although, I was one of the few that showed up an hour early to stand in line, and made it to the front row).  I watched his presentation in awe when he talked about all the technical things that make his company's guitars sound so good.  I had heard he was good about doing "meet and greets" with his fans, and throughout waiting in line, and his presentation, and...waiting in line again to meet him, I ran through my head exactly what I was going to say.  I was going to tell him, how his products got me through some dark times.  Thank him profusely.  And maybe talk to him about the technical nuances of a quality guitar (not that I know what I am talking about, but I can fake it).  

The problem with be one of the first ones in the auditorium for the presentation, is that means you are going to be one of the last ones out to stand in line for the meet and greet.  The whole time in line, I ran over my little monologue in my head.  Over and over again, as the line grew smaller and I moved closer and closer to this guy who really has no idea that his guitar helped me with my cancer fight (although his company does regular donate to cancer charities).  Then the big moment, I am standing before THE Paul Reed Smith...and I feel like I am at the oncologist's office for the first time, all the emotion came flooding back from that day.  I felt the fear, felt overwhelmed, I felt like I was going to burst into tears...but I WAS NOT going to do that...no matter what!

So, I stood before Paul Reed Smith, handed him part of my guitar to sign.  And was afraid if I said anything I would have an emotional outburst.  So, in an effort to hold back this flood of emotions, I stood there looking like I was probably about to punch him.  He asked me if I would like the autograph personalized and my big speech that I had practiced over and over again, was now reduced to one word, "Tom".  Yes, all that I had planned on saying, all that I wanted to thank him for was boiled down to me barely uttering my own name through clenched teeth.  He politely signed my piece for me and I briskly walked out of there, trying not to break into an all out sprint as I headed to my car, hoping if I went fast enough I could outrun this emotional avalanche.  But I was also hoping if I couldn't keep it together, I would be far enough away that no one would see me.

Now, let me just say one thing in my defense.  The surgery I had to help prevent a different kind of cancer, has caused me to be a hypoglycemic.  And sometimes when people have low blood sugar, they tend to get more intense emotions.  And, because I am a big geek, I got so busy looking at musician porn, and standing in line an hour early, and sitting through a presentation, and standing in line again, that I went about 14 hours without eating (not a smart thing for a hypoglycemic to do).  So I will blame part of this incident on that, so as not to appear to be such a wuss.

So, I didn't get to thank Paul Reed Smith.  And to be honest, I don't know what he would have thought about it if I did.  It's not like he found the lump, or performed the surgery, or administered the chemo, but he was still important to my recovery, even if that isn't why he got in the guitar business.  But this incident says a lot about us cancer survivors.  You never know what is going to help us get through a hard time.  It could be a book, a phone call, visits from a friend, or a cheap used guitar.  And it is hard to feel "done" with cancer when you are still going to doctors' appointments every few months.  They tell you it's over with, but in the very next breath, tell you to come back in November.  And just like any other major event in your life, you never know what trigger will bring you back a memory or a feeling, that you may or may not want to experience again.  At least, I got to meet him.  I got something signed to me personally.  And I got something to eat so something like that didn't happen again.

Back To Normal Levels After Testicular Cancer

One of the things many people worry about as they undergo treatment for testicular cancer is how will this affect them afterwards?  Well, I finally received my answer.

One thing I was worried about was testosterone levels.  One of my nurse friends said it would be good to have lower testosterone levels because it would decrease my future cancer risks.  However, commercials are constantly pointing out how my becoming a fat, lazy slob as I get older has nothing to do with me being a fat lazy slob, but low testosterone (that they would be able to fix).  Feeling like I was in a "damned if I do..." position I asked my urologist about it.  I was told that high testosterone doesn't increase the chance of prostate cancer, but it makes it grow faster if you do get it.  And low testosterone may make you more inclined to be a fat, lazy slob, but it doesn't really cause any health problems on its own (being a fat, lazy slob does though).  Worried that my levels would be half, he told me how most duplicated organs aren't working 100%  all the time anyway.  That is why people with one lung or kidney can still function, because the remaining one turns it up a little.  After going through a bunch more explanation in doctor talk which I kinda blanked out on, we decided to test my testosterone and the results came back that I was at normal levels.  So, I have to blame being a fat, lazy slob on something else...like the lack of global warming in my area making it too cold to go outside.

Recently, my wife went to her "female doctor" and somehow came home with an appointment for me!  I get enough doctors' appointments scheduled on my own without having to do someone else's homework too.  Anyway, I was told to go back to the Jerkatorium (official doctor lingo for a sperm bank) and see what my levels were, just in case we ever want to have another kid, which I am told we aren't having, but do this just in case we change our minds one day, which isn't up to me anyway, and it is always a woman's prerogative to change her mind so I should just keep my mouth shut...or something like that.  I will spare you the details of the inner workings of the Jerkatorium, because I have previously written about that.  But what I did find disturbing this time was the addition to the "library" of DVD "aids".  While carefully pushing them around trying my best not to actually touch anything in there, (because after all I know what people do in that room because I was about to do it) I noticed most of the DVD cases were empty.  I wish I could immediately decontaminate everything I am wearing as soon as I leave that room, so it certainly would never cross my mind that I should grab a integral part of the functioning of this room and bring it home with me.  Ewww!  Anyway, we will just fast forward to the results.  That came back saying I was normal too!  Not normal for a testicular cancer survivor, but normal for a normal person...assuming normal people go into a room, look at dirty magazines, leave their business on the counter, and occasionally steal DVDs.

So the moral of the story is, don't steal from the Jerkatorium because you DO know where that stuff has been....NOOO, that's not the moral of the story!  The moral is, not only is testicular cancer a very survivable cancer, but you can regain your normal life back.  You won't be half a man.  You can still have normal levels of testosterone and swimmers, and even if your tests results don't come back normal, you can easily fix the testosterone levels, and if you froze your swimmers like I did before surgery, you can still have children or use it for disgusting pranks to put on YouTube and none of your friends will ever eat or drink anything at your house again.

And there are even some positives of being part of the One Nut Club!  I will close with this Top 10 List:

Top 10 Benefits of Only Having One Testicle

10  You only have to manscape half as much (if you are a manscaper).
9  When you test your levels, you health insurance company is actually paying for you to look at porn!
8  You have more room in your underwear.
7  Not as much to get sweaty down there.
6  People are afraid to use the phrase "Don't go off half cocked" around you.
5  When it is really cold out you can say "I am freezing my ball off!"
4  When your toddler is flailing around like a twerking jellyfish, your chances of getting hit in the nuts just dropped by 50% (anecdotal evidence).
3  Your self exams are done in half the time.  Don't forget to do them!
2  You can make the comment "I would give my right (or left) nut for ______"  then you could offer to go get it from the surgeon.
1  When you wear Speedos you only have to worry about stuff slipping out on one side. 

When Are You Done With Cancer?

As I write this I am about two and a half years out of my cancer diagnosis and treatment.  Aside from a little skin cancer scare (which turned out was nothing) one could say I have been done with cancer.  However, that is not exactly how it works in the cancer game.

There are so many questions as to when you are officially no longer a cancer patient.  Was it the surgery?  The chemo?  When you quit going to an oncologist?  Or when you finally pay off all your medical bills? (In which case I will never be done.)  In many ways I no longer feel like a cancer patient, but at the same time, at the beginning of every month I look at my calendar and see what doctors appointments I have this round.  It is hard to feel "well" or "cured" when you are sitting in a waiting room all of the time.  I mean who needs a People magazine subscription when you can read it for free every month while you wait for the nurse to call your name?  The good news is the frequency of the appointments slowly grows further and further apart.  I think I am down to CT scans once a year now (so I only have to drink a half gallon of nasty tasting water a year).

The funny thing is, because of the doctors' good reports you feel like your not well.  Because of the type of work I do, I tend to run into people that I haven't seen for months or even a year and they always ask how I am doing  With the frequency of doctors appointments my answer is usually,"Well, I was just at the doctor and they said I was fine."  That is the Catch 22 of being in monitoring, you have to see an "ist" each month (oncologist, urologist, gastroenterologist, etc.) but at least they say you are doing good each time.  You don't feel like you can say "Oh, the cancer thing is over." because you are still seeing an oncologist, but at the same time you don't feel like a real cancer patient because you are not having to go through any treatment.

On one hand, it is nice to have the peace of mind every month that you are safe for four more weeks.  On the other hand things get so routine, you wonder why you are paying more and more for something you could probably do yourself at this point.  Heck, I am in and out of my urologist's office so fast, I could probably just drive by his office slowly with my scrotum hanging out the car window and toss out my co-pay.  

I think the biggest part of not feeling "over" cancer is the mental aspect of it.  Every bump, twitch, even feeling tired when you don't think you should makes you wonder if just maybe it's something bigger.  And not even your thoughts are safe.  My one-year-old had been going through a phase where he wants me to hug me, or have me hold him, or just lean against me.  Most people would just understand it is the clingy phase that all toddlers go through, but my mind wondered if he wasn't sensing something, that maybe I wouldn't be around much longer and he needed to get his quality time in while I was still alive.

Even happy dreams aren't safe.  I know two people that have flatlined on operating tables and come back to life.  They both tell of people that have died greeting them at the end of the tunnel and telling them that it's not their time yet to go back to earth.  I have had some friends die and some family members die, but only one person in my life has died that I saw everyday, and would spend an hour just talking to everyday about whatever.  Well, that person was in my dream the other night.  He welcomed me into Heaven, showed me around, and we picked up on conversations we started before he died.  I woke up feeling so good knowing that if I died, this person would be the one that brought me through the tunnel and took me to see my other friends and family that have already passed.  But that good feeling quickly turned to dread, as I wondered why I was dreaming about dying and does my body know something that it hasn't shared with my brain yet.  Maybe part of my brain does know and it is just not sharing the information with the rest of my brain the same way it does when I ask it where I put the car keys.

The biggest joy I have in life is watching my son play, which we weren't even sure we were going to be able to have when all this started.  Even while sitting there just watching him run around like a drunk kamikaze gymnast, I worry about recurrence and not being around to watch him grow up.  Or not being around and maybe his only memory of me will be me yelling at him to quit splashing in the dogs' water dish (which to be fair is something I do approximately 1500 times everyday).

So am I done with cancer?  The doctors say "yes" but then tell me to schedule an appointment to come back and make sure it's still "yes".  Physically, outside of underwear not fitting quite the way it used to, I feel like I am done with cancer.  Mentally, the chemo fog has cleared up, but there is always that cancer cloud hanging over me, just like a summertime meteorologist's permanent "30% chance of storms".  The ironic thing is the more my son shines the more I worried I get about that cancer cloud.  But until then I will enjoy every second I get to spend with my son, even the hours on end I spend pulling him out of the dog dish, and hopefully live long enough to teach him how to check for testicular cancer on himself one day.

What's So Super About The Superbowl Or Ultimate About The UFC?

As the Superbowl draws near, I started to think more about sports.  I have never really been that into sports.  The only sports I would watch were sumo wrestling (which is very rarely on television here in the the U.S.) and I have switched from watching boxing to Ultimate Fighting Championship/Mixed Martial Arts fighting.  Recently I have found myself not even being that interested in watching UFC.  What does this have to do with cancer?  I will explain.
When I worked in the music business, it was not enough to just be able to write good songs and play an instrument well.  Whenever we submitted an artist to our superiors, the first question we were asked was "What's their story?".  That is why you may know that Jewel was homeless and lived out of her car while she was a struggling musician, or that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the Crossroads, or that Justin Bieber was found on YouTube, or that every boy band ever created is a complete fabrication and they all suck.  The point is, there has been a long history in the entertainment business of selling story along with the product.  If someone overcomes something, or has an interesting back story, for some reason we are more likely to buy their products.
Unfortunately, in the entertainment business today someone can NOT be famous unless they have tragic beginnings, no matter how non-tragic those beginnings actually are.  In the past, when I wanted to watch two consenting men or women beat on each other for large amounts of money, I could watch the fights on Strikeforce MMA and they would show the fighters walk out, beat on each other, talk to a commentator about beating on each other, thank God for allowing them to beat on one another, and then the next fighters would come out.  Now the UFC is pretty much the only one left in the fight game, and their style is much different.  You can't just watch a fight, you have to learn about the struggles in their life before you can watch them beat someone.  Because everyone has to have a story, whether one actually exists or not, some stories are as tragic as "Although the Damien 'the Orphan Slayer' Diablo has been on a roll lately, in the beginning life was not so easy.  While all of his friends were riding around on Razor Scooters, all he had were his older brother's hand-me-down Rollerblades.  At night while other kids were on their Playstations, he was stuck playing those games you buy at Dollar General, that run on a 9-volt battery and plug into the back of the television, and only play nine games, most of them just color versions of Pong..."  In other words, many times the "tragic stories" are still better than the life you lived growing up.  So now, a fight that may last all of 45 seconds, has a 20 minute featurette preceding it.  The result of hearing the "tragic stories" on how the fighter wanted a new Camaro for their sixteenth birthday, but only got a used Trans Am,  just make me resent both fighters and I root for them both to lose.
The stories make me think about what really matters.  I have said on here before that my cancer fight was easy compared to what many have to go through.  The fact of the matter is, if you are the one going through the cancer battle, then the fight is huge to you.  I had some rough patches in my chemo, but if needed, I would not hesitate to go through it again.  When I see the "Titantic Struggle" referring to a fight that at most last fifteen minutes, I think how I would have preferred to have gone through a fifteen minute pommelling than weeks of chemo side effects.
As fighters and football players are praised as great warriors or heroes on the field, I ask myself what they have accomplished.  My fight was easy.  Although I was very worried about the cancer spreading and I still worry about the cancer recurring, I was never that worried about my cancer killing me (since we caught it soon enough).  But some others in my support group were in much worse shape.  One has had stage 3 prostate cancer longer than most NFL players' careers.  There was a guy who had to have a hole cut in his skull so they could install a bag that would deliver his chemo directly to the tumor in his brain, all while trying to reassure his two young sons that everything would be fine.  I saw the fear in one breast cancer survivor's eyes as her two biggest supporters in the group succumbed to the very same disease.  There was the guy who's rare skin cancer camped out in his lungs and at best the doctors could only slow down the growth of the tumors.  Those people are fighters.  Those people have "stories".
All sports, even the ones in which the object is to completely obliterate the person standing in front of you, have someone standing next to the competitors to make sure no one gets hurt too badly.  Cancer patients don't have that.  They don't have someone with a rule book to make sure no long term injury occurs.  Unlike televised sports, in the cancer game, there is a real possibility that the player may die.
I am not saying that sports are stupid or don't need to exist, just that they need to be put into perspective.  Tell me the guy had to eat generic Ramen noodles in college.  Tell me that the guy had a deadbeat dad.  Praise the guy for being able to catch a ball well, or being able to take a kick to the face and still be able to punch the other guy.  But don't talk about a "fight to the death" and "struggling to stay alive", in fact us testicular cancer survivors don't even like the phrase "dead ball".  I wish the sportscasters would realize that it is just a game which outcome really doesn't mean a damn thing in the big scheme of things.  We have many people in this world that really are in the "fight of their lives" and that is who I am rooting for.

The Best Gift I Have Received Throws Up On Me...

When you are about to have your first child there are tons of tidbits of wisdom that people will tell you.  I gladly listened to everything people told me making mental notes along the way.  Having just made it six months with my new best friend, I feel I am becoming quite accustomed to this new life.  Some of the things people told us were about the negative aspects of having a child.  I think the big factor in this for us, is how badly we had wanted a child, how long we had been trying, and finally after the cancer/miscarriage/fertility treatments how much we went through before we were successful.

One thing we heard over and over again was how exhausted we would be.  Now, I will admit we aren't as well rested as we were six months ago.  I can't remember the last time we were able to just sleep in as long as we liked.  But I certainly wouldn't call it "exhausted".  One thing we have going for us, is our child has been an overnight sleeper since we brought him home from the hospital.  I think the shortest he ever slept overnight was maybe four hours when he was first brought home.  The other reason I don't think I am tired is I enjoy the time I get to spend with him.  Think of something you really enjoyed, like for me going to Walt Disney World, for you it might be reading my blog...if it is something you really had fun doing, you get whatever sleep you can and do it again first chance you get.

The other very cliched comment is that you will never know how much love you will have for the baby.  Waiting until forty-one to have my first child, trust me a lot of anticipation and love had built up.  I love my little guy a lot, and that love started the day my wife walked out of the bathroom with a pee-soaked stick.  What has surprised me is just how much I like being around him.  Even from the beginning when all he was doing was laying there and messing diapers, I cherished every second with him.  Now I will say this.  He seems like a very happy baby and everyone tells us he is a happy baby.  That certainly helps.  Even when changing a diaper he looks up and smiles and either grabs my arm or if I am careless enough he will grab the clean diaper and play keep away with me, which is apparently very funny when you are six months old.

But then again everything seems to be funny to our six month old.  A hand full of someone else's hair is freakin' hilarious!  Rubbing bare feet on daddy's head or whiskers is also a great source of amusement.  The phrase "peas and apples"  is the greatest joke ever told, ranking right up there with "The Aristocrats".  I have no idea why "peas and apples" induces uncontrollable laughter, but I think it's pretty obvious that he has his daddy's sophisticated sense of humor.

The other side is, I am probably one of those obsessive and over-protective parents.  When you have gone through your own health scare you realize just how precious and fragile life is.  Someone told us the other day that kids aren't that fragile at all, all three of theirs rolled off the bed at one point as babies.  That led to a conversation after we left that person about how after the first roll off (or at the very least the second roll off) wouldn't you take precautions to prevent future roll offs?  This person claimed there was no harm done...but there's one we think the jury is still out on.

I may have given my son his first real electric guitar this week as well (which means I did give him his first electric guitar).  Now I know what you are thinking, "He's six months old, he can't play an electric guitar" and you are exactly right, that is why his is half the size of a normal one.  And since it is difficult for him to strum and hold down the strings, I even brought out a thing that automatically moves the strings for him, so he can just focus on the fretboard for now.  See, doesn't sound near as crazy now, does it?

What I am getting at, is this is the greatest gift I have ever been given.  We waited a long time for him and went through a lot to get him.  Even when during a diaper change he accidentally peed in his face, which literally scared the crap out of him, all I could do was clean him up and laugh.  Being spit up on twice a day, doesn't bother me, I just add the clothes to the huge pile of other garments he finds creative ways to soil.  In other words, even the bad times are some of the best times of my life, so you can imagine how great the good times are.  And hopefully by next week we will be playing our guitars together...

Cancer Scare Number 2

When I was a teenager, we lived six houses down from the community pool.  Every summer day was either spent poolside, or windowside waiting to see if the storm would dissipate so we could go to the pool.  A little bit later, I became a lifeguard at that same pool.  After doing that for a few years, I spent a summer working outside at a State Park.  And while all this was going on, I would take the occasional day job at a local farmer, or my friend's farm helping to bale hay.  What does any of this have to do with anything?  Well, I don't remember using sunscreen at all.  I am sure I did at least a few times, but I certainly don't remember it. At least I wasn't as bad as some of the girls I lifeguarded with, that used Crisco for a week.  Now you might think I am saying that just to be funny, but I am dead serious, they broke out the Crisco shortening and slathered it on, and I am sure you will be surprised by this, the next week they had sun poisoning and had to stay indoors for several days (meaning those of us who did NOT use Crisco had to pull double duty on the lifeguard chairs/sun).  As I grew older, bad habits with sunscreen certainly didn't improve.

That leads to today's topic.  It takes me about four hours to mow our lawn.  The first mow of the season, the sun didn't seem too bright or hot so I didn't think much about sunscreen...until I started burning, but by then I only had an hour of mowing left and it seemed silly to stop in the middle just to put some on, after all the damage was already done, right?  Well, over the next few days of painful and cold showers, I notice a raised  bump on my arm that didn't go away.  After having my experience with testicular cancer I determined the best course of action would be to ignore it and see if it went away.  After a month I started getting worried.  I looked up information on some medical websites that told me I had approximately 17 minutes to live before that bump completely took over my body.  Don't get me wrong there is some good health information on the internet, but a lot more horrible health information.  A search of any malady will lead you to results from  certain and impending death, to "just ignore it and lay your lifecrystal upon whatever hurts".  Somewhere in the middle lies the actual good information, and you have to figure out what that is, and if you knew what it was you wouldn't be doing a blind internet search for it to begin with.  I won't say where my advice falls on this spectrum, but it is probably near the ends.

After consistent (but correct) nagging from my wife, I decided to call my oncologist to see what dermatologist he recommended.  Have you ever heard of those restaurants that you have to wait three or four years to get a table?  Dermatologists' waiting lists are slightly longer.  Luckily, because of a cancellation (or death, I didn't want to ask) I was able to get an appointment just one more month away.  The whole time I am waiting, I am torn because although I want the bump to go away, I don't want to go to the doctor after the month wait and say, "Well, it was here and it looked really ugly, but then it got small and disappeared yesterday."  But I didn't have to worry, the bump stuck around.

Finally, the day arrived for the dermatologist visit...literally one day after we got back from a Florida beach vacation.  Walking into a dermatologist's office really tan feels much like walking into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with a quarter of a bottle of Rum Jumbie (I imagine...).  When I finally get taken back to the doctor, they give you a paper blanket (which is slightly smaller than a Kleenex) and tell you to disrobe.  See, just because a patch of skin hasn't been exposed to the sun, that doesn't mean you won't still get skin cancer there.  So the doctor checks everywhere...everywhere!  In the movies, when you see the doctor walk in the room and the patient is naked, there is usually some boom chicka wow wow music playing.  The real situation has no music, and is a whole different experience (which is good because I didn't want a pizza boy walking in the scene too).  Basically, you stand there while the doctor looks over every millimeter of your body occasionally poking or tugging at things while wrinkling her nose.  The whole time you have to fight the urge to make excuses on why you have abused your skin and been too tan in some areas, or too pasty in others, or too flabby in others, and remark on how cold it is in the room.  After feeling like you are a rental car being inspected to be turned back in, the doctor starts talking again and gets out a marker.  She points out various anomalies and explains what they are, what causes them, whether you need to keep an eye one them.  It was very informative.  For instance, now I know that there are such things as "penis freckles" that guys can get as they get older...I have probably said too much.  Moving on!  The next step is the marker.  Feeling much like the guy who passed out way too early at the party, the doctor starts drawing circles and "x"s and who know what else.  After getting dressed, she said, "This one I am going to freeze off and these two I am going to take."  Happy to have my clothes back on (and not to have any penis freckles marked), I didn't really stop to think what "going to take" meant.

The freezing was nothing.  A bit of itchy, burning type feeling, but no biggie.  Then, I found out what "going to take" meant for the other two.   First, they stick a needle next to the thing they are taking to numb it up.  Then they start shaving that thing down until it is either gone, or they have a big enough sample to test (which as near as I can tell requires you to shave down to the bone).  For the one on my arm, it was a breeze.  Slight stick, a little pressure, and a band-aid.  The other was right next to my eye.  Now the local anesthesia they gave me, not only made things go numb, but it caused my eye to blink uncontrollably.  We are talking like the little light that lets you know your hard drive is running type of uncontrollably.  Then they take the razor thing  NEXT TO YOUR EYE, and after giving the medication to cause spastic twitching they say, "Now hold still..."  I have had much more painful procedures, and much longer procedures, but this was definitely the most annoying in my life.  I am told I am free to go, with one eye open and the other neither remaining open or closed, giving me all the depth perception of walking with a strobe light.  Thinking "Safety First" I thought I should probably wait it out in the lobby before I try driving with "strobe eye".  "How long does this last?", I ask.  "It will wear off in about two or three hours.", was the reply, like it was no big deal to wink at everyone within a five mile radius for the next 180 minutes.  I decided to just drive carefully home, and whatever I do, don't get out of the car.  Hungry, I just pulled into a White Castle drive-thru, because I figured at White Castle a guy winking furiously would still not be the most memorable character they will see that day.

Luckily, I had an oncologist appointment the next day.  I say "luckily" because two weeks earlier I had a CAT scan, so when I received a clean bill of health from the oncologist I knew regardless of my skin results, it hadn't reached my lymph nodes and my blood tests were fine.  At first, the skin samples didn't bother me.  But the longer it took for the results to come back, the more scanxiety set in.  In the two weeks of waiting, I used sunscreen religiously.  I used it almost as much as I checked the mailbox, email, and phone messages waiting for the results to come back.  Finally, the letter came in the mail that said "benign (non-malignant)", which made me laugh because if you don't know what the word "benign" means, will you know what "non-malignant" means?  Maybe they should say "benign (you don't have cancer)" because that is all people want to understand about that.  

So, a good scare to wake me up.  But since part of what I do for a living requires me to know about "rems" and "rads" and all that good stuff, I know that radiation (yes the sun is emitting radiation) builds up over a lifetime, I know that my careless youth means I need to be even more careful now.  If there is something good that came of out this scare, it's that I am taking my lessons learned and applying them to my six month old before the damage starts.  So what if his skin is so pale it's almost clear, one day he will thank me for it.  

My First Father's Day

Well if you weren't able to guess already, we were able to get pregnant.  The swimmers we had frozen before I had chemo apparently thawed out just fine.  However, my "friends" (and I use that term rather loosely) were quick to point out that they could have given me any sample and I wouldn't know the difference until the baby comes out.  After all, you go the the "bank" they give you just a regular insulated coffee mug with a little test tube inside with your name on it.  It seems like for as much as we paid for me to look at their dirty magazines and practice a little self abuse, they would come up with something a little nicer than some cheap looking insulated coffee mug like you get at trade shows for free from vendors you never heard of.

We were actually visiting at my parents' house when we found out the swimmers reached their target.  My parents were overjoyed, which is surprising because people normally have totally different reactions if somebody shoves a urine soaked stick in their face.  It was at this point that it dawned on me that I don't know nothing about birthing no babies.  The coming months were filled with me cramming my head with everything from how to change diapers to how every single thing your child touches, eats, sees, smells, and hears will do irreparable damage to it and make you a bad parent.  So, I will admit, I am one of those parents who is double checking every little thing that comes near my child to make sure it has passed a thirty-four step inspection.

The other thing I didn't know about babies, was apparently you need approximately 43,560 square feet to hold all the items that your new baby will absolutely not be able to live without, use once, then outgrow, and need to be stored for any future babies.  And while we are discussing things I didn't know, when you are buying stuff for a new baby, everything made previous to the point that you arrived at the cash register at the baby store, is very dangerous and should be burned and the ashes locked in a safe and the safe thrown in the ocean (safes are located in Aisle 4 and you don't want to get a used safe).  Personally, I think the baby industry (and there is definitely a baby industry) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission get together twice a week to declare everything that babies had before now, is harmful and must not be used under any conditions.  Which makes perfect sense, otherwise all those cribs, highchairs, and bottles we all grew up on, and apparently survived, would still be in use today, meaning we would not need to buy new ones.  When you tell people you are going out to purchase said new products many older people (i.e. people that bought baby products last year) will say "you can just borrow mine" and you respond "they (whoever that is made up of) say that is unsafe now" and the response is "well it never hurt (insert name here)".

We went through all of the doctors' appointments where you listen to sounds that mimic a cow trotting through mud and pictures that look more like a black and white radar scan of an approaching cold front than any sort of mammal, but yet you still get choked up and excited.  And then there is the time that you stare at the screen, trying to see if the jet stream is going to cause a Nor'Easter when the nurse looks at you and smiles and says that "jet stream" is actually a penis.  Oh the feeling that goes through a future dad when he first sees his son's jet stream.  Already I was thinking of all of the tools I would be buying him and all of the time we would spend working on cars together (although, that probably would have been the case if we were having a girl too).

I will admit, as the big day approached I got more scanxiety even if a scan wasn't imminent.  I had waited so long for a child that I was so paranoid something bad would happen before I would be able to meet him.  And let's face it, less than a year before, I had lost my job, got cancer, and we had a miscarriage in a matter of a couple of months, so I am not unfamiliar with bad luck.  But after a lot of anxiousness and praying we finally were told to check into the hospital.

For anyone unfamiliar with labor, I will try to explain what happens.  You rush to the hospital where your wife seems to be in a lot of pain and there is a lot going on, but on the outside nothing really seems to be happening.  While all this is going on, every single person that is on your hospital floor will walk into your room, shove his or her hand underneath your wife's gown and loudly shout out a random measurement ("6 cm!", "80%!!", "10/6!", "less than 12 parsecs!!").  I think even the kid that delivered our food shouted out "THX1138!" before she left.  All I know about these random numbers and measurements was the baby was still bigger than that.  So, after close to a day of "labor" that only seemed to produce an exhausted wife and goop that I wasn't sure was pre-baby goop or left over lube from the constant measuring, the doctor gets down and looks like she is trying loosen an oil filter on a Honda and says,"Well, he's not going to fit, but you can still push for another hour if you want."  Although I liked our doctors there, that has to be one of the dumbest statements I have ever heard in my life!  As you can imagine, my wife was over the whole push-measure-push-lube-push-measure-measure-measure-push routine.  So it was off to surgery.

I walk into the operating room after they had prepped my wife and I see her laid out on a table, tubes here and there, a curtain, and a line drawn across her stomach.  The doctor said, "You can stand here on this side of the curtain as we cut or..."  I don't remember anything after the "or" because I really didn't care what was on the other side of the curtain as long as I was on that side of it.  I was even more glad I had chose that side after the procedure started.  I don't know what they were doing on their side of the curtain, but on my side of the curtain my wife was being pushed and shoved around on the table like she was the little girl from the Exorcist (minus the head spinning around).  Finally the shaking stopped and they walked around the side of the curtain with...a purple baby.  The comments my "friends" made about switched samples are running through my head and I search my memory for any purple family members (although there was that one distant aunt...), but after a quick wipe down he became the most beautiful, non-purple baby I have ever seen.  Any doubts of grabbing the wrong coffee mug at the sperm bank, were gone for good when one pediatrician at the hospital told us that our new baby was tongue-tied and this would lead to a lifetime of speech impediments, difficulty eating, crossed eyes, sloppy trumpet playing, inability to make friends, receding hairline...basically he was going to turn out like Quasimodo without the musical ability.  This caused a huge smile on my wife's face and mine.  Not because we wanted my son subjected to a lifetime of being a social pariah, but because I am tongue-tied and although sometimes I may have the problems the doctor foretold, it is not from being tongue-tied.  It was like a little sign from God saying "See, now you know for sure he is your son."

In fact, I think every single part of that experience was a blessing.  I used to think Father's Day was just another holiday where you give people stuff (or realize you forgot to buy stuff to give to people until the last minute).  But today I have had to hide my emotions as I played with my son, thinking about how much happened to get him here and how hard I am going to fight to be around as he grows up.  And one last thing on being a father after having testicular cancer/chemo, the procedures and processes involved in making this happen are very expensive.  I had contacted Livestrong during our efforts and received a long list of organizations willing to help make our miracle happen, many of them offering their services for free.  The earlier you contact these organizations the better, as many want to help from the very start.  Luckily for us, we were able to have our miracle without needing to use these organizations.  But, we are keeping all of the doctors' bills to show him anytime he asks for anything expensive.

(Creating) Life after Testicular Cancer.

I know I was supposed to write this last week, but by then end of today's post you will understand why I am not always able to post when I want.  As I have mentioned in the past, I was laid off from work exactly two weeks when I was diagnosed with testicular cancer.  Two life changing events that came back to back. What only my very closest friends know what there was actually a third event that happened right after that.

We had been wanting to start a family for a while, and were actively trying for around a year.  A few days before I started chemo we found out that we were pregnant.  It seemed like the typical feel good story, boy loses job, boy loses ball, but before he lost that nut boy and girl get pregnant.  There was a whirlwind of emotions, it was something we desperately wanted, but the timing couldn't be worse.  Chemo works by being a very nasty drug that is easily absorbed by anything that grows quickly in the human body, like cancer cells, hair, taste buds, and unfortunately babies.  Because of this the first week I had to take tons of precautions around my wife making sure that she did not come into any contact with anything that may have the chemo in it.  Even using the bathroom involved closing the lid, covering the lid with a heavy towel, and flushing the toilet twice.  I never realized how long it takes a toilet to flush until I had to stand, weakened from chemo, waiting for it to finish flushing twice so I could remove the towel and go back to my normal routine.

After we went through all of this trouble, we lost the baby.  It was very early in the pregnancy, and to say we were stressed during this time would be an understatement.  What we found out after this was the staggering percentage of first time pregnancies that end in miscarriage, however that didn't make us feel any better.  It was a third blow to us in less than two months.  It was the ray of hope we had been focused on through chemo.  Of course many things ran through my mind, like was it my fault for missing a chemo precaution and maybe I should have postponed my treatment.

The next few weeks were a mass of confusing information.  Some people say to try again right away, others say wait.  Some doctors say don't try so soon after chemo, others say it is fine the swimmers either die from the chemo or are not affected.  My urologist said to just give up for at least six months, but my oncologist urged us to see a fertility specialist because we "needed something good in our lives".  And he was right.

The first thing a fertility specialist tries to determine is which partner is causing the trouble.  This makes tons of sense, I mean treat the person with the problem(s), right?  So, my poor wife goes through a series of tests that look like the set of a alien abduction movie.  I still have nightmares about some other the stainless steel contraptions I saw.  I also had to go through a series of grueling tests that involved me going into a room, and being provided with dirty magazines, dirty movies, and a cup.  It was horrible for me, mainly because I had already read all of the magazines when we "banked" some samples before my surgery.

So after my wife goes through her series of probings and shots, and I watch a few movies, we find out that...surprise surprise the problem looks like it is with the guy with the testicular cancer and chemo.  Who would've guessed?  The doc was very supportive and said with very little intervention, we could use my frozen stuff and probably be successful.  No nasty chemicals, no danger of having "Plus 8" after our names or being chased by reality TV producers, for the most part things are pretty normal...except one.

This technique required me to give my wife a shot in her gluteus maximus the night before the procedure. Our doctor was very supportive and involved so they even drew and "X" on the targeted butt cheek to show the exact spot that the injection needs to be placed.  Well, the first round didn't work, so when went for the second try the next month, I asked the nurse if instead of an "X" if she could draw a happy face so I could "jab it between the eyes with the needle".  See, these are the kinds of suggestions that would normally get you thrown out of your wife's doctor's appointments, but in our case the nurse drew the happy face.  This seems all very funny at the doctor's office, but it results in uncontrolled giggling when you are sitting there with a giant needle getting reading to lance a happy face on your wife's posterior.  For some reason, my bent over wife did not see the humor in the situation which only resulted in even more uncontrolled giggling from me.  Luckily, we did not have to try it a third time because my wife said she was working on a few ideas of what she was going to have the nurse write on her butt to greet me the next round.

So, I will leave on this cliffhanger, did we get pregnant, did we have a baby, is the baby keeping me from blogging as regularly as I would like?  I think you know the answer, but I will talk about it more tomorrow.

Back And Prepared To Fight If Needed

I know it has been a very long time since I have posted last, and I will explain the reasons for that tomorrow.  Right now, I would rather talk about the catalyst that made me write today.

At my previous job, in the eight years I worked there, seven of us had been diagnosed with cancer (that I know of).  Now, I have been too lazy to actually look up statistics, but I think out of an organization of 100 or so of us that is a little high.  There was a person who was diagnosed with breast cancer just a month or so before I was diagnosed.  Not a close friend, just a work colleague, but still as someone I worked with I had gone through the trouble to go buy a get well card.  Like a lot of things in life, it kept getting passed over until I heard she had made it through treatment without any problems at all.  At that point it seemed a little silly to send a get well card.  Then out of the blue, I got one from her.  That really meant something, because since I had been laid off from the company, I wasn't aware that too many people even knew of my cancer diagnosis.  So it was a little pick me up that she took time out of her recovery to help me with mine (especially when I procrastinated too much to send her a card).  She was also a source of hope for me because other than her and I, everyone else that was diagnosed has already died of their illness.  It was nice to know that two of us had escaped the curse.

Fast forward to this past weekend.  When talking with a different former work colleague, I was informed that this person had passed away last month.  Apparently the cancer had come back in her liver this time and she was unable to fight it.  I was sad to hear of the loss of her.  Last I knew she was past all of this cancer crap.

What happened next surprised me more than I ever could have imagined.  That meant I was the last survivor standing.  All of a sudden, many of the feelings I had the first day I was diagnosed came flooding back to me.  The most prevalent thought in my mind was "does this mean mine can come back without warning as well?"  It was about an hour from when my friend told me of our colleagues passing before I could tell my wife.  I just had a lot of the same scared feelings all over again.

I have had a lot of good things happen the past few months (which I will talk about tomorrow) and to be honest cancer was something I hardly thought about at all anymore.  In fact, after yet another screw up with hospital billing I had even contemplated foregoing CAT scans because I was tired of dealing with paperwork afterwards.

I told another good friend of mine that I felt like I was in an 80's horror flick and that the evil cancer has been picking off the seven of us, and I am the last one being chased.  She lightened the mood by pointing out in horror flicks if I had been black or a busty blonde, I would have been one of the first to go.  At last check, I am neither African American nor a busty blonde (although if I don't start working out more, I may develop some manboobs).  I told her I am hoping that I am the one person that always lives in a horror flick just in case they want to make a sequel.  Although, I certainly don't want to go through all that again.  For one thing I would have to change my blog from the "One Nut Wonder" to the "Nutless Wonder" if I went through all of this a second time.

I just couldn't believe how quickly I could be taken back to a place I thought I had left behind almost a year ago.  After all, during my oncologist visits, I seem to spend more time filling out insurance paperwork that I do with the actual oncologist.  My X-rays and CAT scans are getting further and further apart.  But this one bit of news brought me right back to a week after chemo.  So much so, that I contracted some deadly funk yesterday, be it food poisoning, the flu, Voodoo curse, or whatever gives you 102 temp, stomach cramps, and body aches, and the whole time in the back of my mind I am asking myself "Is this really just from cutting off some Haitian on the Interstate or is this an indication that cancer has comeback somewhere else?"

Regardless, I will try to enjoy the blessings I have and if the day comes where I have to star in "Cancer II, the Recurrence"  I will do my best to make it through the sequel to fight again.  Now I just have to think of a witty catch phrase...