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...

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.

An Xray, 3 Blood Tests, And A CATscan Down, Now Shove A Camera Down My Throat

I am finishing up my latest round of scans.  In the past three weeks, it seems I have been tested every other day. I haven't actually been tested every other day, but medical providers have still found a way to bill me every other day.  So far I have finished a chest X-ray, a CATscan, CBC, tumor marker blood test, and in a matter of hours a upper endoscopy (with jumbo biopsies, YIPPEE!), oh yeah and peeing into the random cup every once in a while too.  I just hope I was supposed to pee in that one cup, because the nurse gave me a funny look, and I don't remember specimen cups saying "Moe's Southwest Grill" on the side...

The X-rays were as expected.  I raise my hands above my head while the nurse shoves me against the wall like she's on COPS and I am an unruly suspect (one time I accidentally yelled out "Don't tase me bro" during the test).  The blood and urine tests were pretty routine as well.  I get asked for a body fluid, and I deposit it into whatever receptacle they hold in front of me.  The only problem was a slight miscalculation on driving time/fluid intake, which required me to make the receptionist wait for my insurance co-pay until after I gave them a sample.

The one thing I wasn't expecting was a CATscan.  When I decided to do chemo over testing (mainly dozens of CATscans) I knew I would still have to get the occasional CATscan, I just wasn't expecting it to be so soon after my last oncologist appointment.  As soon as he ordered it, I had flashbacks of the taste of the contrast dye and the associated CATstipation.  Not wanting to roll around on the floor in impacted and backed up pain again, I had taken two liter bottles of water with me to do some mega-hydrating on the drive back from the hospital.  Luckily, I didn't start drinking them yet, because when I arrived I was told I would not be drinking the slightly flavored chalky substance.  They had a new water based contrast, but I had to drink a liter of it in an hour.  Still skeptical, I apprehensively took a taste.  It tasted like Terre Haute water, which for those of you that haven't been to/smelled Terre Haute, IN, it kinda taste like...well...have you ever put a cooler away and forgotten to drain it?  Well, it kinda tastes like that smells.  Not good, but not bad either, and definitely better than the nasty, chalky, constipatitiony, bottomless cup of sludge that I had to drink before.

Within a few days, I got all of my results back, X-ray's and scans were clean.  Urine and blood tests were normal, and tumor marker's still dropping.  So now I am preparing for my endoscopy tomorrow.  My preparation involves mainly not eating after midnight and not sleeping.  I have literally had more scopes than I can count, all I know is that I am in double digits, and I have developed a routine.  I stay up late the night before, I go into the hospital barely awake, I get some Demerol shoved in my vein, and I wake up with my wife giving me dirty looks because I apparently won't wake up and I ask the same questions over and over again.

See, in my long history of scopes, there are two things I don't like about them.  One time I woke up when they snapped the plastic guide between my teeth, and the feeling/sound was not a pleasant experience.  Now they say you don't remember anything from the scope, but obviously if I just told you about that, I did remember it, because they don't put that thing in your mouth before you go in there and it is out before you wake up, so the only way I would know about it is to wake up during the procedure, and remember it (and I also remember hearing the doctor say, "He's waking up, give him so more.").  The other thing, is for some reason the oxygen tube that they stick in your nose, makes me feel like I am drowning.  OK, OK, I will wait for you to quit laughing at me.  Are you done?  So, I don't know why I have that feeling, but I do.  If I am totally out, it's no big deal.  If I am kinda out, I wake up, thrashing saying I can't breathe (which just by saying "I can't breathe" it proves I can breathe, but anyway), and before I know it I am sedated again and I wake up with straps on my arms.  For the comfort and safety of myself and the nurses attending to me, I have found that we are all much happier, if I am completely out of it during the scope.

As far as tests go, an endoscopy really isn't that bad.  The bad thing is, they keep you from eating for so long before, and for my condition they take out large biopsies in my throat to send to a pathologist, which leaves me waking up starving, but yet it hurts to swallow.  It's like some cruel joke the doctor's and nurses play on me, maybe in some sort of retaliation for thrashing around during the procedure acting like I'm drowning.  At any rate, I am ready to get this test over with and anxious to hear my results.  With this test behind me I am through with doctors (for me) until November.  Hopefully, the nurses will loosen my straps tomorrow and I can come home and tell you how everything went.

If Coughing Were A Sport, I Would Be An Olympian!

So a couple weeks back I wrote about having a cold.  Well, the sniffling stopped, the sneezing stopped, and the coughing...well it never went away.  In my typical, stubborn, I-don't-want-to-go-to-the-doctor sort of way, I decided the best thing to do was to ignore it and keep coughing.  That changed the night my wife asked why I was breathing so fast.  I said I wasn't breathing fast, especially since I was just sitting there, not exerting myself with heavy exercise like bending over to tie my shoes, reaching for more cookies, or grabbing the remote to change the channel.  When she pointed out that I indeed was breathing fast, I started getting worried.  One possible cause could be pneumonia or any other number of pfunny gnamed illknesses.

So, first thing the next day I called the doctor and scheduled an appointment for later that day.  The two things I can always count on with my obsessive-compulsive doctor is that no matter what I am there for I have to be humiliated with the scale, and that he will be at the very latest on time.  And that is exactly what happened, after finding out I was fat (again) I was taken back to see the doctor...early!  While the nurse was pointing out that I was fat and taking my blood pressure, she scared me by telling me how rampant pneumonia has been this year.  My doctor came in and had me take several deep breaths, much more than usual, which seemed like a pretty sadistic thing to do to someone that was having trouble breathing.  Finally, he told me to take a deep breath, and breathe it out as fast as I could, which resulted in my coughing very hard, getting light headed, and almost falling off the exam table.  That caused him to giggle a little and tell me that people usually get lightheaded if they come in in my state and do that, which made me wonder why, if most people get lightheaded and almost fall off the table, why didn't he put himself in some sort of position to catch me?  Anyway, he narrowed it down to walking pneumonia or viral bronchitis, and told me to go to the hospital right away to get an X-ray.

Because of my medical past, I have been pummeled by radiation so much to the point that my oncologist wants to limit the amount of exposure I have from now on.  For those that don't know, radiation builds in your body over time.  It starts from the day you were born and keeps adding up until the day you die.  I told my doctor that my oncologist (and his good friend) had ordered a chest X-ray as part of my six month post-chemo check-up for the next week and asked if there was anyway I could just get one set of X-rays that would take care of what both my doctor and my oncologist wanted to see (plus then I would only have to pay one co-pay).  He thought that was a great idea and wrote the prescription.  My doctor sent me on my way, but not without first giving me two free inhalers.  He is one of those doctors that feels if drug companies are constantly going to keep coming around and bugging him, he is going to take all the samples he can, and try his best to keep from actually ever writing a prescription for anything, just give away free samples.  I don't think that is what the drug reps had in mind, but I certainly appreciate it.

I rush to the hospital just in time to spend the next half an hour filling out paperwork and answering questions between coughs.  I finally got in to have my X-rays done and my doctor called the next morning to say I just had bronchitis (which isn't that much easier to spell) and that it looks like I am still cancer free.  I still have another week before I hear that officially from my oncologist, but the surprise X-ray and results have definitely cut down on my scanxiety this time around.

So, going on week four since all this started, I am still coughing and according to my doctor, can expect to still be coughing for another two weeks.  I am thrilled.  In the meantime, I will steer clear of salty foods, keep making people around me scared that I am contagious, and keep my wife and basenjis awake by hacking all through the night.  Let's just call it payback for all the kicking that they supposedly do "in their sleep".

I will close by telling the story about the Evil Casket.  The Evil Casket started chasing this poor girl one day.  No matter where she went the Evil Casket came bouncing after her.  The faster she ran, the faster the Evil Casket bounced.  She ran into her house and locked the door, the Evil Casket knocked the door down.  She ran upstairs, and the Evil Casket bounded right up the stairs behind her.  She ran into the bathroom and locked the door, and the Evil Casket broke that door down too.  Cornered and desperate, the poor girl reached for something, anything to use as a weapon against the Casket.  She opened the medicine cabinet, grabbed the Dimetapp, threw at her pursuer, and....the coffin stopped!

Hmmmm....Livestrong Does More Than Make Bracelets

As we wait for my "junk" to wake up after chemo (or what's left of it after surgery), our doctor has mentioned all the possibilities we have for getting pregnant.  Many of those possibilities cost a lot of money.

Before my cancer support group the other day, another woman and myself were both sporting our Livestrong bracelets, and talking about upcoming Livestrong events before the meeting started.  This lead into a conversation about Lance Armstrong and the Tour de France.   After the meeting started, when it was my turn to discuss things with the group, I asked if anyone knew of any foundations that would help pay for fertility treatments for testicular cancer patients.  Then someone asked me something so obvious, I felt absolutely stupid for not thinking of it myself.  She said, "Have you called Livestrong?"  I hadn't.  I hadn't thought to call the foundation started by a guy who had testicular cancer and had fertility problems and successfully fathered children since his treatment.  Why would I think to call that guy?!?!  Did I mention I felt stupid?

So, first thing the next day I called Livestrong and talked to a really nice young lady who sounded like she was about twelve years old.  I am hoping she was twelve years old, because she gave me names of several places that offer help for people in my situation, and all those names were wrong, and if she were twelve I could say "she got the names wrong, but she's only twelve, what do you expect?"  HOWEVER, they were just barely wrong, so I was able to type them into Livestrong's website and get the correct names for the foundations I was looking for.  Now back to the twelve year old, I am pretty sure she wasn't twelve (unless Texas doesn't have child labor laws), but nevertheless, do you realize how awkward it is talking about testicular cancer and fertility issues to someone on the phone that sounds like a twelve year old girl?  I expected Chris Hansen to get on the phone about halfway through the conversation and ask me what I was doing.

So, after figuring out the correct foundations, I started researching them.  Some of them had requirements that I qualified for and others I didn't qualify for.  One in particular I think was all talk.  They would pay for everything provided you filled out your application after getting diagnosed and prior to any treatment and you had to wait until you heard back from them before you proceeded, but then they would pay for everything!  Of course they will pay for everything, because they know there is absolutely no chance anyone will do that.  Your mind is going a million miles an hour once you have been diagnosed, the last thing you are thinking of is looking up foundations and filling out applications.  Here is a timeline, I got preliminarily diagnosed on a Tuesday, confirmed that Friday, was told to immediately go make a "deposit" at the "bank" followed by another on that Monday, and have my surgery Thursday.  That left literally a two hour window between my official diagnosis (which you need for the application) and the deposit to fill out the application, send it off, and wait for a reply.  Yeah, I am sure they give out tons of cash.  (That is sarcasm by the way.)  But I am also sure that company is telling everyone about this great program they have.

One of the more promising leads is a hospital. that I am all too familiar with, will do in vitro for free (if it comes to that) for testicular cancer patients in my situation (poor).  They have very little requirements, like you have to make less that $75,000, which I just barely squeaked under that requirement by about $70,000.  I love this hospital and would be happy to work with them, although admittedly, most of the time I am there I am on my back and unconscious.  But from what I remember about my visits there, they are good.

A question that frequently comes up when I mention in vitro is "Does that mean you guys will be like the Octomom?"  In our doctor's conversations about in vitro, not once has she mentioned the word "litter".  I don't think I need a bunch of kids at once, because not being a sports person I am not trying to make a "team".  Although being a fan of music, a power trio might be nice.  We are still hopeful though that the other tricks our doctor is having us do will work, including my junk working right again at some point.

So as we approach another set of fertility appointments, I am getting anxious to hear what the next step will be.  Do you remember the old flea circuses on cartoons and stuff?  I feel like my swimmers are having to do a sperm circus, because they are constantly washing them and counting them and freezing them and thawing them and who knows what else.  All I know, is the toughest thing I have had to do so far is look at dirty magazines.  Wait until we have a kid and I tell them all the hardships I went through to create them.  I am sure they will want to hear it.

Braced For Impact Wrench

With the heatwave we had today, I knew it was a good day to get outside.  With temperatures soaring just above freezing, I took my wife's car to my workshop for an oil change.  I put on my "abdominal brace" and waddled to work.

Up to this point I have only been wearing my abdominal brace when walking around the yard.  I haven't been doing anything that requires bending with it on, because quite frankly you cannot bend with it on.  For just walking around the yard, it doesn't do too bad.

With the snow beginning to melt, I also put on my heavy snow boots.  I was up in my workshop with the abdominal brace's lattice work digging in to my back and immobilizing me from the waist up, and clomping around in the heavy rubber steel-toed boots that really don't bend at the ankle at all.  I was stumbling around up there like an arthritic Frankenstein after hemorrhoid surgery.

I will say this much for the abdominal brace, it did help my ailing incision with only a mildly intense pain in my back.  I don't know if it was from trying to bend over with this complicated contraption on, or just the nature of the brace itself, but I feel like I have been bailing hay for eight hours, then decided to lift weights for another eight hours, all after spending the night sleeping on the hood of a '54 Cadillac...sideways.  In other words, my back is really hurting.  But the oil is changed and that is all that is important.  Now I don't have to worry about the car breaking down while my wife drives me to the emergency room.

My incision area is still bothering me, I am assuming it is the stitches dissolving like the doctor said.  Even though the brace causes severe back pain, that is a lesser evil than severe abdominal pain.  Until I heal I will just continue to wear it and walk around in the snow like a cowboy mummy.

Apparently, My Swimmers Should Stay In The Shallow End...

Today was my scan and my urologist appointment.  Two things I wouldn't necessarily say I was looking forward to, but I was anxious to get them out of the way.

With the foretold doom and gloom from the purveyors of precipitation prediction, I left the house a half an hour early and with all the inclement weather...I ended up at my doctor's office an hour early.  I am not sure where I drove through a time shifting wormhole, I think I should have taken a left turn at Albuquerque, but whatever the reason, I suddenly had an hour to kill.  Luckily my scan orders weren't for any specific time and the hospital was less than a mile from the urologist office.  I thought an hour would be more than enough time to get irradiated.  I forgot, however, about hospital bureaucracy.  After all the red tape and going to this desk, then that one, then the other one, I flew into my urologist's office with less than five minutes to spare.  I don't get the scan results until I talk to my oncologist next Friday, but the lady didn't have the "Oh, crap!" look on her face when she looked at them that the nurse that did my ultrasound had on her face when they found the cancer.  I am taking that as a good sign.

While signing in at the urologist's office, the receptionist was asking the usual litany of questions, among them was if I had a procedure done.  I wasn't sure what she meant or why she was asking (maybe it looked like I had lost weight in the groinal area) so I said I had the one procedure in September.  She responded by asking if that was the only procedure.  I stated that I only had one left, so there wasn't too many more procedures he could do.

I go back to the exam room and tell the doctor of the problems I have been having.  First he discussed the results of my testosterone level test.  He said I am at the bottom end of normal, which isn't bad considering I  have only half of the production facilities.  Next, he looked at the area that my general practitioner had suspected that a stitch trying to push its way out.  He grabbed a package containing some fierce looking tweezers, and digging around down there, pulled out a stitch!  It was like a magic trick...that hurts and bleeds a little.  Next we addressed the thorn in my side ever since the operation (figuratively and literally).  He came up with two scenarios.  Option one is that I could have scar tissue that is constantly building up, and for some reason the walking is breaking it apart causing the pain.  I am still not sure I understand that explanation, which is probably why he gave it to me to shut me up and get me to quit whining.  The other thing that could be happening is that my stitches are dissolving.  Apparently they dissolve at different speeds in different bodies, and the fact that he pulled one out of me today is evidence that they haven't dissolved completely yet.  He says as these stitches are starting to dissolve they get weaker and break, which could be that "popping" feeling I have been experiencing.  The only solution he had for me was an "abdominal brace" to use just when I plan on doing a lot of walking, since every time it has let loose, I have been doing a lot of walking.

So I went to Wal-Mart, which in itself is a lot of walking, and found their assortment of braces and supports.  Most focus on the back, but I did find an abdominal one under a pile of dust.  It basically looks like a back brace that has been slid around to the front and had $10 added on to the price tag.  I haven't really walked with it yet, since I was already hurting pretty bad from walking around trying to find it, but I did try it on.  Basically, you strap on this elastic and velcro thing fairly snugly.  Then, there is a ring that you pull and through a complex series of cables, pulleys, and winches in the back, it supplies the added support.  I must say, just from walking around a little bit to test it tonight, it feels really good.  I am just fortunate that this is happening in the winter, where I have heavy jackets to cover up this contraption!  My wife says is looks like some S & M mechanism.  I will admit I am not that up on S & M paraphernalia, so I guess I have some research to do the next time I can't sleep.

There is one final bit that I have left out about today.  The urologist discussed the last test I took and I will admit, it has me more than a little bummed, even on the verge of depressed.  When I went to read my dirty magazines, the nurse called and said I didn't have many swimmers, but I had swimmers.  I specifically remember asking her, if they were good swimmers and she said they were.  Today, I found out that was not the case.  I don't have many swimmers, and a good portion of the ones I do have are not very good ones.  I don't remember the exact term he used, I just know as he was describing them, I am thinking of little sperm swimming in neverending circles, a few ramming repeatedly into random objects, and other sperm just wiggling around aimlessly screaming "I want a juice box!".  The good news is that I am producing the little guys so the chemo didn't shut down the factory.  However, it appears that the factory hasn't yet been retooled after the chemo (pun intended), and that I haven't completely gotten rid of the affected guys yet.  It can take as long as seventy two days for the little guys to regenerate, so he wants me to wait another three months, and test again.  And I am definitely NOT supposed to try to have kids in the mean time.

First of all, I know this wasn't a big setback.  We have frozen guys, and it isn't out of the ordinary at all for the little guys to be affected like this.  When the factory starts pumping out quality product again, the baby making attempts can resume.  What I will admit was absolutely devastating to me today was that two weeks ago the nurse told me I was good to go.  When you hear so much bad news, the good news really lifts you up, and to get told today that what the nurse told me was incorrect seemed like it knocked me down lower than I was before.  I know it shouldn't bother me.  It is a minor set back.  But it is bothering me.  A lot.  Four months from now, I should be able to move on with our plans for baby making.  It is just that I thought I had a bulk of this cancer crap behind me, and today I get told I have this Klingon that won't get off my butt.

Trying to always find the bright side in everything, I admit it was kind of tough today.  I was just blindsided by that news.  The one thing that kept me from really getting down in the dumps was I had told my good buddy Willie before today that I would stop by his house that is within a mile of my doctor's office.  As usual, Willie cheered me up with random fire department stories and tales of the latest thing he hid from his wife and got busted on.  It worked out well that I saw him within five minutes of the news today.  I guess one of the few bright spots is by May, there should be some new magazines in the jerkatorium for my next test.

A Bunch of Crap About Chemo...

Tomorrow is supposed to be my "bottoming out" day.  Supposedly my red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets will be at their lowest.  Best case scenario is my numbers are within range and they kick me out of there allowing me to resume my normal activities...which quite frankly, since the surgery and unemployment I haven't had any "normal activities" to speak of.  Worst case scenario, my numbers are dangerously low and they check me into the hospital until they come back up.  It's not that big of a deal, except the hospital TVs aren't high definition and they don't have any of the good channels I have become accustomed to in my weeks of lying on the couch moaning.  They check other numbers in your blood too, including liver function, which leads me to a peculiar observation.

One side effect that wasn't mentioned in our chemo class is a strange discoloration in the toilet.  For a day or two, no matter what business I had in the bathroom, it was coming out yellow.  Now for half of the bathroom business that is perfectly normal.  For the other half, you are perplexed and wondering just how many bananas you ate.  First time, I thought it was a fluke.  Second time, I was a little more concerned.  Third time, I opened the big folder we received at chemo class and poured over it, trying to figure out exactly where this particular side effect would be listed.  Having my oncologist's twenty-four hour number and e-mail, I decided the best thing to do would be...look it up on the internet.  I just sat there on Google's web search for a while trying to figure out the best way to search this, without coming up with a bunch of disgusting (well even more disgusting) results.  Finally a found a combo of words that looked this up as a medical curiosity and not a fetish.  Surprisingly there was a lot of information on the subject.  My research seemed to narrow it down to one of two things.  Either it was no big deal and it would go away with time, or it meant I was in liver failure and I would probably die before I finished reading the article.  This is not the type of information you want to read right before bedtime.

I go to bed, eyes wide open, trying to see if I can feel my liver dying.  I can't.  I get back up and get back on the internet for more information.  Most of the sites that say you are going to die immediately mention that you will also notice your eyes turning yellow as it gets more serious.  I don't know if that means you are getting full of crap up to your eyeballs or what.  But, that hasn't happened yet, so I guess I still have time to finish today's blog entry before I die.  And in my tired state I wonder, if the whites of my eyes turn yellow, can I go get a kid's pair of sunglasses with the blue lenses and make my eyes look green, because that would be cool.  Or red lenses and they'd be orange.  Well, it didn't matter.  After checking my eyes repeatedly every time I walk past a mirror, so far no yellow.  But this is something I am going to ask the nurse about.  Not if I am OK, I'm asking why she didn't warn us about that in the class.  Getting up from doing work like that and seeing yellow is a little startling.  It must be some chemo nurse practical joke that they do.  "Hey Susan, you see that guy over there, I didn't tell him his poop turns yellow."  I do think I heard two nurses laughing hysterically as I was leaving chemo.

However, this is one of the few times my gastro-intestinal problems have helped me in life.  One of the big problems with many chemotherapy drugs is...well back-ups.  So much so that many patients come out of chemo with major hemorrhoids.  My main GI problem is that I go too often in that respect.  When we met with my GI doctor, he said the easy thing for me, instead of having to take the drugs to counteract the chemo effects, I could just quit taking most of my regular drugs for my GI issues.  And it worked!  My GI issues and my chemo side effects have combined to make me feel like I normal crapper...well except for the yellowness. I will take discoloration over hemorrhoids any day!

As I prepare for tomorrow, I am trying to think of anything I need to take in case I do get checked in to the hospital, although I am not feeling too bad, just really tired.  And I am trying to think of the best way to ask my chemo nurse about miscolored manure.  Hopefully, I will be back on here tomorrow to let you know what happened!

Which Is More Tiring, Chemo or the Shake Weight?

CHEMO IS KICKING MY BUTT!!!  I was doing great yesterday.  In fact, long about our third hour at the hospital yesterday, even though the nurse wasn't there for me, she did mention that she used to work with chemo patients.  Since we had plenty of time to just sit around waiting, I decided to pick her brain.  I told her how great I had been feeling physically and asking if it was normal.  The nurse said some people aren't affected by chemo much, some feel affects gradually, and some it comes on all of a sudden.  She also said how important it was to stay away from sick people.  She says this as we are in our third hour in a hospital.  I don't know if you are aware, but there are four places sick people like to go, hospitals, elementary schools, anywhere with a buffet, and cruise ships (I imagine the sick people go to the cruise ships because of the buffets).  The only saving grace was for about an hour and a half of our hospital stay, we were in a room by ourselves.

Fast forward twelve hours and I am waking up dying of thirst again, except this time things are a little different.  It feels like I gargled with sand in my sleep.  Now, ever since my diagnosis I have been having some strange dreams.  The other night I had a dream that I had lost all my hair that was so vivid I woke up and touched my head and looked at the pillow because I was so sure that it really happened.  However, I don't think that I have taken up sleep gargling, especially with sand.  I guess there is a possibility since basenjis are African dogs and both of ours are originally from Florida, there is a chance that sleeping in various yoga positions between these two downward-facing dogs that some residual sand fell into my throat.  I would hope that we are bathing them a little better than that.  I have the increasing thirst (up to about a gallon and three quarts a day at this point), I have the scratchy throat, and then half way through the day, I feel like I just finished a marathon.  Well at least I assume it feels like after you run a marathon, except without the feeling that I have accomplished something.

And speaking of not accomplishing anything, that is exactly what is driving me crazy at this point.  We are getting to the point in my chemo treatment where by blood count is bottoming out, so I am pretty much grounded at this point, and unlike being grounded in high school I didn't get to do anything fun and stupid to warrant it.  Sitting around the house is definitely giving me cabin fever.  I sort of hurt myself on the elliptical machine yesterday, and running from the car into the hospital yesterday to check on my wife shook some things that haven't been shaken for a while and I am feeling it today.  OK, now when I say running, keep in mind I am a little more than a month out from my surgery, so what felt like a run to me, was probably like that horrible race-walking thing that was popular for about ten minutes in the nineties before everyone realized how ridiculous it looks to run like you are trying to get to the restroom after eating spoiled Mexican food leftovers.  Since I can't seem to concentrate enough right now to read anything, I have been watching hours on end of daytime television and today I caved in...I bought something I saw that was sold on TV.  I bought a Shake Weight.

We have a decent collection of exercise equipment here at the house.  We have a weight machine, lots of free weights, an elliptical machine, exercise bikes, an ab machine, and a rower.  The rower, ab machine, and weights all put too much stress on my still healing incision from my nutectomy.  The elliptical machine ended up hurting that area as well, but not too seriously.  And obviously, with the trauma that has befallen my crotchal area, I am more than just a little afraid to hop on anything with a bicycle seat right now.  So, outside of the Wii, I haven't been getting any exercise at all.  The Shake Weight looked so cheesy and lame, it didn't seem like there was any possible way it could actually hurt anything, and maybe I would feel like I did something.  Let me just set two things straight, I bought the MEN'S Shake Weight and I don't for a second think that this thing is going to make me look anything like the guys in the commercial or on the box.  But it will have me doing something except walking to the next room for new water bottles all day.  So as we run an errand today, I did it.  I walked over to where they were and I picked one up, and felt immediately embarrassed.  I look like crap.  Because of the surgery, I am still walking around in public in pants with elastic waistbands.  What if people think that I actually believe the commercials?!?!  Of course we were in a large mega-store and these things were in the back.  I have to walk all the way to the front, which felt like an approximately seven mile walk, while trying to conceal the identity of what I am carrying.  I would have felt more comfortable carrying tampons, condoms, a Playgirl magazine, and Preparation H.  I had to resist the urge to tell the cashier I was buying it for a "friend" or as a gag gift.  But it's home now and I have been using it.  I don't know if it is doing any good or not, but at least I feel like it is doing something.  Who knows, with the weight I am losing from chemo, and all the time I will be spending in front of the TV doing nothing but Shake Weighting, maybe I will end up looking like the guy in the commercials.  No, not the Shake Weight commercial, the Subway commercials, except I hope I resemble the after photos more than the before.

So here I sit, feeling like crap, shaking overpriced crap, and watching crap on TV.  I just am counting the days (3) until I bottom out on my blood count, because I know after that it is all about getting better and feeling better.  It's good to know the end is in sight.  And I am taking comfort that I am not the dumbest person in the world.  The dumbest person in the world would be whoever the "Warning" sticker on the Shake Weight was printed for.  "Keep Shake Weight at least 6 inches away from your face while exercising."  They wouldn't have to put that on there unless at least one person hadn't already Shake Weighted their jaw.  Personally I say leave the sticker off and let's get some natural selection happening here.  At least that's what I say now, I may change my tune after I Shake Weight myself a black eye.  Right now I think I will hop off of here, do a few more "reps", drink some more, and collapse into bed.  Maybe I will take my Shake Weight with me... 

The Cancer Toll

Right on cue, I wake up this morning seeing a six as the first number on the clock, and having a full bladder and a dry mouth.  At least for the past few days my chemo has been consistent.  But today, I know there is no chance of laying there and falling back asleep, and that is because of yesterday...

Few people know this, but my faith is defined by two incidences in my life.  The first was when I was a dumb little kid in California, and doing what dumb little kids do, at some point I had fallen and scraped my knee.  Not thinking anything of it, until my father noticed days later that it had become infected.  He cleaned a needle and tried to poke a hole to get my healed over wound to start draining, but was unsuccessful.  I still didn't care, until he mentioned what the next step would be.  He said if it didn't drain, it could get worse, and we may have to go to the doctor who would use a "knife" to get it to drain.  Now as an adult, I know he meant a small scalpel.  However, as a dumb little eight year old, I assumed he meant a machete or hunting/survival knife of any of the other large knives that a military brat is accustomed to seeing while growing up on military bases.  It scared me to death the thought of this doctor coming at me, white coat covered in blood, wildly swinging and stabbing at my knee until he hits the right spot and it starts to drain.  I mean, the needle hurt bad enough, how bad would the knife hurt?  This was the first day I really prayed.  I had said grace and bedtime prayers before, but they were basically little poems I recited because that's what you are supposed to do.  This time, I made up the prayer, asking God to please not let that knife wielding, maniacal doctor chase me around (OK, at eight, I didn't use the words "knife wielding, maniacal", but you know what I mean).  A day or two later, I run into my parents' bedroom as I had done thousands of times before without major injury, but this time I ran smack into the nightstand, the corner hitting me RIGHT where the infected spot was on my knee.   Man did it hurt.  And the next day...the infection was gone.  It was that day at eight years old that I learned, God may not always do things the way you want Him to, but if you ask and believe, He will do what's best.  As a little kid I wanted it to magically go away.  What happened is my dad went with a needle as deep as he could, but it didn't work...until I banged it hard against the nightstand, opening the wound deep and connecting the hole dad made to the infection causing it to drain.  That was a pretty powerful thing for an eight year old to grasp.  From that day forward my faith that God always does what's best was always in my mind.

And I still feel that way.  Through all of the things I have been through, I honestly have never said "Why me?". I am one of those people that believes we are never given more than we can handle.  I have only lost a job twice in my life.  The first time I did, I went from losing a job running record stores to running around with rock stars a few years later.  So for every trial and tribulation in my life, it always seemed to lead to something better, and usually a learning experience.  Many people's dream job would be running around with rock stars.  My reality was that I was constantly driving to this state or that state, and although 80% of the rock stars were great to work with, the 20% could really make you dread your job, however I won't mention the names of the 20% because I don't want you to think less of Jewel, Tori Amos, or Big Wreck (which I know you probably never heard of, and it may have something to do with my bosses' boss asking why I refused to work anymore Big Wreck shows.  Sorry, I didn't mean to get you kicked off the label, but he said I wasn't the first one to call you guys A-holes).  For every low point in my life, it seems with a little patience and a little faith, I eventually get to a very high point in my life.  So, where am I going with all of this?

One of the hardest things for a cancer patient is not what you go through, it's what you put your family through.  My journey through the medical system started in 1989 with my gastro-intestinal stuff, and I can handle whatever is thrown at me.  As I said, I have never asked God, "Why me?".  But with the stresses, worries, and everything else that comes along with major health issues, last night I laid in bed and asked God, "Why her?".  I am used to it.  I can handle it.  Throw one thing after another at me, I know that something greater is around the corner.  And after the news yesterday, I am still fine.  I know there will be other chances.  But seeing the way my wife has been emotionally and physically beat down the past couple months is more than I can bear.  I have seen cancer patients that were doing great, suddenly just change their attitude and pass away in an incredibly short period of time.  And I always wondered, what caused them to give up when they were doing so good?  Yesterday, I understood.  As a cancer patient, like it or not, you are causing a lot of pain and heartache to those that love and care for you.  And for the most part, the last thing those people want is for that loved one to be out of their life.  But as a cancer patient, you only have so much fight in you.  You fight the disease, you fight the surgery, you fight the treatment, and you are still left to fight to pretend that nothing is bothering you and that you are fine and strong and can put on a brave face for the ones helping you on that journey.  

Yesterday's news had nothing to do with cancer.  But it did have everything to do with the bright spot in this otherwise very dark past few months.  I am tired of that hospital.  I am tired of being in that hospital.  I am tired of seeing employees of that hospital, walking around, hating their jobs, and letting patients and loved ones see that attitude.  I didn't want to spend four more hours there, especially just to receive that news.  And most of all, I am tired of the toll that this emotional two months has taken on my wife and others that I love.  Yesterday, I understood why cancer patients give up.  I understood why they go so fast.  I understood it all.  It's not that they have given up on life, or treatment, or faith, or anything, sometimes it is simply that they just want the pain to be over.  Not necessarily their pain, but the pain that ripples throughout their support network.  And in most cases, that is the last solution the support network wants, but yesterday I understood.  If there was anything I could do yesterday, to make this emotional hurting stop, I would have.  What's killing me is there is nothing I can do.  I am positive.  I know we will both get through this.  I know there will be a bright spot down the road.  But I can't stop her pain.

That is why I found myself laying in bed, next to my wife as she cries herself to sleep asking God, "Why her?".  I try to imagine, what bright spot is going to make up for the past two months of heartache.  And the way I figured it out, this is what must be in store for us, we must be finding a winning lottery ticket while at Walt Disney World, when we bump in to Johnny Depp (that would be for her) who tells us he has a surplus of American made Paul Reed Smith guitars with double cutaway and twenty four frets, he would like us to have one, and nine months later we have triplets (the triplets would be for me, and should be really small magical triplets, that are an easy pregnancy, but are magically very healthy).  The triplets would have to come nine months later, because we would want to ride everything at Disney World without having to worry about all those signs that list all the medical conditions that preclude you from riding (from pregnancy to hangnails, are the rides really that unsafe or is the added fright from all the medical warnings part of the ambiance?).  And those triplets better not look like Captain Jack, if you know what I mean.

So here I am.  Up early blogging so no one in the house sees the tears in my eyes, trying to digest why yesterday happened.  Go ahead and plug me with a few more tubes, hoses, wires, monitors, and stitches, but can we leave her out of this?  I don't know what to expect next.  I just know there has to be something bigger and better planned, and hopefully it is soon.

The ugly truth about CATscans

The rest of my Friday involved greeting my parents and drinking every non-alcoholic, non-caffeinated beverage that wasn't nailed down.  After all, the nice nurse did tell me I could get dehydrated from the CATscan dye.  With my parents in town to check on my recovery, I decide to "go crazy" and have a twelve ounce Pepsi with dinner, the only caffeine all day.  After all that's just a little caffeine and the CATscan was 10 hours earlier.  We make plans for Tom's Big Day Out the next day, since I have basically just been a crotch icing hermit for the past week.

I get up in the morning excited to start the day.  I take my medication and get ready for the fun filled day ahead of us.  We have so many plans!  Shopping for tools.  Fixing the boat.  And other great feats that would have me more than 100 feet from the house (and that number is relevant later).  Then I have a feeling...downstairs...in the back.  It kinda feels like I have to go.  But I kinda don't have to go.  Then the feeling kinda feels stronger.  I go into the bathroom, sit down and...well, how to explain it.  Remember the old movies where the army grabs the battering ram and hits the two huge doors to the castle and they don't budge?  Something like that.

You know, it is at this point I remember reading somewhere on that checklist before the CATscan "Have you ever had any adverse reaction to the dye?"  We checked "No" because somehow, I have never had this particular medical procedure before.  Because of my gastro-intestinal issues, most of my medical tests involves me being violated in some way.  I have things done to my body that would be considered obscene outside of the operating room, I even think that some are illegal in Alabama, (and a bar show in Tijuana).  But I have never had a CATscan.  I remember hearing the guy just down from us filling out his form while I was trying to choke down the orange flavored cement "What the heck is the dye?  Squid ink?"  I didn't pay any attention, because if I have been poked, stuck, sampled, scanned, scraped, sliced and diced, I can walk through this test and it's wimpy dye!

Then it hits me again.  I feel like I am going to pass out.  Now I have the same army, with a slightly bigger battering ram, except this time they are trying to break through the mail slot, and still aren't getting anywhere.  The pain is immense.  Because I have had so many tests, I am familiar with a little painkiller back up, but nothing like this.  It feels like I have the back up of constipation with the urgency of diarrhea.  In between contractions, I grab a liter bottle of water.  I must have gotten too dehydrated yesterday.  I down the water and fill it up again.  And again.  Embarrassed beyond belief, I beg my wife to run to the pharmacy and get me some relief, ANY RELIEF!  Still sore from the surgery, I can't stand up completely straight, and now with this going on, it hurts to sit in a chair...or lie on a bed...or breath...or blink.  I park myself in the bathroom waiting for something, anything to happen.  I start sweating, but feel chilled at the same time.  I take off my clothes and think about jumping in the shower between squeezing and slamming.  Maybe the hot water will help, I don't know.  It can't hurt.  My wife arrives and walks in to something a spouse should never have to walk in on.  I am on the toilet, weak from all of this, and naked from almost, not quite, thinking about getting in the shower.  The ordeal to this point has produce just a few brown dots in the toilet (another thing a spouse should never have to see).  She says "You were successful?  You don't need this?"  I snatch whatever it is in her hand and start to rip it open. She told me that the pharmacist said this happens sometimes in reaction to CATscans and gave me some other instructions.  He also told her that if this didn't work, I would have to use an enema.  At this point, I am upset that she didn't grab an enema too.

Satisfied that relief is just around the bend, I grab the pills and take a swig of water.  The funny thing about drinking three quarts of water in a short amount of time, you run out of space.  None of it makes it past my mouth.  I set the pills down, and then things get worse.!

People with severe gastro-esophageal reflux disease (and in my case paired with an esophageal ulcer and a hiatal hernia) can have a surgery called a laparoscopic Nissen fundiplication (and those three words just made my spellcheck start smoking).  It is a great surgery and only really has one side effect.  You can longer regurgitate.  Your mind and stomach don't know this, but your throat is one way only now.  So, the signals keep getting sent, and the muscles react, but everything stays where it started.  This is really not that big of a problem...unless you just drank three quarts of water and then tried to take one more drink with two pills.

The heaves start.  For some reason, even though I had this stomach surgery twelve years ago, I still lean over the toilet out of habit.  Something else a spouse should never witness, although there is a small part of me that is glad she finally witnessed this anomaly.  When people ask about the surgery, and you tell them about the side-effect, you usually get a skeptical glance back.  Now I have a witness!  This goes on for what seems like hours, but was probably about twenty seconds.  I finally stop, get to my feet, when my wife asks, "What's that?"  Newton's third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  In the midst of everything else going on, the pushing and lack of motion in the front, led to a pushing and lack of motion in the back...except for a few brown spots on the carpet.  I am positive now my wife can walk in front of any judge in the world, relay what she has witnessed  in the past five minutes, and be granted an immediate annulment.

I manage to choke down the pills.  I jump in the shower as I wait for them to work.  I get out and read the package.  "Expect results in 6-12 hours."  I wish she would have gotten the enema too.  I manage to awkwardly get onto the bed.  It has only been fifteen minutes, I might as well get comfortable...uh-oh, better take a walk, a really quick walk.  I sit down, and minimal success.  The army is still there.  I try to lay down again, no I don't.  Army isn't budging.  I decided it is best to remain upright so I can move quicker and walk outside to talk to my parents...I mean back inside...standing army...back outside....inside.  I bet that my parents are really glad they came to see this!  Within an hour, the medicine worked.  I feel like the Octomom after baby six or seven, but I can sit comfortably now.

I am ready to go on with my plans with my parents.  We need to go to the store, then fix the boat...  Then I remember what the pill bottle said, "Expect results in 6-12 hours."  Did it work so fast because I hadn't eaten anything in twelve hours?  Did it works so fast because I drank half of Lake Erie this morning?  Or am I 5-11 hours from expecting results.  Over the next twenty minutes or so, I do get some more results, and then nothing.  But I am scared.  I am very scared.  If this stuff worked that good within an hour, what are results going to be like in the optimal time.  We decide to call off shopping or anything that involves me in a vehicle with upholstery until the twelve hours is up.  We will work on the boat later.  Later comes.  The boat is in the backyard in my workshop.  Without a bathroom.  We can fix the boat later.

Six hours came and went, as well as twelve without incident.  As I recover from the day's event, I read up on the literature the oncologist gave me.  The active surveillance option for my treatment calls for about twenty- five CATscans over the next ten years, including every four months for the first few years.  I think we can throw the active surveillance option RIGHT out the window.  I continue to recover from my surgery and "labor" until the oncologist visit Tuesday.  I tell the oncologist about the horrific reaction to the dye, and how I would like to limit the times I have to go through that test.  The formerly nice oncologist tells me I didn't have that reaction.  My wife chimes in to say that I most certainly did have that reaction (she probably has it permanently etched in her memory).  The distantly nice oncologist again states that I didn't have that reaction. It must be the painkillers...that I have been off of for a week...and have already experienced and gone through that with a lot less trouble...which I would have told him had he given me the chance.
Tomorrow, I will talk about my search for a new oncologist!

CATscan and first Oncologist visit...

Thursday, we head back to the surgeon.  One piece of paper said to come back in a week, another said two weeks, but then he kinda said a week and a half.  But the scheduler put me in for today, so I am half expecting to be turned away.  I see my surgeon and he says I am healing up nicely.  He tells me to lay back and he will take my bandage off.  The "advice" I got earlier told me this is worse than the surgery.  My whole body tenses up and he grabs the bandage and slowly pulls.  It has all the pain of...peeling off a wet bathing suit.  Boy, do I feel stupid.  Not that I am complaining that I didn't have the excruciating hair pulling pain I was told about.  Maybe it's because sometime under anesthesia I was shaved from my nipples to my kneecaps with just a little landing strip going down my entire left side for some unknown reason.  He tells me to schedule a CATscan, assigns me an oncologist, and sends me on my way (I also got a grape lollipop).  

Anxious for answers, anxious to get on with my life, we ask for the earliest CATscan, regardless of where we have to go to get it.  Tomorrow morning?  Perfect!  We immediately call the oncologist.  Tomorrow afternoon?  Perfecter!!  Everything has been moving so fast, which we are both thankful for.  

I wake up Friday like it is Christmas morning.  I am so excited to finally be on the road to recovery/treatment.  I am also very hungry on this road since I haven't been allowed to eat or drink anything today.  Luckily, they have a nice big jug of slightly orange flavored chalk for me to drink for my test.  For those unfamiliar with this,  the consistency of this wonderful concoction is just slightly more liquid than setting concrete.  I get about a third of it down when they call me back.  That's all I can do.  The nice nurse says that will be enough and tells me to lay down on the sliding table...that doesn't have hand rails...and I can't really bend at the waist.  She looks at me standing there.  I look pitiful.  Then it dawns on her that I need help getting down there.  She comes over and helps me lower myself into position.  She throws a sheet over me and tells me to slide down my shorts so the zipper doesn't show up.  I have a zipper?  Because of the location of my incision and the location of the offending part's removal, I have been wearing over-sized boxer shorts (which look just like shorts) underneath over-sized shorts (which look just like boxer shorts).  Since I want to put as little pressure on the aforementioned areas as possible, I don't wear any that would be tight enough to require the use of a zipper.  Still unable to bend at the waist, I try to shimmy my way out of my shorts.  

The nurse comes over and sticks my vein.  She looks for the one vein that doesn't have a big bruise on it already from the previous two weeks of jabbing and jabs me there.  As she starts the dye, she says I may feel a warm or cold sensation in my arm followed by the taste of garlic in my mouth.  Right on cue, it happens.  First a pleasant little hint of garlic.  Then the sensation of burping after eating a slice of garlic bread.  Then the overwhelming feeling of having just sucked the life force out of eight cloves of garlic followed with a garlicy gargle.  WOW!  I was hungry about 3 seconds ago, but now, not so much.  Then, I am really glad she gives me the next warning.  She says, "Some people will later have the sensation that they have went to the bathroom in their pants.  But don't worry, it's just the dye moving through your system."

She walks out of the room and the scanner begins its whirring.  I think to myself how funny it is that some people feel a little wee down there.  "Take a deep breath."   "Hold."   "Release."  I hear that several times as the slide pushes me in and out of the tube like I am riding on an old mechanical type writer, and then it happens.  "Take a deep breath."  "Hold."  And I just crapped my pants!  "Release."  I think I did already.  Did I crap my pants?  It certainly feels like I am sitting in a pile of crap...well, I don't know exactly what that feels like, but I imagine it feels a lot like I what I am feeling right now.  Dear God, please let this be that side effect she was talking about.  I thought she was talking about a little wee, not a giant mushy poo, which is what I think may have happened.  I keep being pushed in and out of the tube.  I can't check.  I guess when this is over the nurse and I will find out at the same time whether I crapped my pants or if this is just a drill.  At least if I crapped my pants, my shorts will be clean since I had to shimmy.

The test finally ends.  The garlic subsides and the pooing sensation was the dye, either that or me and the poo are now at the same temperature, because I don't feel like I am sitting in anything warm anymore.  The nurse tells me to slide on my shorts and get up.  The problem is, I have shimmied beyond my non-waist-bending reach and cannot pull up my pants until I get up.  Now, how do I ask a nurse to help me up and then I will pull up my shorts without sounding like a bad punchline to a schoolyard joke.  I decide the best thing to do is to lay there and look pitiful.  It works.  I explain, while very slowly in a non-creepy, non-Chris-Hansen-attention-grabbing way, show her that my "underwear" is basically shorts and I need help upright so I can then be able to pull up my shorts shorts.  Luckily, she smiles and says "Oh, I keep forgetting your surgery was just a week ago."  The nice nurse sends me on my way, while telling me about one more side-effect.  I need to drink plenty of fluids to keep from being dehydrated, while staying away from caffeine.  We have a long, heated discussion about what exactly is "staying away" from caffeine (i.e. Pepsi) as she pushes me out in the lobby.  She gives us a CD-ROM of my scans for the oncologist and I KNOW today is going to be a day full of answers!

A couple hours later, I am at the oncologist's office.  It is a large building with several oncologists.  You see people in the waiting room at all stages of care.  We go back to the room and the very nice gentleman sits me down and says "Don't worry, you are going to survive this and be free of cancer."  I start bawling like a little baby, and I don't know why.  I never thought for a second I wouldn't beat this. I don't know why I am crying.  I feel so stupid.  He asks if I had my CATscan yet and we proudly whip out the CD, to which he replies, "Oh, I can't read those.  We'll wait for the results."  He talks about my options.  Twenty to thirty scans over the next ten years, while waiting for results on each one (and possibly really crapping on the table because you think the sensation is just the dye).  We already don't like that one.  Option two is chemo.  Less scans and less chance of anything popping back up.  OK.  Option three is radiation, that may cause more and worse cancer than it kills.  Hmmm.  Option two is sounding better and better.  

We didn't get our answers, but we are on our way.  We met a very nice oncologist and in a few days, everything will be in place.  I wait for my parents to show up for the weekend.  I am looking forward to getting out of the house.  I hydrate all day long, limiting myself to one small Pepsi.  Life is starting to look up.  That is until.  The Wrath of CATscan.....which I will talk about in way too much detail tomorrow.  

"...the best kind of cancer!"

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

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

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

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

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

Nutectomy Day

Leading up to my surgery I received a lot of advice.  Most of it scared the crap out of me.  One family friend who meant well started off his well wishing saying he had been through the same thing a few years ago.  He said I shouldn't get too worried, because after they removed his testicle, they found out it wasn't cancer after all.  I had already come to grips with the fact that I was going to lose a "boy", but I was certain it was for a good reason so I wasn't too worried.  I know he meant to tell me not to worry, I may not even have cancer, but what I kept thinking is "they are going to take out one of my testicles, and they don't even know if they have to?"  I would hope they did not just randomly chop off balls on the odd chance one may have cancer inside.  Me and the boys have been through a lot.  I will be tough saying goodbye to one, especially if he is moving out for no good reason.  As if that wasn't enough "advice", I get warned that the bandage removal is worse than any of the surgery.  Great, something else to look forward to.

The night before I wasn't tired at all.  We had to get up around 4am to start getting ready, and even at 2am I am wide awake.  I figure I should probably at least try to get some sleep, something that has been hard to do ever since the diagnosis.  I lay in bed, thoughts swirling through my head.  I still didn't sleep much.  The morning came way too soon.  We hop in the car and head to the hospital.

I start my prep, and lay like what seems an eternity in the hospital bed.  Obviously, the nature of the surgery has me naked except for a flimsy gown, and in typical hospital fashion, the average temperature in my room is just slightly warmer than a Canadian winter.  They talk about how hot a day it will be outside, while I ask every nurse that walks by for another blanket.  Soon I look less like a patient and more like a pile of laundry.  I don't want to be here, I don't want to do this.  The advice I got keeps echoing through my head and I contemplate the consequences of just walking out.

The anesthesiologist comes in and gives me some "calming" meds in my IV.  She is nice for a gas passer and soon we head to the operating room.    The team starts gathering around me and the nice gas passer gives me the good stuff.  I drift off knowing that the poison will soon be gone and I will be on the road to recovery.

I wake up dying of thirst.  The funny thing about strong painkillers, your inhibitions go out the window.  Where a normal person wouldn't scream over and over again that they are really really thirsty and would kill to get some more ice chips, I in my my opiate fog begged and bartered for some frozen gold.  I don't think I was technically ready to get more ice yet, but soon every nurse in the place was walking by handing me a cup of ice just to get me to shut the hell up.  The sore throat and thirst was a good diversion for the huge gash in my abdomen, which I suddenly became acutely aware of after eating my fifth cup of ice.  The drugs wearing off, I start acting like a civilized person again, just as they wheel in some old lady from the operating room.  She starts asking for ice and complaining about the pain, and I think to myself,"what a rude, whiny, little, bi...wait, that's what I sounded like 4 cups of ice ago".  Now slightly more comfortable, I am still fighting the meds and the lack of sleep.  I close my eyes and start to drift off.  It feels so good to sleep.  The pain starts to subside, my body is begging for some more rest when "BBBBBBBBBBBBBBWWWWWEEEEEEEPPPPPP" an alarm screaming right behind my right ear followed by nurses gathering around me screaming "BREATHE DEEP, BREATHE DEEP!!!"  Startled from waking up from such a sound relaxing sleep to the equivalent of a smoke alarm sitting on my forehead and a nurse bum rush, I of course start breathing deep.  Hell I am hyperventilating, followed by happy nurses saying "good, good, you need to keep those oxygen levels up".  This gets repeated several more times in this recovery room.  I can't see the oxymeter to verify that any of this was actually happening.  Personally, I think this is just sweet nurse revenge for all those ice chip runs I demanded earlier.

They finally decided to not be so sadistic and put me back in my own room.  I start to shake off the heavy stuff and now I just want to be in my home bed.  My butt hurts so bad from being in the same position in this hard bed for so long.  I want my achy butt back in my own bed.  In another page our of the Marquee de Sade's book, the nurses tell me as soon as I pee, I can go.  Hmmmm.   Apparently the recovery room nurses have been talking to these nurses.  This turns out to be a very hard task.  I try standing, sitting, in the toilet, in the milk-jug-on-its-side thingy they give you.  Nothing.  As I am sitting down thinking of better days when I could pee with no problems, a nurse works to slam shut my already shy bladder by ignoring all the "Knock Before Entering" signs and walks right in on me.  After what seems like dozens of trips and trials of perfect water flow in the sink for inspiration and rubbing ice chips on the back of my neck (I don't know how/why that worked but it did) I finally get a few drips.  Then a trickle.  Then a slight stream.  Not exactly relief, but enough for them to look for blood.  The nurses send me on my way.  As soon as I get dressed I can leave.  Now I just sit there helpless as I wait for someone to dress me.

I'm dressed, I high, I am sitting in the sun, waiting for the car to pull up so I can be on my way.  Now I it's time to do what I have been doing so much since this all began, hurry up and wait for test results.  Tomorrow, I talk about the recovery and the waiting (just ask Tom Petty, that's the hardest part).