The First Three Month Cancer Results Are In!

I took an unwanted break from writing mainly because I couldn't focus long enough to write.  Between the doctors' appointments last week and the appointment yesterday, I was thinking about results, questions, possibilities, outcomes, etc.

The good news is that my results from my first three month cancer check-up were clear!  I didn't really expect any result other than that, but no matter how much I try to tell myself everything is going to be fine, it is kind of hard to convince myself completely.  After all, I didn't expect to find cancer in the first place.  But that is behind me, and I have three months before I start worrying again.

I was more anxious to talk to the oncologist about my swimmers though.  Although I trust my urologist, I feel like he was a little rash when he told me to basically forget about any baby making for another six months.  I have been anxious to get back to baby making, and not just because of the fun involved in mixing the ingredients.  There are several reasons, but I think there is a part of me that feels like I will be moving past all of this cancer crap once the baby stuff gets back on track.

My tests revealed that my swimmers weren't the strong swimmers we initially thought.  I suspect part of that is my fault for getting tested as soon as they said I could.  In my haste to move on with my life, I ran to the spankatorium to find out if we could start again.  I wonder if I would have waited a few more days if the problem swimmers would have completely left the pool.  That is where I differ with my urologist.  His idea is to just do another test in May.  Well, my first problem with that is that I don't know that we have to wait the full time frame to see if I rushed things the first time.  My second problem is that his math was way off!  The amount of days he said we should wait would have landed me somewhere in March, but then he said May.

There is a part of me that is a little embarrassed about all of this too.  I don't want to become a regular at the jerknasium.  I walk in and they tell me they have my favorite magazines laid out for me already and the video is cued up to where I stopped it last time.  But I want to know when the games can start again.  I don't care if I have to go in there a thousand times, I want to know exactly when it is safe to start again (although admittedly after a thousand times I may be a little chafed).

I had a heart to heart with my oncologist about this yesterday and he kind of agrees with me that the sooner the better.  I asked him how to keep from offending my urologist and he said to not even go through him.  He suggested working through my wife's doctor to order the test since she is the one I am trying to impregnate (my wife, not the doctor).  He called this plan the "backdoor way" of getting my tests done.  I go out to the car, excited about my oncologist's idea, and as soon as I said the words "backdoor way" in relation to getting pregnant, I was immediately vetoed.  However, once she heard what the "backdoor way" was and that it had nothing to do with the plan that was conjured up in her mind by those words, she was more receptive to it (figuratively and literally).

So, that is where I am currently at as far as getting cancer behind me.  I am clean.  I don't plan on getting recancered anytime soon.  I just want to be that One Nut Wonder.  Now off to the Backdoor Cave and make a call with the Back Phone, to put the Back Plan in action.

Fears Subsided But Validated

I met a friend for lunch today.  She is a fairly good friend and she asked how my appointments went yesterday.  I told her about how the nurse mistakenly told me my swimmers were OK and how my wife and I thought it was OK to start trying for baby again and her face went pale.  Luckily (?) we are not preggers right now, so I don't have to worry about any damage done from my chemo cooked swimmers.  But her reaction today showed me that maybe I wasn't over reacting yesterday.  It is one thing if God gives you a special needs child, it is another thing to do something that caused your child to be a special needs child.  That is why most of us don't smoke, drink, do drugs, bungi jump, work in nuclear power plants, or watch Jersey Shore while pregnant.  I can't imagine the amount of guilt I would have had if we had a child that was born facing challenges their whole life because of something I had done, i.e. chemo side effects (knowingly or unknowingly).  So, I am feeling a little better about that issue today.

Other bad news I almost got was that our dear rescue basenji darted out the front door when a delivery driver came to drop off a package.  My wife and I were both gone at the time so it had the potential to be a very bad situation.  Luckily it was very cold and snowy yesterday so she ran all the way from the front door to the back door to be let back in.  She made it back there before my mother-in-law could even put on her coat to go chase after her.  I guess it is a good thing that African dogs don't have much fur, otherwise she may have tried to stay out longer.

Daisy the abused and neglected basenji paid me back this morning  for her little excursion by eating part of a stuff toy causing the stuff toy to re-emerge while I was trying to sleep...three different times.  The mistake I made was telling my wife and mother-in-law about it.  To understand why that was a mistake I will run through my first waking moments today.  I wake up to the unmistakable noise of a dog puking, and knowing I am too late to do anything about it.  I lay my head down in disgust, not wanting to deal with it, then I hear that same sound again, but this time I am awake so I am able to throw a dog blanket under her to keep it off the carpet, and success!  I lay back on the bed to revel in my success, when I hear a third mess being created and instantly deposited on the carpet.  I drag myself out of bed, walk the dogs in the bitter cold, then come in to clean up the messes.  I come out from my cleaning just to get asked to explain everything in detail to my mother-in-law.  I finally think I am done talking about dog regurgitation, when my wife calls.  I mention Daisy ate another stuff toy, with the usual outcome, and I again get asked about time, coordinates, etc.  And now for some reason I am writing about it...

I did briefly try out my "abdominal brace" today while I walked the dogs, and it actually works very well and allows me to walk normally.  I don't know if I will use it out in public or not.  It would have a rather slimming effect the way it compresses the gut to hold everything in place, except that the adjustable scaffolding in the back, the contraption that allows it to brace, is a huge bulge that sticks out so much it won't even fit under clothes.  I guess I will have to find a long jacket.  I plan to use the brace tomorrow as I take advantage of the bitter cold and clean out the snake haunts in my shop and hopefully leave them with nowhere to hang out anymore.

So that is my life about now.  It's just a rootin' tootin', doggy pukin', snakepit bootin', workshop lootin', Daisy losin' 'n' return to roostin', tummy boostin', no swimmer shootin' kinda week.

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.

The Nutrition Paradox

Even before all of this cancer crap, my wife had been urging me to eat better.  Although that was kinda thrown out the window during chemo, when I was supposed to just eat anything (or in my case everything), now she is coming down on me hard about finding better food to eat...and then she beats me.  OK, I am joking about one of those things.

In some instances, I have been working towards a healthier lifestyle.  I have greatly increased my water intake, until I had the recent bout of hurting myself.  I haven't been drinking as much water since I hurt myself Saturday because more water equals more peeing, which means more walking to the bathroom, which means more hurting.  I would continue to drink lots of water, but my wife hid the little porta-john thingy they gave us at the hospital after my surgery.  Many people have said I should cut back on my Pepsi intake, however I don't agree with them, and neither do Pepsi's stockholders.  But I have been cutting back.  As I mentioned, I have been drinking more water, and instead of Pepsi, I try to drink healthier stuff like root beer and Big Red.  I am assuming the Red in Big Red comes from some healthy fruit.  And I think Pepsi should count as a vegetable serving anyway, because it says "corn" right there on the label, and corn is a vegetable.

Which leads me to the servings count.  One thing I have been doing since chemo is drinking a very large glass of orange juice first thing every morning.  And a serving the size I drink in the morning counts as two fruit servings.  To keep from messing with my stomach I only drink the "Low Acid" orange juice.  I also make sure it is the "No Pulp" version from Tropicana.  It has to be from Tropicana, because it is made in Bradenton, Florida, which means a few times a year when I am down there, I can drive by there and give them the "stink-eye" to make sure they are doing everything correctly.  So far, it's working.  And Tropicana is owned by Pepsi, and we all know that they only make quality products.  I am also eating at least one banana a day, so we are up to three servings of fruit.

Now is where the serving sizes get a little sketchy.  I have been snacking on carrot slices, which come in a giant bag.  It says there are only five servings in that bag, which I find hard to believe.  If I ate carrots in those quantities I would get so orange I would be mistaken for a Jersey Shore cast member (provided I was also a alcoholic whore).  Despite what it says on the bag, I am counting it as a serving.  Then there are olives.  I can't find out whether those are counted as a serving of vegetables or not.  I only eat the green ones, and the people preaching that health crap are always talking about eating green stuff.  I say it is a vegetable and since I eat several queen olives while I cook lunch, I am counting it as another serving.

Next we have the gray area fruits and vegetables.  First up, my wife tries to claim raisins don't count as a fruit.  I say they most certainly do count as a fruit.  After all, they are just dried grapes and grapes are a fruit, so why aren't dried grapes covered in chocolate a fruit?  I did mention they were chocolate covered raisins, right?  Not that it matters.  My wife's argument is that the chocolate negates the benefits of the raisin.  The way I look at it, people will order a salad, slice fried chicken strips and throw them on top, then drench the whole thing in ranch dressing and call that a healthy meal, I think a raisin, that happens to be covered in its BFF chocolate, is just as healthy.  My live in nutritionist/warden also claims that a potato is not a vegetable.  I don't know what she thinks it is.  It is not an animal or a mineral, which according to my 20Q game, only leaves one thing.  And I eat that particular vegetable all day long, as fries, tater tots, and chips.  Not too mention that some of the chips I eat are CORN chips, and corn is a vegetable too.  I have argued several times that I eat more servings of fruits and vegetable than she does.

By my math, I am intaking approximately fifty servings of fruits and vegetables a day.  If anything maybe I should cut back and not eat so many carrots (just in case being orange turns you into a drunken slut).  The bottom line is I am trying to be a healthier Tommy.  And after all, the doctors and nutritionists are constantly changing their minds on what is good and what is bad.  One day it's meat is bad, the next day it's carbs that are.  First no alcohol, then it's good for your heart (not that I can do anything about that one since I can't drink).  Used to be eggs were good, then bad, now they may be good again in certain situations.  Everything with nutrition seems to be an oxymoron.  Things have changed just since I have started going through my cancer ordeal.  On one hand they say to eat pecans, almonds, and cashews, but the FIRST thing they told me to do when I was diagnosed with cancer was cut back on my nuts...

Scanxiety, The New Caffeine

I really didn't think this week's test would bother me as much as it appears to be.  The cancer insomnia is back in full swing, as bad or worse than it was when I first got diagnosed.  I can operate on just of few hours of sleep and not seem to be tired at all.

My wife has been picking up on it, but hasn't found a way to make me sleepy, outside of poisoning me, and I catch her before she is able to slip stuff in my meals like "vegetables".  She sometimes convinces me to lay down when she does, but I lay there for an hour or two, then get back up again.  Once up, I stay up for another two or three hours until I decide I had better lay back down before she gets up for work, or she will beat me (it's happened before).

The worst part of all of this, is just like last time, there is very little productivity in all of these extra waking hours. I wish I could exercise, but that late at night all of the wheezing, moaning, huffing, puffing, crying, and whimpering would wake up the rest of the house, and that is just from putting on my exercise shorts (because I have found you can't work out in a camouflage snuggie, it keeps getting tangled on the uneven bars).  I don't really do anything creative, either.  If I were to play my American made, twenty four fret, double cutaway, Paul Reed Smith in the dead of night, it would also wake up the rest of the house (although every note that comes out of it is pretty much a sweet lullaby in my hands...).  I haven't done anything like written a great novel about giraffes ruling the Earth and starting their own Puritan society until some giraffes with poor morals start wearing turtleneck sweaters and that risqué clothing starts eroding their moral fiber and the giraffes start fighting so much within their own group they don't notice that the impalas are starting their own society which is a lot better because all impalas are cool (provided they were made before 1996).  I have spent some of the time late at night in the insomnia hours looking for jobs, but the jobs you find yourself looking for at 3am aren't the same jobs you would apply for at 10am.  Apparently the later in the night it gets, the better your perceived abilities are.

When I finally do get to bed and it is really late (or early) that is when my mind starts running rampant.  I am usually still not tired physically, but my mind is completely fatigued and not working correctly.  I lie there, still wide awake, and in the still of the night I hear every little sound outside.  I can hear that damn raccoon farting in my workshop, and I just know he is doing it on Michelle the Impala.  Then I lie there thinking of elaborate ways to assassinate flatulent raccoons, but I know the squirrels will never cooperate with the plan and I just plain don't trust the 'possums.  The longer I lie there, the more my mind conjures up weird thoughts that scare me awake, like images of little trolls doing backflips on trampolines with cutlasses in their mouths, kinda like lederhosen wearing, green Shawn Johnson's, but not near as cute.  And I don't know whether I should tackle them and steal their swords, or jump on the trampoline with them and pinch their little cheeks (because that is what I would do if I were jumping on a trampoline with a green Shawn Johnson, is that weird?  Hmmm, I guess it is.  Forget I said any of that last bit.  Unless your Shawn, you're into that sort of thing, and have a place for me to stay after my wife kicks me out and beats me...not necessarily in that order.  I'll bring the lederhosen.)

I tried listing some of the crap that I am trying to unload on ebay while I was up that late, but nowadays everyone always waits until the last minute of an auction to bid, and what I found out, is people are not on ebay at 3am, they are either asleep, coming downstairs to ask me why I'm not in bed, or looking at porn.  Maybe if I could sell porn on ebay I would have the perfect combo, but first I would have to get some porn to sell.  I doubt I could make any myself, because I don't think there is a market for "husky" guys with one nut.  If there is, how much does that sort of porn pay, and will there be trolls or a trampoline involved?  (I'll provide the lederhosen.)

I am definitely counting down the days until I do this latest test and I get my results.  Hopefully I will find my normal sleep patterns again.  If I can't get my normal sleep patterns back, I hope I at least find something productive to do with my time.  Maybe I could rearrange the basement while no one is awake to get in the way.  You know, if I move the couch over there, and the TV there, and the computer desk there, I should have just enough room for a trampoline and I tripod,hmmm....I gotta run, I think I just found a way to make money and occupy my time.

Twit Happens

One thing that is nice about the "new media" is the ability to get together with people from all over the world that you have no idea who they are.  However, as a cancer patient (trying to make the transition to calling myself a cancer survivor), there has been one surprising fact about this new media.  Cancer patients seem to be able to find each other on-line, befriend each other, and actually talk to one another and offer support!  That seems to be especially true on Twitter.

As I had mentioned before, very early into my ordeal @noboobsaboutit and I connected and she was a constant source of inspiration, support, and information.  Shortly after that @pharmacistmike offered support with his @TCSociety  Since then, many other people have offered their support on-line.  I may put a little note how I am not having the best day, and inexplicably I will get someone sending me a note to hang in there, or relating how they made it through the same thing.  Granted, Twitter does have it share of celebrities trying to say something outrageous just to get in the public eye for another fifteen minutes, and it is impressive how some can manage to tick off so many people in only 140 characters!  And there are the comedians that try to say something ridiculous in their bio to show you what you can expect on an hourly basis.  And there is the obsessive tweeters who let you know what size coffee they bought that morning.  But I would rather hear from my fellow cancer warriors any day.  It is surprising the number of very busy people that take the time to send a private message or tweet back.  I have even seen Lance Armstrong send several notes of support (but never to me, c'mon Lance, send some love, my doc knows your doc...)  Even if it is a day where you don't need the encouragement, seeing that someone else that has gone through it is thinking about you, puts a smile on your face.

So, I offer this friendly advice to anyone that is going through their own cancer battle.  Create a Twitter account.  Follow the American Cancer Society, Livestrong, or in my case the Testicular Cancer Society or any of the others, and you will be surprised how much support finds you!  That is just some friendly advice from @the1nutwonder  I would write more, but I am probably coming close to my 140 characters.

NAKED CHURCH! Now That I Have Your Attention, Read About What It Is...

Recently I was invited by my parents' pastor to be part of his internet radio show, the Naked Church's Naked Talk.  Before you get your hopes up, it is strictly a voice interview, not webcam and the name is definitely misleading (something I embarrassingly found out after the fact).

Throughout my ordeal I have tried to look at the positive side of things, because frankly, I don't have a choice.  Sitting around stewing about things doesn't help anyone, so why not be positive?  And I think I have a lot to be positive about.  I found my cancer early, and even though I ignored it for a month, it still didn't spread.  I was Stage I and had the "best kind of cancer".  I had doctor's that moved swiftly and quickly treated me before things had a chance to get any worse.  I only lost approximately half of the balls I started with, and just found out what is left still works (in theory, still trying to make it work in practice by having a mini-me running around).  Even the one hiccup with the bad oncologist resulted in me finding a great oncologist that helped to unite all of my doctors into a team.  I only had to do one round of chemo and I made it through that fairly unscathed.  All in all, I think I am pretty lucky.

We have all heard that there are no atheists in a foxhole, and I wish I could say the same for cancer patients.  many of us do depend a lot on faith in God and man (now Bowie's Modern Love in running through my head).  On one hand, you have to have total faith in your oncologist, because your life literally is in his/her hands.  So in that sense, you are putting your faith in man to cure you.  Many of us also spend a lot of time on the horn to God asking that he guide that man to help us through what we are going through, as well as help us as we fight to survive the cure (which can sometimes be a harder fight that the sickness, but at least you have a fighting chance of surviving the cure).

The people I don't understand are the ones that curse God for their cancer.  As I said in my unfortunately clothed radio interview on the unfortunately clothed Naked Church, for those that say "Why me?", you can also say "Why not me?"  In this world, we can't all walk around with everyone having the perfect life.  Some of us are going to lose jobs, some of us are going to get cancer, and some of us are going to be given American made Paul Reed Smith guitars with twenty-four frets and double cutaways for Christmas.  I had all three of those things happen to me last year, and I think I made it through OK.

For the atheists, they don't have anyone to curse, and they also have no one to put their faith in other than man.  Personally, if I were an atheist with cancer, I think I would hedge my bets and find some faith quickly.  After all, if there isn't a God, you won't be any worse off than you were already, right?  It's the people that curse God for giving them cancer that really confuse me.  If you think God gave you cancer and you are cursing Him, what sense does that make?  If you believe He is the type to do something like give you a disease, won't cursing Him just make things worse?

One of the ladies in my group said a friend of hers said, "NOTHING is a surprise to God."  And I don't think that phrase needs to be expanded on or thought about in depth, just repeated when you think life has taken a dump on you.  Nothing is a surprise to God.  I don't know if it was a plan, a punishment, a blessing, a break from working, a rest, a teachable moment, a way of that extra scrotal weight I have been carrying around all these years, or what.  I just know that I experienced it.  I made it through with God's and man's help.  And now I will hopefully use these life experiences to be a better person and help others.  And if you are the type that doesn't believe in God or curses God, what do you have to lose by becoming a better person from all this?

Don't get me wrong, there are periods of frustration, or confusion, or exhaustion, or apprehension.  But there are also periods of relief, elation, joy, and a whole different outlook on life.  So far I think my faith has served me well, and I don't plan on giving that up anytime soon, which is a good thing because I already have the tattoo (wish I could say the same thing about the wedding ring tattoo, guess I am stuck with her now).  I don't mind talking about my ordeal and I don't mind talking about how my faith got me through it and continues to get me through things.  The only time I think I have really asked "Why me?" is when I found out, that the Naked Church is false advertising, but I still managed to enjoy that too.  I guess I will have to find somewhere else to show off my new, slimmer sack.