Day 3 - Metastasis
I think I can pinpoint the moment for me when "Testicular Cancer" became "Cancer."
Notes from before my surgery:
Most cancer stories are concerning the heroic battle for life, filled with wisdom, memories, and hope. Not mine. I'm just losing a testicle here. Clearly, I've been robbed.
This is a memoir, a requiem for a testicle, if you will. (That would have been the name of the site if I had wanted to be ridiculously cheesy.)
I'm currently sitting in a waiting room awaiting blood work, thinking about how I'm going to turn this semi-critical health problem into an award wining novel. Writing is the therapeutic process of transferring misfortune into pleasure and profit. Well, pleasure anyway.
Before surgery I viewed testicular cancer as kind of a pseudo-cancer, much in the way I view my Jewish heritage allows me to be kind of a pseudo minority. Like, as a Jew I can say I'm a minority, but no one knows unless I explicitly tell them, so I don't face any of the potential hardships of a minority. With testicular cancer, you technically have a life threatening illness, but it's pretty easy to treat, and you don't really have to deal with it on a day to day basis unless you go around telling everyone you meet. Thats how it seemed to me. Until I saw my mom's face one day.
Alpha-fetoprotein markers indicate the presence of liver and germ cell tumors. My AFPs were at 9 when I got bloodwork before surgery. A week afterward, I got blood work again, and scheduled an appointment so my family could come down to the urologist with me and discuss the results.
I was whisked into an empty examination room and told to take off everything from the waist down and get under a paper blanket. The urologist came in, and quickly checked to make sure things were healing correctly, and after approving with a confident nod, opened the door and signaled my parents to enter. My mom stepped in, first smiling, then she saw the blanket, and a mortified expression took to her face as she realized that it was the only thing I was wearing below the waist. "Are you ready for us? He's not even dressed yet!"
Again, I found myself smiling stupidly, wondering why this consultation required me to be half naked in front of my parents.
The doctor walked over to the desk and picked up my file and started talking about my AFP markers, saying he hadn't yet received the latest AFP results, but...
"Wait. No here they are, the marker is at 15, it went up... Should have come down after the surgery. That's probably a mistake."
Confusion thickened the room, but I already knew what was going on. My cancer-lite was turning into real cancer. Right in front of me.
"You should see the oncologist, he'll be able to tell you more." His tone was grim, but caring. He stuck out his hand.
My Urologist had done all he could. He had cut out the cancer he could see, but now there was some invisible cancer floating around in my system that no blade could touch and no CAT scan could identify. I shook his hand, and he gave a comforting smile to me and my family, and then walked us out of the room. I knew I was stepping into new territory.
When you're dealing with a urologist, it means the problem is localized to a general region.
I had looked up "Oncologist" earlier in the day. I was now officially in the care of a cancer specialist.
A week afterwards, my AFP marker had risen to 20. My cancer was spreading.
Notes from before my surgery:
Most cancer stories are concerning the heroic battle for life, filled with wisdom, memories, and hope. Not mine. I'm just losing a testicle here. Clearly, I've been robbed.
This is a memoir, a requiem for a testicle, if you will. (That would have been the name of the site if I had wanted to be ridiculously cheesy.)
I'm currently sitting in a waiting room awaiting blood work, thinking about how I'm going to turn this semi-critical health problem into an award wining novel. Writing is the therapeutic process of transferring misfortune into pleasure and profit. Well, pleasure anyway.
Before surgery I viewed testicular cancer as kind of a pseudo-cancer, much in the way I view my Jewish heritage allows me to be kind of a pseudo minority. Like, as a Jew I can say I'm a minority, but no one knows unless I explicitly tell them, so I don't face any of the potential hardships of a minority. With testicular cancer, you technically have a life threatening illness, but it's pretty easy to treat, and you don't really have to deal with it on a day to day basis unless you go around telling everyone you meet. Thats how it seemed to me. Until I saw my mom's face one day.
Alpha-fetoprotein markers indicate the presence of liver and germ cell tumors. My AFPs were at 9 when I got bloodwork before surgery. A week afterward, I got blood work again, and scheduled an appointment so my family could come down to the urologist with me and discuss the results.
I was whisked into an empty examination room and told to take off everything from the waist down and get under a paper blanket. The urologist came in, and quickly checked to make sure things were healing correctly, and after approving with a confident nod, opened the door and signaled my parents to enter. My mom stepped in, first smiling, then she saw the blanket, and a mortified expression took to her face as she realized that it was the only thing I was wearing below the waist. "Are you ready for us? He's not even dressed yet!"
Again, I found myself smiling stupidly, wondering why this consultation required me to be half naked in front of my parents.
The doctor walked over to the desk and picked up my file and started talking about my AFP markers, saying he hadn't yet received the latest AFP results, but...
"Wait. No here they are, the marker is at 15, it went up... Should have come down after the surgery. That's probably a mistake."
Confusion thickened the room, but I already knew what was going on. My cancer-lite was turning into real cancer. Right in front of me.
"You should see the oncologist, he'll be able to tell you more." His tone was grim, but caring. He stuck out his hand.
My Urologist had done all he could. He had cut out the cancer he could see, but now there was some invisible cancer floating around in my system that no blade could touch and no CAT scan could identify. I shook his hand, and he gave a comforting smile to me and my family, and then walked us out of the room. I knew I was stepping into new territory.
When you're dealing with a urologist, it means the problem is localized to a general region.
I had looked up "Oncologist" earlier in the day. I was now officially in the care of a cancer specialist.
A week afterwards, my AFP marker had risen to 20. My cancer was spreading.
posted by sleepwithoutdreams at 5:25 PM
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