NOTE: As much as blogging this past year about my journey through the world of unemployment helped me deal with that experience, I am now faced with another 'psychological-writing-prompt' that, by following the same process, will help me deal with my current state.
Again, let me state, that my blogging is more about me being able to deal with things than a plea for concern, sympathy or pity. I see this challenge (a second one as you will see) as just that. Another hurdle placed along the road for me to ponder, deal with and overcome. I am certain that, in another year or so, I will have come through this experience alive and well - albeit with a few more physical scars from this experience than I had from dealing with being unemployed.
But, first a little back ground. Nearly 20 years ago I developed some symptoms that took me to the doctor where it was discovered I had a cancerous colon polyp. At the time, it was very scary, though in the big picture of cancer, my condition was very treatable. In short, after some minor surgery, 8 weeks of radiation and a years worth of chemotherapy, I had beaten the disease. Life goes on.
That first time with cancer led to many unique experiences, of course -- some humorous, some scary, and, believe it or not some wonderful. The two things I cherish most from that first experience are the support love and care I received from family and friends who helped me along the way, and second, the conception and birth of our first son, Cameron. My course of treatment, according to the doctors then, would leave me with about a 25% chance of being able to father children. At this point in our lives, my wife and I had been married about 3 years and were considering children anyhow so we sort of said, 'What the heck...' and BING! We made a baby.
So, with the cancer beaten - as we always hope, for good - I built my life for the last 20 years. The ensuing time saw many changes in my life. Job changes came and went. The birth of a son, becoming a father, balancing work, graduate school and married life. Good and bad economic times. The marriages of my brother and sister, the birth of nieces and nephews. The passing of loved ones. The conception of our second son, Malcolm, the purchase of our home, the growth of life-long friendships -- all the typical things that life brings our was as I moved from the post-college / early professional years, to the career / family growth phase of my life.
With everything seemingly clicking along smoothly, I was hit by the economic nightmare of losing my job last year, but again, with the support of good friends and family, I made it through that darkness. During this time I had the pleasure of seeing my oldest son graduate high school and go off to college, my youngest child barreling headlong into puberty and my wife and I celebrating 20+ years of marriage.
Then as is often the case, like a slow-motion car wreck, the symptoms of cancer reappeared in the fall, just before the holidays. Having just transitioned unemployment to an awful job, then to a new, better one, I was doing my best to ignore the obvious and get by to the holidays, during which time I would be able to schedule a round of doctors visits to figure out what was going on thinking, surely, that it could be nothing serious. Boy was I wrong.
A part of me just knew that my cancer had returned, it just seems that is the kind of luck I get. Hell, I don't smoke. I don't drink that much. I pay attention to my diet for the most part. I don't work in an Asbestos coated plant. But yet I am the one that gets fucking cancer --- opps, did I swear? I might do that in these blogs. Sometimes it is emotionally necessary, sorry. Not just ONCE but I get the damn thing TWICE! If I believed in karma, or a higher being, I would question what I had done wrong to deserve this? What am I being punished for, or challenged to over come? I just don't get it. But no, it is not karma, or fate, or anything like that. It is simply genetics, pure human genetics. Some of us get 'saddled' with bad hair, or a misshapen toes, or diabetes (I have that too!) and some us get cancer...
NOTE: The next part will contain some potentially 'icky' descriptions, you have been warned!
So, unlike the first time when I had to wait for a week or so for the biopsy results. I insisted on being not only AWAKE during the exams, but insisting on seeing the results before I left the office. The first test, a 'reglar' colonoscopy, showed that one section of my colon my colon was not smooth-like expected but was full of ridge-like areas that were bleeding - not good. So, this doctor scheduled me for another 'procedure' to get a different look at things. O.K. so enough with the serious stuff for a moment. I need to bring some humor into this process -- it is a coping mechanism, I know -- but I also feel that with humor comes comfort and will hopefully encourage others who read this to get checked themselves and not to fear the process.
OF MEDICAL TESTS & COLLEGE DAYS
In many was my college days are only a wee bit more removed than my first experience fighting cancer, and with time, comes perspective and I can now link them both to the present to help people get a better understanding of what it is like going through the process of finding out you have a serious illness.
The Call - almost like a first date, in college, I have to make a call for an appointment to see a doctor for your condition. For me this part of the process was the easiest - since I had already established a 'little black book' list of doctors. For first timers, it is scary, like a blind date! Who do you call? Do you just grab a phone? Do you ask your friends who have had cancer --- you have them, I bet, or at least family members - ask around. I pick up the phone and dial and of course you get put on hold... "Hello, this is Dr. C's office, can you hold?" and like a pizza joint, before I can say; "NO, DAMNIT! I'm sick. I need to see the doctor now!" you hear the click and then the, 'blee, blaah, ba, blee blaah' bad elevator/jazz music and the wait begins -- get used to WAITING.
Waiting will defines my state of mind from now on. Just like when I was dating... "Will she call me back or not?", "Will she shoot me down or give me a chance?" Waiting. Waiting. Staring at the clock, I clutch my cell in my hand all the time, absent mindedly spinning it, palms sweaty, nervous... Finally I am granted a 'date' with my doctor, my partner in this confusing battle. I will spend more time with my doctors during the next couple years than with my actual spouse, so we had BOTH better get used to it.
The First Date - Like a date, I prepare for my visit with my doctor, much the same way I would for a date -after all I haven't seen this doctor in nearly 20 years. I shower, get dressed -- trying to decide which clothes to wear based on what I THINK will happen on my 'date'. 'Do I dress for the office?' ' Do I dress for comfort, in my snazziest track suit?' I choose the track suit, because I KNOW that this date will be, uh, more intimate than I want it to be, so comfort is important. I arrive 'fashionably early'. There are forms to be filled out, papers to be signed, and waiting, waiting waiting. Kind of like waiting in the foryer of your dates' house, talking awkwardly to the 'parents', anxious to get the date started. The date goes well, I am comfortable with the doctor, he seems calm and self-assured, confident that he can figure out what is wrong and fix it (after all it is not HIM that is sick!). At the end of the visit, he schedules the second date, the one when I will REALLY examined - turned inside out to find out what faults I have.....
The Preparation for the Second Date - I leave the first date with my doctor with a hand full of prescriptions to 'prepare' me for my next date... I have learned to treat these preps as a 'drinking-game'. For my second date my insides need to be as clean - or cleaner - than my outsides. So, commence with the drinking game. To say this is a 'fun' game would be both wrong and a bit perverse... But, treating it as such makes it more bearable.
The game comes in three distinct parts; The Drinking, The Running and The Shivering.
First, however, I must dress for the game. No fancy clothes here, get comfy. Now I position myself between my kitchen, my comfortable chair and my nearest bathroom -- I warn people to stay the hell out of my way. Next, I have to to prepare the drink - kind of like mixing up a batch of 'Hairy Buffalo' but without the everclear, fruit, or punch mix.
I mix up the gallon of solution (which I can flavor with cherry, orange, lemon or pineapple - YAY!) I chose pineapple this time! Stick it in the fridge so it is nice and cold. The rules of the game say drink an 8 oz glass of this stuff every 10 minutes until it is gone - sounds simple AND fun, right!
It seems like it should be fun. I put on music and was dancing around the kitchen, trying to make the best of what is to come. Then, about 6 or so doses or so into the process I stop dancing. The Running Begins. I get that 'rumbly in the tumbly' feeling.
Now I really get to move, back and forth between the kitchen, for more drink, to the bathroom for more, uh, relief. Drink. Run. Repeat. This goes on for an hour or so and about the time I'm 3/4ths through the happy juice, I realize I am shivering.
Why am I shivering? Well I have been drinking icy cold fluids that have been rushing through my system for the past two hours - I grab a blanket - but one that I can run with remember. Eventually the jug is empty, but I am not quite. I make several attempts to lay down and sleep, but my colon has other ideas. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, it finally lets me sleep... Unlike many college drinking adventures that might have ended up with sex, or at least drunken singing and dancing. Instead I wake up the next morning, with a headache, and starving... No eating or drinking util after the test, of course.
The Second Date: - I hop in the car, empty stomach, head aching due to no coffee, and I make my way to the hospital for the actual second date. Again, I get there early and wait. I sign papers and wait. I get moved to a prep room and wait. The prep room is awful, not the physical room, but the CONVERSATION between the nurses and doctors... who are all chattering about what they will have for lunch or what they just ate, and then the ultimate stab to my headache I hear them actually ARGUING over whose turn it is to go down and get Starbucks in the cafeteria! I wanted to scream, "Hell, I'll wheel this bed down there myself and get some, if I can have a cup too!" Instead I got them to give me a shot of fentenyl to take the edge off before the procedure... Ahh, the drugs begin....
Soon enough I am relaxed from the drugs, getting groggy and remember being wheeled into the exam room. I am cold, they cover me with wonderfully warm blankies and hit me with another dose of drugs....man is this worth it. I am cocooned under warm blankets, woozy from meds, all comfy. Then I notice the 30 foot anaconda sized camera (it's not REALLY that big, but remember, I am on verrrry good drugs at this point!) they are prepping to insert into WHERE? Oh, man, they had better dose me again... I ask, and they comply.... man this is too easy. More drugs, ah, the floating feeling is countered by, uh, pressure down below.
Now, remember my colon is empty...like a deflated baloon. So what do they have to do to get good pictures? You got it they, uh, mm, 'inflate me' as they move the camera. It is hard to describe the delicate balance created by the good feeling from the drugs and the feeling that there is a clown blowing up and twisting my insides into some kind of circus baloon animal... The last things I remember are watching my colon pass by on the monitor and the lovely anesthesia nurse sliding another needle of something into my IV.
The Third Date - A couple days pass after my procedure. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Then I get a call. No, not A call, THE call. "Hello, Mr. Lightfoot. The Doctor would like for you to come in and discuss the results of the test you had done last week." I set the appointment and wait for the date.
Remember, during all this time, I have been working my job. Trying to balance things so I don't miss too much work (read money) for doctors appointments, since I have not been here long enough to have banked any paid time off, every doctors visit means some missed work...and some explanation to be given to my boss. I will say that this time around, unlike the first time I dealt with cancer, my employer is not only very understanding of my situation, but immediately assured me that my job was secure, no matter how much time I had to miss as I deal with this - in this economy that is a HUGE worry off my shoulders.
Back in the waiting room, I try to figure out what is to come. I vaguely remember through my drug induced stupor that the doctor performing the procedure was using words like; tumor, T2, N1, lymph nodes, mass, total circumference of the colon.. All things I new were not good. I also know that at this date things would be laid out for me. One step closer to the battle plan for defeating the ugly Spectre that has reared its head.
Waiting, waiting, waiting. I fall asleep in the sunlight of the waiting room. "Mr. Lightfoot. Mr. Lightfoot. Wake up!" I jerk back to conciousness, dropping my pile of papers on the waiting room floor. "Sorry," I mutter as I gather them again. I follow the nurse to the consult room. Blood pressure, temperature, medial history, blah, blah, blah... Don't they HAVE all this stuff in a computer somewhere? "The doctor will be in soon." Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. I bide my time by trying to guess how old each issue of magazine is that are stacked in the rack on the wall. I read the anatomy charts -- the pretty ones with all the diseases of the digestive track illustrated on one poor sap on the chart... Man it would suck to be that dude. Finally, the Doctor walks in, with a pair of eager, neatly shaven residents on his coat tails. My oncologist is more gray in the beard, more wrinkly and thin haired than he was 20 years ago, but still possesses that same smile that tells me things are rough, but they will be better. He sits down, sips his coffee. Looks at me and says, "So, as I am sure you have guessed. Your cancer is back. Unfortunately, this time we have to be more aggressive in our approach, but I am certain we will beat this again."
The Plan of Attack - While not a blow by blow account of the past few weeks you get the drift. The evaluation of my condition led to a second opinion at the Cleveland Clinic - where my Mom has been successfully treated for the same conditions - and the plan as I outline here. For a host of reasons, from genetic testing to past cancer at a young age (I was 29 at the time), my whole colon must be removed. The surgeons will give me a temporary ileostomy and rework my innards to connect my small intestines to my sphincter -- leaving me with at least somewhat normal 'function'. It will mean two surgeries, weeks off work, months getting used to using a bag, and then after all the surgical procedures are complete, sometime in the fall, I will start chemo. SO, there you have it, friends. My new adventure begins. I will try to post when I can. Hopefully through my experience others can learn that despite the curves that life throws us, we live in amazing times that allow us to cling onto our lives as long as possible. I don't intend on going anywhere, anytime soon. I have lots to do...
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