More Fun with Cancer

My Accelerated Apocalypse, Part 2
(Part 1 here.)

The doctor wanted to schedule a meeting for us to talk about “going forward” with the diagnosis. I say, well, we’re here now, why not talk now? Unfortunately, the in-person meeting was required, part of the process and all that. So I’m told, and what am I going to do? All I can think is, now begins a bunch of three-hour drives across a mountain pass that are sure to kill me before the cancer has a chance.

The appointment was five weeks down the calendar. “Don’t worry, this is a slow cancer,” says the doctor. “We’ll make sure sure to get everything on time.” All I could think was at least I had a while before I had to go over La Veta Pass again. Besides, the Gleeson Scale numbers weren’t that bad. Just bad enough to have to do something about it.

Now I had all this time to walk around with this cancer inside of me to think about it.

No cats, just cars this time. This vehicle and others were racing along the dirt track at Movie Manor just west of town the first weekend in June. On Saturday evening you saw them parked all over as the owners/drivers partook of the Monte Vista restaurant scene.

We were going out to our favorite restaurant in town anyway. Now we had something to celebrate, sort of. My wife nudged me into pulling the trigger on the rib-eye platter. It had been on my bucket list for a while. Now, why not?

Actual photo of the rib eye platter I consumed that evening at the Mountain View in Monte. Yes, it was everything I dreamed of.

So began a series of nights drinking and thinking about my mortality. I’d already been through this once throughout Thanksgiving and Christmas after my friend Steven took ill and died, so I bored quickly. I was assiduous about throwing stuff out and burning off loose ends, but that spasm of activity lasted maybe three days before I gave up. I’d already taken care of more than most. Everyone knows where the will is. (My wife and I had our wills, medical powers-of-attorney, and all that jazz drawn up in the wake of singer/ songwriter/ performer Prince dying in 2016. “My God, he’s as old as we are! We gotta take care of this!” So we did.)

I was somewhat disappointed in myself for how quickly apathetic I became towards so many things. Here in the face of oblivion, and I’m saying, eh, whatever, won’t be my problem anymore, will it? I had to really work for that slight twinge of guilt, too.

Across the street from the first photo. I thought it funny how the drivers parked their cars in the striped, no-parking zones, but then these things are already running around without plates, so why not distance themselves from the common idiots and their careless employment of car doors? So far as I could tell the Monte Vista police essentially shrugged off this potential fine/rent-collecting, much to their credit.

It’s funny. I got the news of my enlarged prostate in January, went up to see the urologist for the first time in March, got news of my cancer in mid-April, and I think I did that follow-up for the going forward or whatever in late April. I know I had another long while until the actual operation in June. It’s just strange to me how quickly the seasons and months of half a year have slid past me. For the longest time, I used to annoy people around me by noting the dates of the most trivial things. Here I am with cancer, and the only dates I can give you are 16 April, the day I learned I had cancer, and 5 June, when I underwent the five-hour operation to have my prostate cut out.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. First, the “going forward” meeting:

The best-looking one of all the ones I saw in town that Saturday. Ironically, it has plates, but is being towed on a flatbed. The rest drove away under their own power.

The urologist spent an inordinate amount of time explaining radiation therapy to us, and the more I heard, the less I liked about it. “You really, really ought to give these people a chance,” he kept saying. And I’m thinking, What part of “three hour ride one-way” are you missing, son? One six-hour round-trip a week for six weeks, and my wife and I would be filing for divorce three weeks in. 

That was not even the worst of it. Basically, my groin area— “They’re very precise with the beams these days” was repeated—would be subjected to doses of radiation until my prostate was essentially killed. The idea of walking around with a dead, irradiated organ wrapped around my urethra just to avoid surgery seemed to be the most insane thing I’d ever heard. I’ll take the surgery, thank you. I’m pretty sure I repeated that more than twice.

“Well, the surgery does leave a door open. If it doesn’t get all the cancer out, you can do the radiation. If you do the radiation first, getting the prostate out will be impossible due to keloid scarring.”

Now we bring this up. Fine. Like it wasn’t already settled.

So when’s my surgery? What do I have to do?

The earliest they could do was 5 June, a Tuesday. Tuesday was Robot-Assisted Surgery Day, a very good day.

Six weeks away. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about making the three-hour ride through the pass again for a while. This is, after all, a slow cancer. Right?

I’m out of cars. We’re back to cats. Hey, I needed a kitty break after that last part.

To be continued on a later post....
Any contributions towards insurance co-pays, incidental expenses (those three hour drive to Colorado Springs), or maybe just a margarita for my long-suffering wife will be greatly appreciated. (Yes, that preceding block of text is the link.)

Meanwhile, I’ll throw in some unrelated, and far more entertaining stuff while I write out the rest of this. I honestly have to fight with myself to even talk about it. Which, I suppose, is something else I’ll have to talk about. Sometime....