Observations on a Haunted Summer's Evening

In the late afternoon light
Slouching regally
Upon the hard gray faces of the trees
I see the end of everything.

The dry brown sorrow of the grass
Reddens in tune
Before glowing
Once more golden in love
with every sunset I have ever known.

Brassy as newfound faith
Or a missed lover’s smile
Before fading
one last time
from my life.

One last time
Like every other last time
I spoke to that face
Went along with that laugh
Knew the smell inside that car
I junked years ago.

I see them all
Loving me with their eyes
My ghosts a-bloom in bright youth
Slowing darkening among the trees
Fading with the last silent shriek
Of light on this late summer’s day.

From the forthcoming collection Nymphomagic Electroshock and Other Middle-Aged Complaints.
Copyright © 1994, 2018 by Lawrence Roy Aiken.

Spoiler Alerts for Stuff I Haven't Written Yet, Part 1

...and may or may not get around to writing, because writing about my cancer, surgery, and recovery isn’t something I enjoy. I didn’t like going through it the first time, so let’s talk about where I’m at now.

So far, on this cool, curiously damp (for a Colorado high valley) morning in August, I don’t know if I’m cancer-free. I’ve done a final PSA blood draw, from which I’ll get the verdict on next week when I have what I hope is my last face-to-face with the urologist. Chances are good all should be settled until the next scare—prostate cancer is generally a lot easier to deal with than most when caught soon enough—but I’ve learned the hard way not to make these kinds of presumptions.

Meanwhile, it’s been a matter of re-learning how to rise from chairs and walk across the room without leaking from a urethra that no longer has the double-stop action provided by a working prostate. For some reason, this is only a problem around sundown. That I’ve been able to sleep through the night without incident since my catheter has been removed is something I’m very grateful for.

I’m out of cats and cars for now, so let’s do food porn. Yes, I have a folder full of photos of Great Plates I Have Known, and this jewel of a breakfast sandwich, featuring a perfect storm of scrambled egg, shredded cheese, diced onions and jalapeño, is from the morning of 5 June 2016, making it one of the last breakfasts I would enjoy in my old basement office in north Colorado Springs. 

I can cough and sneeze with full force, with no ill effects on either one of my five surgical wounds or my underwear, so there’s that. It’s something I couldn’t do two weeks ago. Another thing I’ve learned, to my great physical and psychic discomfort, is it’s best to consolidate my victories before moving on. The most painful implementation of this lesson came to me shortly after I got my catheter taken out on 19 June.

This double sausage patty under a slab of cheesy scrambled egg and sliced jalapeños goes all the way back to 25 July 2014. I’m glad the memory of this culinary delight didn’t wash away with the tears in the rain or whatever.

It’s important to understand that I had this tube sticking out of me for two weeks after my surgery. Two weeks. It made going out awkward, so I didn’t. I’d walk around the yard with my outboard bladder in hand, mindful of not catching the long tube on something, look wistfully up and down the street, and that was it. For two weeks.

Now I was free of the awful thing. All I had to do was figure out how to hold my water with only the urethral sphincter to hold back the flood, as opposed to that and the prostate. It was a conscious effort, but I was willing to chance wetting myself in public just to get out and get used to walking again.

My wife’s nachos are always a lively, colorful affair. Unlike nachos you order in a restaurant, you are more likely to run out of chips before you run out of toppings. We keep the bag handy during dinner.

I started easily enough, just going around the block by my house. I did it once in the morning, and again in the evening. The next day, I went out to see how far I could go without becoming exhausted. I made it two blocks west of the town’s central intersection before I had to turn back. 

The next day, I took on one more block. Gradual enough, right?

The day after that, I went all the way to Chapman Park, which is where I like to walk laps on the perimeter. It’s seven blocks west of Monte Vista’s main intersection, on the far west side of town. I didn’t do a lap, but turned around and went back. The next day, though, I decided to try two laps before coming home.

Salmon, egg, fettuccine, with my usual sprinkling of diced onions and jalapeños. A fine breakfast from 22 September in that most transitional year that was 2016.

Like a lot of things about this blur of a cancer year—there’s a lot I’ve simply spaced on, being quite unwilling to engage with the reality—I can’t tell you when I noticed the swelling. I thought I was doing well, finally sleeping through the night and such. (I awoke every three hours to empty my bag when I had the catheter. For two weeks.)

It was that Sunday, 24 June, that I noticed I was sleeping a lot more than usual. My left side felt heavy, like something was accumulating there. A lot of something.

Whatever this was, it was draining me. I had very little energy. It was already painful to walk, or to even sit up. This was not good. Something was going to have to be done, or I was done.

We’re all going to need a drink for what happens next.

My wife called the urologist first thing Monday morning, and was told I was showing a classic case of “overdoing it” on the exercise (by walking?), and all that was needed was a hot compress put on the affected wound.

We had an electric heating pad, so I went to bed with that sprawled over the thick mass around the wound in my abdomen, not coincidentally the one of the five reported to have entertained the most remote-controlled robot-arm activity. I was a little put-out by the cavalier attitude of the urologist’s office. I figured I needed an industrial strength antibiotic, not a heating pad.

I could feel the effects, though, as I tried to fall asleep. The skin around the wound itched furiously, and I didn’t dare scratch. I could feel something being pulled up towards the incision. I rubbed some anti-itch cream around the incision site. This, and a painkiller allowed me to drift off to sleep.

The heating pad cut off by itself after a point, and by that point it had certainly done...something.

I awoke with the mass concentrated up to what looked like a weird, fleshy peak around my incision. Walking was a little easier. So was sitting, but not by much. After my usual morning browse of social media and blogs, I got into the shower. After an initial soap-and-rinse I stood and let the hot water run over my wound. It felt good, so I let it run for a while.

Toweling dry, I’d thought it a rogue stream of warm water that I somehow kept missing. It was when I looked into the full-length mirror that I saw it.

No, you really need this. DRINK NOW.

This was a long line of gray mucinous material—as the pathologists at the hospital I once worked at called it—oozing from my wound, down the crease of my abdomen and down my thigh. Suffice it to say, better out than in. If I’d had any sense at the time I would have gotten right back into that shower and rinsed as much as I could out. Instead, I dabbed at it with the towel and called for my wife, who wiped it as clean as she could before putting a bandage over it.

I figured this gas grill converted into a flower pot was a nice, absurd counterpoint. Besides, I can’t think of any food pics I can run at this point in the story.

This routine went on for a week. Heating pad at night, long rinse in the shower in the morning, wipe, clean, and bandage after. It got noticeably better each day, but sitting up straight in my chair was a problem. Aside from being very uncomfortable, I could feel the goo squeezing out of me.

For a couple of weeks after that, it was clear fluid. My wife, who was training in wound management as a U.S. Navy hospital corpsman, assured me this was normal. 

I’m still a little put out by the cavalier attitude of the urology clinic towards my condition, though. This mass stuff was closer to my heart than I’d like. Also, the frequent periods of fatigue where I had to lie down and sleep for three hours at a time were unsettling. I honestly wonder how close I was to dying of whatever this was. Not quite an infection, but not good, either.

Peaches Kitty is not amused.

Sometime along the way the surgical wound stopping weeping clear fluid. Eventually, I was able to sit up, get up, and walk around like I didn’t have five incisions in me. It was just within the last two weeks. I’m making efforts at walking again.

Next week, I find out if we’re done for this scare, or if I have to put myself through radiation therapy. Or something. I’ve had an enormous run of luck so far. Let’s hope it holds for that last PSA reading.