Any day above ground is a good one

One year ago today, on Halloween it was Trick or Treat for me, I received the worst news anyone can hear delivered in the worst possible way. “You have cancer. “ I actually had a hint of what the news was going to be because of all of the testing and the biopsy that I had. But I had not heard or seen the actual word cancer yet; I was still delusional with the slim hope of a cancer free biopsy. I was sure that it was a trick and I wanted the treat.

I had up to that moment in time always been terrified of the results of cancer and definitely didn’t want to see myself in any of the stages of cancer that I had witnessed in my life. The frailness, the wasting away of the body, the inevitability of death, it petrified me. And here I found myself hearing those words about me, it was like a bad dream that I couldn’t wake up from.

But here it is a year later; I’m awake from my dream and cancer free. I am lucky in so many ways. I’m lucky that I had the habit of getting a physical each year that is how my cancer was first noticed. I was lucky that Paula, my wife, is a researcher and got me very informed about prostate cancer. I was lucky that she stumbled upon information about the Dattoli Center. I was again lucky in the fact that the Dattoli Center with the best possible doctors I could ever hope for were a mere 70 miles away. Yes I am lucky and I have the treat of the rest of my life.

You my readers are most probably in the same boat I was in just one short year ago. You are scared and seeking information about prostate cancer. You are doing the first right thing and that is getting informed. You have some time with prostate cancer, as it is a slow growing cancer. So get informed and try to get information that is unbiased. You will quite often hear the information that the doctor wants you to hear. Quite often the word surgery if you are going to an urologist. So first get a second opinion and try to get all of the facts that you can from as many sources as you can and then make the decision of the form of treatment that is best for you and your situation.

Lastly please don’t hold the fact that you have prostate cancer so close to your vest that people don’t know about your situation. Cancer needs to have light shed on it and exposed so other people are less fearful of it and better educated about it. I myself did not fully understand about prostate cancer and prostate health and I consider myself very well informed. There is no excuse for this so please be the one who informs your friends and family about this cancer so they do not receive the trick that we have received.

Dan is very depressed these days. His energy level is extremely low. It is what it is, and there is not a darned thing I can do to help. He has told me so.

Halloween will be one year since he got the diagnosis. I have given up trying to figure out what is going on in his mind.

Dan is more remote than he used to be. He doesn’t laugh like he used to laugh. It is so frustrating to not to be able to do anything for him.

He says he just wants to be left alone. Hopefully, he will find a way out of this depression.

We all deal with our emotions differently. I talk and write and cry. What helps me may not be of any help to another. All I can do right now is stick by Dan.

That is all I can do.

Paula

On the 22nd of September I went for my three-month check up at the Dattoli center. I had the usual blood and urine test, CT scans etc. I was surprised this week when I received a letter from the Dattolli center with the following ominous note in it:

The purpose of this correspondence is to provide a copy of your urine cytology with a prescription to have this test repeated due to the presence of "atypical", possible pre-cancerous cells. These cells are not considered normal, however they are NOT cancerous at this testing. It is MANDATORY that you have this test repeated in six months time as a follow up to this finding and to rule out the potential for bladder cancer!

Needless to say this got my attention. When a letter from a doctor’s office comes in the mail and it is annotated with quotations, "atypical" and things capitalized, NOT and MANDATORY, not to mention an exclamation point at the end of a sentence that ends with the words bladder cancer. Yes it got my attention, real fast.

I called the doctor the very next day to get his alarming letter cleared up as the copy of the test from Bostwick labs stated that the overall test returned negative results but showed:

Rare single and clusters of mildly to moderately atypical urothelial cells: this may represent a reactive process, but neoplasm should be considered. Clinical correlation is indicated.

Upon talking to a nurse she indicated to me that this occurs with many of their patients and is cause by the great deal of radiation that we receive. My urologist also scoped me just before I got my seeds and it showed no signs of bladder cancer. So I will be going back in six months for my next test which we hope will be clear at that time. But in the mean time I am left thinking more about my cancer than I recently have been…. Was I engaged in wishful thinking?

Quite some time ago I made a decision not to post on this blog for awhile. One of the things that a serious illness does to a relationship is create more tension. DUH!

Writing often on this blog only made me think even more about the cancer. I was already thinking about it too much.

Sometimes I felt sort of guilty about not sharing in the blog. Dan even asked me a couple of times why I had stopped posting. The bottom line is that I also have a life, and Dan’s illness was already so big in it that I decided to avoid the parts of it that I could. This blog is one of those parts.

Several years ago Dan and I went white water rafting. Our raft capsized in the middle of a part of the river that is called HELL’S HOLE. I was caught UNDERNEATH the raft. Dan and our two companions were able to swim to shore. I first worked to get out from underneath the raft, and then I struggled to swim to shore, but I kept getting sucked down under the water because of the whirlpool.

After I was saved by one of leaders of the excursion, Dan told me that I, indeed, almost drowned. He told me how frightened he had felt. I replied that it was strange, but I did not have time to be afraid because I was fighting the whole time.

Sometimes living around cancer is like that maybe. I mean the one with the illness is in the whirlpool busy fighting, and the others are helplessly watching from the shore.

I am watching from the shore, and sometimes I need to get away because I just can’t stand it.

Later,

Paula