It’s Cancer
Is this the end? It feels like a beginning.
It’s cancer. I have a cancer in my prostate. Crap.
Is this the end? Most likely not anytime soon. It feels like a beginning.
I’m suddenly taking a crash course in biology and medical terminology. My Gleason score is a 4+3=7 which importantly is different than 3+4=7. When the 4 is first, it’s slightly more aggressive. The doctor also informed me as I sat dazed on the paper-covered padded table in his clinic that it’s only Stage 1.
These are not bad numbers in the world of prostate cancer. I mean, they could be better. I could have a 3+4=7 Gleason score. Or even a 3+3=6. Heck, I could NOT have cancer. But I do, and as long as I do, the tests tell me it’s not as bad as it could be. A 7 means that it’s definitely time to treat it. The stage 1 means it’s entirely contained within the organ and hasn’t spread.
I have meetings scheduled with 3 doctors over the next two weeks — one to get a second opinion, one to discuss radiation treatment therapies, and one to discuss surgery.
After a disembodied shuffle to my car in the wind-swept urology parking lot of north Austin and a call to Celeste (“It’s cancer, babe; I have prostate cancer.”), I drove back to the office and promptly spent the rest of the day reading Reddit and reports from the CDC and listening to a podcast called the Penis Project. I’ve spent hours and hours researching this, and I’m 95% sure I will opt for the surgery. It’s a depressingly common procedure these days (1 in 8 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetimes). The surgery is done with robot arms that insert through holes in the abdomen.
At the moment, I’m not so worried about the surgery. It’s the post op that sounds rough. Seared into my mind is the fact that I will be required to wear a catheter for the first week or 10 days. After that, I’ll have to deal with urine leakage for about two months. There’s also the erectile disfunction. Thirty percent of men will never get it up again. Please don’t let this be me. Please don’t let this be me. Please don’t let this be me.
I have two very big things going in my favor for a successful and relatively speedy post op recovery — my age (I’m young for this) and my health (I’m in shape and lean).
In the meantime, I feel like I’m beginning a new journey to stay sane, calm, and optimistic, which I can already tell isn’t going to be easy. Most of what I feel is angry, scared, and annoyed.
I can also tell that there’s more to this than the physical treatment. I don’t want it to define me, and I’m afraid to tell people because there’s a type of shame that comes with this and a stigma. I think part of the reason I decided to write about it is to help dismantle those things, add a human voice to this common affliction, and try to find some humor in this weirdly intimate biological defect. Adult diapers, baby!
One might expect a journal like this to run straight at the idea that life is short. That we must wring every last drop of living from the universal sham cloth. Certainly, there’s something to that, but cancer or no cancer, isn’t that the idea anyway?
I’ve written about this before. I’ve always known that one day I’d need to confront my mortality and accept the limited time I have with the people I love, with the life I’ve made, with what I can notice and see and explore and discover. I just never thought prostate cancer would be the reminder I’d need.
Asian Tarot Cards by Monica Ong.