March 21st. Having fun and dinner with friends, celebrating the end of needing a catheter and my final surgery after years of work to be healthy. And my 30th birthday on the 26th. Excited to be applying for jobs overseas to get to explore, working on a new diet and exercise plan to get into shape. Was up until midnight doing 4 player snipperclips then went to bed, had to be up at 6am to prep for surgery. Damn was I nervous but also so excited. Had a nightmare but not really a scary one, just imposing, of thousands of black thorny vines swirling around me.
March 22nd. Get there early. Scared shitless there will be an issue with the paperwork and have it delayed another three months. Was scheduled for the past December but scheduling snafus the graduation messed with insurance. But once everything went through I felt so relieved. Waiting, taken in back, drop trow and change. I decided to have fun and took a selfie with my Darth Vader teddy bear (gift from a dear friend) with the caption “Guess where I am” just to mess with people who weren’t up to date. They put the IV in, eventually wheel me back and I’m out.
I woke up in recovery. Something felt wrong. The bed was wet, I was freezing, and felt nowhere near sore enough, and it didn’t feel late enough in the day. It was a 6 to 8 hours surgery, it did not feel like night, not even midday. Two nurses attended to me (as in in earshot for a solid hour), assumed I just had an adverse reaction to something.
Eventually my urologist comes up to me and she is carrying pictures. Normally she is so professional or mildly caring looking but this was so different as it was apologetic, it made no sense. “I have some bad news. We couldn’t finish the surgery.” Cancer never entered my mind, figured there was just some complication that will mean no Japan trip in May. It sucks, I mean really sucks, spent years working towards that, but I will live. Then she started placing the pictures on my bed, full sized papers all glossy and fancy, talking about a mass they found and couldn’t even push a needle through, it means nothing, except that one word. CANCER. Everyone knows and fears that word, we are raised from birth to, as its the ultimate death and death sentence, or so it feels. Then all the promises of how they would get me though it.
Then they offer me a phone and if there is anyone I would like to call. I would love to say I broke down and cried, that I immediately called my family and they rushed down. I did break down but I didn’t contact my family, what could they do, nothing. I don’t talk to my dad much and my mom would be scared shitless like I was then it would be me doing the comforting, and then with no way to visit being in a different city. I didn’t even break down properly, teared up, asked for my cell phone so I could get some numbers to make the calls (cells don’t work in hospitals.) I called the parent of one of my best friends as he was at work and didn’t want to disrupt it. Then sent a message to another good friend who had just finished a bone marrow transplant due to leukemia. Then another friend I had known through 2 quarters but would visit and not get all emotional. The last two were texts, only the first was a call and did get a little choked up over that one, the other two use exclusively text. Then I waited for a room so they could run tests.
Will stop it here for now as its a long enough update and this shit is tough to write. I still didn’t believe it was cancer at this point, was hoping for an error. Now I am thinking of my next cycle of chemo starting Tuesday.
Cancer is Bullshit 