Putting first things first, you should know that at the time of this writing (September 2011), it has been about 15 months since my treatment for colon cancer and right now all the signs point to me being cured. Yes, cancer can be cured.
So, why a blog then?
With any luck the worst part of my trip is over in terms of the physical part of the disease and treatment, but I've been finding it difficult to heal and recover mentally and emotionally. I'm out of sorts. I cry at Disney movies or listening to Pink Floyd. I vacillate between feeling sorry for myself and seriously getting on my own nerves about feeling sorry for myself. Some things that I used to enjoy have lost their appeal. And while I have every reason to be grateful and think of myself as one of the lucky ones, sometimes not so much. It's difficult to describe, but my soul hasn't settled and maybe it won't. I don't know what the new normal is just yet. This is a trip where I don't know the route or the destination, and maybe it's that feeling of lack of control that is at the root of my malaise.
On the positive side, and at least in my own mind, I am much more likely to roll with the punches of day to day life, and have become quite philosophical about many things in the larger sense. **cliche alert** I have a renewed joy for the simple pleasures of life. And in an interesting trick of the human mind, I spend a lot more time thinking and planning for the future, even though for a while it seemed like I might not have one.
It occurred to me that writing about it all might be cathartic. And what the hell, let's share it with the world, and maybe someone will commiserate, be informed, educated or even entertained. So if you're reading this and you're someone who may have asked me 'how are you feeling?' at some point in the past, well, here you're going to get the real answer. If you don't know me, maybe you're going through this yourself, or maybe you know someone else who is going through this, and I can help you understand how they are feeling. Let the wonderful doctors and nurses worry about the rest.
What I don't intend is for this blog to be any source of knowledge or expertise. It's just little old me and what I am going through.
And so well over a year later I'm going to regurgitate my whole experience mostly from memory and with the benefit of hindsight, which ought to result in a slightly less whiny and angry tone to the proceedings. But I guess we'll see about that. If I didn't have something to get off my chest I wouldn't be doing this in the first place.
A little housekeeping note - most blogs list the newest post first, but I want this to read more like chapters in a book and go oldest to newest. This requires fudging the post dates so just ignore them.
Happy reading.
Showing posts with label cancer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cancer. Show all posts
The Life Bomb
But first a little background about how I got there.
It's late March 2010. Since my 40th birthday I had been disciplined about going for my annual physical, and I had one coming up in early May. For the third time since January, I noticed I had some blood on the toilet paper after having a bowel movement. I called Dr. A, my fabulous family doctor, to report the problem and she said if it happens again come in right away, otherwise let's have a look during your physical. Fine. Months later I would realize my body had given me a signal years earlier but I failed notice. That's for another post though.
The physical came and Dr. A examined me as I laid there somewhat horrified, but I'd later look back and laugh at this episode as the least flagrant violation of my dignity.
"Everything looks OK, but let's have specialist Dr. B take a look anyway. Maybe it's a hemorrhoid or fissure or something and he can give it a little freezing and away you go."
Ha.
At this point I was moderately concerned and a little anxious I guess, but pleased to get the specialist appointment scheduled for only ten days hence. Later I would learn this isn't because I am charming and handsome and good at euchre, but because I could be high risk for colorectal cancer and our medical system is set up to expedite cases like mine.
As an aside, I had my first lesson in how medical professionals are blase about their work versus the way a non-medical person might think about it. I called Dr B's office to confirm my appointment, for what I thought was a colonoscopy.
"Oh no, you're not having a colonoscopy. You're having a sigmoidoscopy. Colonoscopy examines the entire lower intestine but for a 'sig' we only go up eight inches." Ahem.
I picked up my preparation kit from Dr B's office which consisted of a bunch of paperwork and instructions on medication I was to get, in this case a little suppository to 'prepare' my bowel. Where do they get these terms? Ain't no way my bowel was prepared for what was coming.
Now, if you've never heard of or used a suppository before (I hadn't), it sounds pretty simple. They are sometimes helpful to combat constipation but in my case were to clear the place out so Dr. B could get a good look. You take this slippery pill that is about the size of a multivitamin or something, and shove it up your rectum a certain distance, then sit back and wait for the fun to start a short while later.
I set up to take my suppository the morning of my sig.
Actually, the little devils are really slippery. Combine this with my usual clumsiness, lack of experience and lack of motor skills performing a task that millions of years of evolution have taught me to avoid, and you can see trouble on the horizon. And no effing way was I asking for help.
The little bitch won't go in. My anus is tighter than Dick's hatband and I'm failing badly, but after a few attempts I do manage to get it partway in. It feels like a hot poker from a fireplace with thorns and hot sauce on it. Hmm, that doesn't seem right. Let's reread the instructions. "Insert to the length of your middle finger". Are they serious? Insert middle finger joke here.
By this point the suppository had fallen on the floor, and once I found it, it occurred to me that it might have gotten dirty, and should I wash it? Honestly. Is it OK to shove this dirty thing up my ass? I was in very unfamiliar territory here and I thought I was doing pretty well. It was on the floor after all. Does the five second rule apply? I decided to forge ahead.
The, uh, insertion was eventually successful, although followed by some muscle spasms in my lower back (don't ask), and the suppository was fast acting and thorough in a way that would require a separate blog entry to do it justice.
I was prepared. I was so clean you could eat off my ass.
I arrived for my 'sig' at the Trillium Health Centre, a wonderful hospital, anxious but with no idea I was about to step off the curb in front of a bus.
A few minutes in the waiting room. Magazines exclusively geared to women's interests, as if they are the only ones that visit doctors. It's that or, and this has just occurred to me, all the dudes are stealing the good magazines. Or maybe they're in the bathroom! Futz with my phone for a while. Geez this onscreen keyboard pisses me off. Cute nurse over there. Wow, that guy looks really sick. That lady can't weigh more than 80 pounds. And what the hell is that smell?
I am called and escorted to the examination room at my precisely scheduled time by an under-appreciated volunteer.
The examination begins without fanfare.
"Hello Mr. Clement. I'm Dr. B and we're going to do a sigmoidoscopy today to investigate the bleeding you reported. Please lower your trousers and lie face down on the examination table."
Imagine a table only big enough for your torso, with a place to kneel at one end. Then imagine being tipped head first toward the floor. That's right. Drawers down, ass in the air, and you know my cheeks were clenched.
"You'll feel something a little cold now." Understatement #1.
A medical imaging device the size of a blue ribbon zucchini with lubricant harvested from the polar ice cap of Neptune is placed against my anus, and the party starts.
My anxiousness and discomfort at this point did not escape the notice of the attending nurse, who put a gentle hand on my back and told me everything was OK. Amid all the expensive equipment, an excellent doctor, my thorough 'preparation' and with my best mental effort to deal with everything, what I needed most at that moment was a tender bit of human contact, even from a total stranger, to bring me back. Amazing. The laying on of hands. I hope they still teach that at nursing school.
Then, a surprised, "Oh! Forceps please."
Snip.
"Pull up your trousers and have a seat." This was an interesting sentence. Did some people forget to pull up their trou before taking a seat, or was this just a way to say the exam was over? In hindsight, I wish I had taken a close look at the seat of the chair.
Examination elapsed time: 90 seconds.
"You have a tumour about 4 inches up your rectum which will require surgery. I don't think you will need a colostomy bag, but I can't be certain at this point. I believe the tumour is malignant but I will wait for the toxicology report to be sure.
"We'll make a large incision from your navel to your pubic bone and remove a section of your colon.
"You'll need to take a about a month off work." Understatement #2.
He said a few other things that I can't remember.
I fumbled my way through a few questions, trying to understand that he really said I had cancer and it was serious. Cancer? Cancer. Can-cer. /ˈkænsər/
"It can be serious if it has spread", he said.
I shuffled out to the desk in the waiting area in a daze and waited while the nurse faxed some forms marked URGENT off to the surgical department at the hospital. "Sign here please. Take these forms to your family doctor. Are you alright?"
Tumour.
Cancer.
URGENT.
Fuck.
Purgatory
After being told about my tumour for the first time, I would go into three dark days waiting for results from my biopsy, which would turn out to be some of the worst days during my whole journey.The rug of my life had been yanked out from under my feet and I was in a slow motion spin through the air waiting to crash down to the ground.
This is the downer post.
As luck would have it, my exam was on a Tuesday, which was my regular day to go on the road and do piano tunings for a local piano store. On this particular day, I had an especially grueling schedule involving a crazy amount of driving. Caring about tuning pianos was going to be supremely challenging.
But of course the first order of business was to call my wife, who had not yet even arrived at work. I've reflected on our conversation many times, and it's clear to me now that she was in just as deep a state of shock as I was, and went through the same, almost slow motion phases of comprehension.
My wife is a nurse, now working in the management of a hospital, and is as tough as nails. She deals with stuff like this all the time. I told her I had a tumour.
"Really?! Well, that's a blow." Understatement #3.
Even at the time I recall being amused by this response. A blow? Are you kidding me? But she was processing this all for the first time, and was as unprepared for it as I had been only moments earlier. As the conversation went on, the pitch of Dale's voice got higher and higher and I could hear the real distress in her tone. Then, life cut us short as she arrived at one of her numerous meetings scheduled for that day. We had to move on. Two minutes to tell the love of your life and best friend that you have cancer. See you at dinner. Have a good day.
In a startling bit of kismet, my first visit of the day for a piano tuning was this guy who, out of the blue, announced to me that he was home on a leave recovering from throat cancer. When I told him about my morning, he had me stop tuning his piano and we talked for an hour. I don't think I'd have made it through the day successfully if it hadn't been for that chance encounter. Since then, people are seemingly coming out of the woodwork to tell me their stories about cancer. I bet everyone I know has their own story about a friend or family member who has fought a cancer battle.
Piano tuning is a funny thing to do. To a layperson, it seems pretty boring and monotonous, but actually requires prolonged and intense concentration to do well. You have to shut out everything else out of your mind; stray thoughts, background noises, even emotions. You are a tuning machine. I go into a zone on my good days, and have been known to drool on the piano when in deep concentration. I think those couple of hours of tuning that day brought me back to my centre and gave my mind a break from the racing it would have been doing otherwise.
Still, I cancelled my remaining appointments for the week after that and tried to start making plans and making sense of everything. What a stupid idea.
It doesn't make sense.
My father grew up poor, didn't eat the things we're supposed to eat, never exercised, smoked since his teens, and is diabetic. Still going strong at 83. All my friends in my band smoke except me, and I get the cancer. In the last 10-12 years or so, since Madeline was born, Dale and I made major changes in our lives regarding our health. I stopped smoking. We lost weight. We started working out. We changed our diets. I thought we were doing everything right. Bam! Cancer. Do I sound bitter? I don't mean to say I wish it was someone else, but I don't understand.
I don't understand.
It's possible I'm looking back through glasses tinged rose by my happy ending, but I believe I truly never had a self pitying 'why me' moment. I did get pissed off because I couldn't make sense of it, and later on during my recovery there were some frustrated outbursts. The universe is indifferent and I wasn't about to start feeling sorry for myself though. No way. But I did feel lost and angry without a path of reason to follow.
So the days of that week were some of the longest and bleakest of my life. No answers, only questions. Fear. The unknown. And yes, staring my own mortality right in the face. Was I a good person? Had I done anything useful with my life? Big questions, and sounding a little maudlin in hindsight, but one of the standard catchphrases in all the support stuff is no one can tell you how you're supposed to feel. And there was pain. A funny thing about this time is that I never felt ill, but in those few days I was having terrible pain in my abdomen. I bit my wife's head off when she told me it was probably nothing, but she was right. It was only my mind playing tricks on me. Dr.'s A and B both told me this was quite common for someone in my circumstances but it only added to the confusion.
As you can imagine. I couldn't sleep and for the first time ever asked my doctor for some pills to help. Mmm, lorazepam. Even in times of distress, it helps to channel Homer. I don't like taking medication so this was a big deal for me, but nothing like the onslaught of drugs that was to come.
My next move/mistake was undertaking my own research about the disease on the interwebs. Don't do this. Ever. I made myself crazy for three days and was convinced my body was riddled with cancer. For years leading up to this time I had had some sporadic problems with indigestion and heartburn. Separately, some soreness in my left side was diagnosed as an enlarged spleen, but was nothing to be concerned about. Was my entire abdomen riddled with cancer?
It wasn't. But in the sort of free falling state I was in, I felt I had to do something that was going to give me some answers and so I fired up the laptop.
I did learn a little bit though:
- 9 out of 10 people diagnosed with colon cancer are over 50. I was 47 at the time. I'm special!
- There are over 9,000 deaths in Canada from this disease per year, second only to lung cancer among cancer deaths. Later on you'll see a rant about the disproportionate way cancer fundraising is done.
- If caught early enough, surgery is often the only recommended treatment for this type of cancer.
- Nearly half of those diagnosed die from the disease, but it is probably the easiest cancer to detect early and prevent.
- Survival rates range from 73% for stage I to 6% for stage IV.
We had to tell our daughter, but I barely remember it. I have a loving, caring and affectionate family unit but in my memory we all seemed to be internalizing a lot of things. Madeline took everything at face value and retained her composure - tough, like her mother - but withdrew to her room to process everything. Throughout the whole ordeal I would draw a great deal of strength from my family's stoicism, and also my desire to remain strong for them. I wanted to use these feelings to attack my fear the way cancer was attacking me. Right back at ya motherfucker.
It was a very long weekend.
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