Cancer Coming Attractions

I'm starting to realize that emotionally for me cancer appears to have stages. The first one was the I'm gonna die stage. It started with the moment of my diagnosis, lasted for 2 weeks and was marked by emotional instability, no sleep and the desire to "get my affairs in order". It was an awful time when I didn't want to do anything or see anybody.  There was going to be no further retirement, no new house, no future, no nothing. Cancer and death tinged my every thought.

I'm in the 2nd stage now, acceptance. I have doctors and a plan so I have some confidence that I'm in good hands. Things could be much worse, at least I don't have a gruesome big league cancer like glioblastoma multiforme, or GBM. In this 2nd stage not much has happened. I got a hormone shot and I took some pills and got a mildly invasive back door ultrasound but other than that I've resumed my normal retired life and haven't thought about cancer much. But I sense a gathering treatment storm, I now have so many upcoming medical appointments that I've had to use Google Calendar to track them all.

The 3rd active, invasive and radioactive stage is about to get underway. Soon I'm going in for the internal implantation of gold markers. I was told that it's just like a prostate biopsy (!) except with no snapping sounds (the peeling of the prostate is accompanied by snapping sounds as the harvesting instrument does its back door deeds). That means an experience as close to prison rape as I'd like to get, urinating blood and other jarring side effects. Perhaps carrying the gold markers will be something new to explain to airport security screeners if I get x-rayed by the TSA, assuming that I get through all of this and live to fly again.

Soon after I report to the downtown radiation/oncology center for something that on the phone sounded like a simple consultation session. Then an envelope arrived in the mail containing a flyer with an ominous heading that read, 

PLANNING APPOINTMENT FOR RADIATION TREATMENT 

An excerpt: "A bean bag mold of your hips will be used to position you in the same way each day. A few tiny, pin point tattoos will be placed on your skin. These tattoos will assist in positioning throughout your daily treatments".  My first tattoos!

The flyer goes on to instruct me about my sit down bathroom habits (they want daily and on schedule production), what to eat to get the desired solid and gas levels, when to pee and how much pee to leave inside for them. "We would like your bladder to be partially full for your CT and each day when you are treated. Please, urinate 30 minutes before your CT and then each day before your treatment time to empty your bladder. Then drink 8 ounces of water or non caffeinated fluid and do not urinate until after your CT or Tx". I don't even know what a Tx is but for all I know I'll be getting one (or more) daily starting before New Year's Day.  Radiation treatments will be daily and last for 5 weeks so hello again daily commute, bring out those lead lined King County Metro buses.

The power of radiation

After all of this will come the 4th stage, one so invasive that anesthesia will be required and when I awake I'll leave sore and with even more radiation. The anesthesia is a good thing, please bomb me back to the stone age if the hands of strangers and their medical tools must enter me there.

Now men have their own unique and manly exam room stirrups

After that the healing can begin and if everything goes according to plan an old home can be sold and a new home purchased and I'll be able to gratefully add cancer survivor to my list of life accomplishments.

Man Plans and God Laughs

I've encountered a major obstacle in my retirement plan of selling our home and moving into our new home presently under construction in Arizona. I've been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer.

My urologist and oncologist say that it's probably treatable with a triple play of hormones, radiation and something called brachytherapy ("seeds"). One thing is for sure, the house in Arizona is being built and cannot be cancelled, the only way for me to get out of this financial legal responsibility would be for cancer to win and for the builder to sort it all out with my widow and my estate. On the day that I received my cancer diagnosis I also received an email with a picture of the first home site construction activity, the foundation being poured, so now the race is on.

This is the sort of health crisis that I've always feared even as I knew it would increase in probability as I aged. It means having for the first time to stick my head deep into the mouth of the medical/insurance lion. When we move to Arizona we will lose my wife's insurance and be cast into the Obamacare cauldron.

There have been bright spots though. My GP and urologist say that they found it early. Bone and CT scans show that the cancer has not spread. Right now I feel fine physically, if the doctors hadn't told me I'd never know. My wife is down for the struggle and as long as she's working we both have good insurance. I contacted my surgeon friend in San Diego and he was much more than just supportive, he spoke with my oncologist and asked him the questions that I'd never know to ask. He also checked out the triple play I'm about to undergo with several oncologists and urologists at his hospital, in essence giving me a 2nd and 3rd opinion because when it comes to complex life and death personal medical questions like this WTF do I know?

When the house in Arizona is completed the builder will summon me to come with payment. I can have the money to give them if we sell the house here. I can only sell the house here if my treatment is complete and I'm cancer free. So as I said earlier, the race is on. Assuming I'll be cured, will the house be completed first or will I be cancer free first? As of last contact all of the wooden bones of the new house are up and the new home is quickly taking shape down there. Here's my to do list, any one item alone would be a major undertaking:

• Beat cancer 
• Cough up a large sum of money and give it to the builder in Arizona 
• Sell our old house  
• Pack all of our belongings and get them to AZ (method to be determined) 
• Unpack and then move in to our new home and feather the new nest with appliances, bed, utilities and the basics 
• Obtain and pay for new health insurance on the open market (Obamacare) 

So I guess that my retirement won't be as peaceful as I had planned, at least not in the short run. I'm glad that I managed to get in the Asia trip last year and the cross country drive earlier this year. It appears that I'm in for quite an eventful tail end of 2015 and 2016 and if/when I emerge on the other side of all of this I might be a changed man, at least emotionally if not physically as well. But we play the hand that we're dealt, nothing in life is guaranteed and nobody gets out of life alive. It's just that as we age these truths that we've heard all of our lives slowly become more obvious.

I'm an MRI machine, let me see if your cancer has spread.

Retirement: The Fountain of Youth?

Today is the first weekday of my new life.  The weather is normal for summer in Seattle, which is to say absolutely fantastic.  I feel energized.  The world just opened and I want to take advantage of everything.  It's the fountain of youth.  

This is my first summer vacation since I was 15.  In a way I want to spend this time the way I would in Bangkok or Taipei.  What I usually do in a cities like those is to purchase a transit pass and find a different neighborhood to explore every day.  The transit pass that I've carried for the last 20 years of employment is good until the end of September so I'm good to go.  But first a new life needs new clothes so it's off to Cabelas to score new touring threads.   I  also took a daytime run through Costco so I could rub slouched shoulders with the rest of the old retired codgers who seem to haunt Costco on weekdays.

The Freeway Stop at 145th st & I-5 South

The stress of work has left behind a few layers and some extra belt notches and they need to go.  Bus pass plus lots of summertime walking = sweat and expended calories so I walked down to I-5 and took Sound Transit's 512 bus to to 45th street in Wallingford. 

Meat Activists?

I lived in Wallingford for my first few years in Seattle and I haven't crawled 45th street in 20 years.  My how it's changed.  Nearly everything seems to have changed, much shinier, grander and more upscale. More gourmet ice cream, gelato shops and coffee shops trying not to be Starbucks than I remember.  Until today I'd never seen a shop run by "meat activists" before.

From 45th street I walked into Greenlake and briskly walked to the Starbucks at the top of the lake so I could drink something, catch some A/C and plot my next destination.  I whipped out my bus pass and hopped a bus heading toward Ballard and got off at 85th and Aurora to take the "E" line downtown so that I could catch and express bus home.  

Gosh the park was pretty today:

I'm not sure whether it's the sudden freedom or the magnificent weather and I'm just one day into this but so far it's great.  I keep wondering how this would be if it was 45 degrees, overcast, wet and damp, and the sun was going down at 5PM; in other words just like 9 months of the year in this part of the world.

Playing the Old Man Card

I was riding home from work on my regular King County Metro bus, seated near the driver on a side facing bench that had textured lines dividing the seating area for three passengers.  I occupied the right seat area, a woman occupied the left with a space between us.  The bus made a stop to pick up more passengers and a young Asian woman perhaps in her 20's took the available seat but then scooted over to her left leaving half a cushion for her plump, unattractive friend who plopped down into the available half space with her left butt cheek and put her right butt cheek on my left thigh.  She forced herself to slide into the available half space and off of my left lap and compressed me into the wheel well of the bus on my right with her fat ass.  

I shoved hard to my left in an attempt to give myself some lebensraum and convey that this was unacceptably tight but she ignored me and went on yacking with her friend.  I stood up and without looking the fat woman slid over to occupy the space that she sensed that I had vacated.  There were no more open seats on the bus.  I glared at the 2 Asian women, they ignored me.  A young woman sitting across from the Asian women  said, "Sir, would you like my seat?".  I told her no, that wouldn't be necessary.  Other passengers looked at me, one shook her head in mild disgust as if to say, "Kids today, what are you gonna do?"

The bus continued north on I-5 and got off the freeway at the Seattle City line in Shoreline when the woman occupying the 3rd bench space toward the back of the bus got off, the two Asian women scooted to their left without missing a word.  I took my now open seat next to the fat interloper.  I drew her attention and said, "These seats are made for three people, not four".  She replied, "I didn't know that", in a monotone.  I continued, "You have absolutely no manners forcing an old man like me out of his seat to stand all the way home so that you can sit next to your friend".  She gave me a look of mild displeasure and the two resumed their conversation as if I had never been there.  

I'm nearly 61 now, at work I'm the oldest in my group and some of my coworkers joking refer to me as "Grandpa" and 'Papa", which I really don't mind.  My thinning gray hair and lined face tell the truth and at 61 I don't qualify for any senior citizen discounts at restaurants or airlines and I don't try to con my way into any.  But time marches on, I am thinking about retirement and this is the first time I've ever played the age card.  I don't think I'll do it again soon but I felt strangely empowered, like I had something new to help me press this case against these two rude women.