Another big medical week. But they all seem to be right now. Minor: had my teeth cleaned yesterday. “Your teeth are so clean.” Hygienist. So one part of my body’s in good shape.
Kate and I visit Ed Smith today. He’s the surgeon who will, we’ve been hoping for several months now, implant the j-tube. The pulmonologist has cleared her, the last remaining hurdle. I’m expecting (hoping?) that we will schedule a date.
On Thursday I have the standard of care imaging studies for prostate cancer reemergence, a ct and an mri. The axumin scan is a pet-scan. In a followup visit to Dr. Gilroy, the radiation oncologist, we’ll see what these tests have to say and revisit the axumin scan if it seems like it would increase the accuracy and efficacy of treatment.
Each step on this journey makes things a bit more real. A bit more sphincter tightening. Right now, I have no idea where I am, except that I’m in a place I’d rather not be. No diagnosis except a rising PSA. No treatment plan. Just the knowledge that somewhere in my body are cells working against my survival.
It’s a strange place to be, ethereal, filled with fantasy. They’ll find distant metastases and I’m doomed. They’ll find a small, localized tumor, zap it with a Buck Roger’s ray gun. I return to a new life free of cancer. The disease is slow, but not fully treatable. I’ll have to live for years with an invader slowly gaining more and more territory. A losing game of go.
I’m sleeping well, not overly distracted or anxious. Yet this is a moment of existential angst, the sort of moment that defines existential angst. Dante helps me see it more clearly. Here are the famous first lines from Canto One, modified just a bit.
Two thirds through the journey of my life I find myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway has been lost. Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say What is this forest savage, rough, and stern, Which in the very thought renews the fear. So bitter is it, death is little more...
“But, since it came to good, I will recount all that happened there.” This is v. 4 of the Canto and my hope. We’ll see.
