What I did this summer

I wonder why they call it a “positive” diagnosis when it’s actually anything but?

Okay, to keep things in perspective here: prostate cancer isn’t unusual in men over 70. Also, it’s relatively easy to treat, with minimal side effects these days, and he probably won’t die of it. In other words, not such a big deal, right? Sure. Take a deep breath. Right.

Oh … bollocks.

What – you speak American, so you don’t know what “bollocks” are? Don’t worry about it. Here’s a picture of a famous statue for you to look at instead. (Source)

The truth is, the past few months have been downright scary. And difficult. And sad. And really scary (did I already say that?)

it started sometime this past summer, when I casually asked Himself a question relating to some or other health matter, and got the growl that is the standard response around here to any question for which he does not have an answer. A few days later his ankle swelled up to the size of a football – and I’m not talking about a squishy little Deflategate football, either. So I unleashed my Inner Pitbull and chased him clear across town to his doctor …

On guard. (Source)

… where I learned that what he actually needed was for Pitbull Wife to be standing alongside him, barking questions, listening with pricked ears, and standing guard with an I-will-bite-you gleam in her eye. Because, as it turns out, while I haven’t been paying a whole lot of attention to his bodily well-being, neither has he. And although over the years he’s built up an impressive stable of specialists to take care of a range of anatomical bits and pieces, apparently they don’t talk to each other, and in consequence various other body parts had been overlooked.

So that’s what I did last summer. I chivvied my guy from surgeon to specialist to internist, with several detours past his primary care physician and frequent pit stops for tests of one sort and another. And it’s been tiring and challenging and, as previously stated, sometimes sad and scary – because this is my guy, you understand, the only one I’ve ever had and, as it happens, the only one I want.

Back about 17 years ago, at some point between “Yes, I will” and “I do”, he said, “We have to talk.” I giggled and poked him in the ribs and said, “Gee, that sounds serious!” (because that’s the stage we were at – lots of giggling and poking). And he made me quiet down and sit still and listen to a lot of words about how he was 14 years older than me, and his family tended not to be as long-lived as mine, and he was going to get old and then kick the bucket and I would be a widow. Although I really didn’t want to hear it he made sure I did, and so over the years I’ve periodically pondered my impending widowhood, and even made jokes about it, ha ha, because that’s what I do when something isn’t funny but won’t go away. (I won’t deny that, during the course of 17 years, there may have been one or two occasions when I’ve contemplated speeding the process along.)

And now here we are. A summer of doctors, just figuring things out and developing a plan to manage a variety of not-deadly-but-no-longer-ignorable issues. And then, a week ago, like the cherry on a teetering healthcare sundae, a cancer diagnosis. On a seriousness scale of one to ten, it rates about midway between let’s-keep-an-eye-on-this and oh-shit. Yesterday morning, they shot him full of isotopes to make his bones glow. Next week he gets to drink a barium milkshake to make his organs glow. In about a month he’ll start daily treatments. In the meantime, for comic relief, we’ve had lengthy chats about erections with two separate specialists, although when last Friday’s specialist slipped on a rubber glove and prepared to probe more deeply into the subject, I scurried off to the waiting room and worked on a jigsaw puzzle they’ve set up in there.

It’s a tricksy puzzle of a couple thousand pieces, which is good, I guess. Apparently I’ll be spending quite a lot of time with it in the months ahead, while the doctors fire death rays at the sneaking attacker within him.