Grrrr-nnnarrrrr

So last night I'm at work, talking light beer and the power of gezelligheid when my phone goes.


Jude. You have an MRI tomorrow. You need to take your doctor's script and be there.

Steve : But I'm not scheduled an MRI
Jude : I didn't know that

Steve : Be where?
Jude : At the place

Steve : Which place?
Jude: The place

Steve :At what time?
Jude: I don't know... maybe 2pm

Steve :2pm?
Jude: maybe not

Steve :Why can't you take a simple message?
Jude :Christ, I assumed you knew

Steve :Assumed? Assumed? ASSUMED?
Jude: Alright already

Steve :CLICK
Jude: (Dick)

An hour of calling later I find that I'm due for a sonogram, at 9am on 2nd Ave at 21st street.

I get up, drink horrible amounts of water (as required) and leave for the scan.
I get there. They have my name but don't know WHAT to sonogram.
I call my doctor. HE hasn't asked for a test.

I drink another 48 oz of water.
And wait.
And squirm.
And wait some more.
My bladder threatens explosion.

A nice woman arrives. She takes me in to a dimly lit room and cracks open the lube. The morning starts to look up. Briefly.
45 minutes later I'm slightly tacky, completely sonogrammed and on my way home. Still no idea what's going on... thyroid oddly swollen (perhaps all the iodine over the last week) and cough mysteriously under control.

A call to work. New business people who I may have infected with TB have been in to say that they like us. Then they left. We still don't know quite what it do - feeling like a kid who has a first date's bra clasp stuck in braces - it's obvious that she likes him but he can't figure out the next move.

On to a 3.45 showing of Harry Potter... despair of children and their unruly behavior and think again about whether the offer to 'cum in a cup for use at a later date' is one I should take up.

Check my e-mail - turns out Gary Glitter really IS a pervert (Thanks Helen)

There goes another of my requests to the Make A Wish foundation.

Oh and it's FREEZING

Steve

An odd day

Jude had her 'big' exam today - 8 hrs of writing in the frozen wastes of Albany - so I was home alone. The doctor called yesterday and told me that the CT scan had been moved forward - so it was Barium all the way for me. Nasty tasting stuff and I had to drink 450ml at midnight, another 450ml at 1.30pm and another glass at 2.15. The banana flavor was more chemical than fruit, but hey it's a minor thing.

With all the Barium I didn't use the inhaler I've had and weirdly breathed well all day. Bar one coughing fit that had me on my knees and vomitting again. That's two days running now and it's scaring me just a tad. Will talk with the doctor on Friday - it doesn't seem to be symptomatic of anything particular.

Trying to limit my 'Internet research' until I know what I have. Staging and biopsy results will let me start to dig rather than self diagnose. I keep finding ever rarer and more lethal variations on the lymphoma theme and of course as soon as I read about them the symptoms start.

A guy at work today offered me referals to some of New York's finest oncologists. I think that I may well take him up on the offer... he's well connected and I'm well insured - plus it will put my mind at rest regarding Brooklyn quality health care vs. Manhattan stuff.

Ultimately though this is a waiting game and I have so little patience it's unbelievable. Still very much 'up' - still hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. Still at work, still telling people... starting to get practical. Called health insurance people, called benefits people, looked at electric razors (all the better during Chemo), Netflix (for those bad days), bought new sheets ahead of night-sweats and looked into hand sanitizers (the better to ward off infection)

I'm either in denial, unbelievably zen or I really am a fatalist... because whilst I'm prepared to hand over my body and allow the doctors to do with it what they need in order to fix it I'm also quite happy with the idea that what will be will be (very Doris Day of me).

Anyway past my bed time.

Night all

Steve

PS - I do hope I don't get too Anne Frank with this

Telling the workmates

Started to tell people at work today - to various responses ranging from gobsmacked, through concerned to hilariously un-PC.

Have to say that I felt most comfortable with the 'can I have your office?' type comments than the offers of support.

Did find out that I work with hands off healers, dog lovers and compulsive tea brewers. Most gratifying.

Not sure when the novelty of it all will turn into reality - but so far it's been okay.

The coughing continues - a violent reminder that all is not well.

Steve

Ok - here goes

So with this bloody cough getting no better I head back to the doctor. It's been about 6 weeks, antibiotics haven't worked and I'm starting to get annoyed. He takes more blood, sticks me for TB and sends me for a CT scan. The blood comes back clean. The TB comes back negative (relieved at that because we've just had a new business meeting and nothing kills a potential client relationship quicker than the chance that you may have infected the client with something that could potentially kill them)

CT scan was fun, if expensive, all warm tingly feelings and hospital gowns. Getting home and receieving a call from your doctor asking for the pleasure of your company the next day was not. I self diagnose lung cancer and head off for uneasy sleep.

Next day I walk to 30 minutes to the doctor's office, meeting some friends on the way, and am met with respectful faces and quiet ushering into a new room. It's not lung cancer. It's lymphoma. I have a mass in my chest that's blocking my airway, has caused the partial collapse of a lung and is making me cough. No idea of the staging of the disease yet. I need another CT scan to see whether it's in the abdomin and pelvis and then a needle biopsy to find out whether I have Hodgkins or Non-Hodkins disease. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy ahead anyway. Yum. He shakes my hand gravely and I leave

The wait for another CT scan is, annoyingly, 1 week.

Head home, my wife comes sleepily from the bedroom and I tell her that I don't have pneumonia - I have cancer. Her dad died of cancer 6 weeks ago. It took him fast. She copes as only she can - and I feel strangely ok. Major worry is whether I can afford this disease. My office has a policy of cutting your pay from full to just $170 a week after two months, and disability pay doesn't kick in for a year. I tell the office. They're great. The president offers me her summer home, money to pay my rent and a guarantee that the job will be here as long as I am. I resolve to work with them for ever and ever.

Head for the cinema - Pride and Prejudice - and then home. Venture online and determine that at my age there's a chance that this is Hodgkins - I cross my fingers and head for bed.

Wake up certain of my reason to survive this. I want more than 13 years with my wife. She's the most amazing, fascinating, evolving, brilliant woman I know and I really want to be part of what's next for her. I love her madly, blindly, pasionately and with a certainty that borders on manic. There's no way that this is going to beat me.

And here I am. In Brooklyn. Starting one of those god awful cancer patient blogs. But it helps.

What next? Only a whirring machine and an armload of iodine will tell.

But thanks for being interested enough to follow along.