The story of finding that I had prostate cancer

Although I had been diagnosed months previously, I did not write the story until later. This piece, written in February, tells the story of that summer and the events leading up to the discovery. I have some dates not filled in. I will do that eventually, but they were all in September and October 2007.

The Prostate Cancer Journal.
2-19-08
On Sunday I tried for the first time to deal with my erectile dysfunction. I looked at some kinky photos, felt my cock stiffen a little, like what are now the old days, so I tried to stroke it to see if I could spring a hardon. Know what happened? I pissed into my Depends. Well, I got a good laugh, changed Depends, fortunately I didn’t wet the pants so I could keep wearing them, and changed plans. I started to work on a sudoku. I have prostate cancer. This is my story. I hope it is candid and funny. What can you do but look this kind of thing straight on and flip it the bird?

I should have kept a journal, but I didn’t so I am writing from memory, though it hasn’t been all that long. In July Mary and I went to Australia, 15 hours over and 15 more back. In late July we were supposed to go to Yoho Park to hike at Lake O’Hara, and climb up to Emerald Glacier and touch the ice. We would stay in Field, eat at the xxx, and hike the
Rockies. Then we would go to Glacier and cross Siyeh pass, one of my favorite places in the world, right up there with the little slough at Upper Whitefish Lake. Well, it’s a three-day drive and we had already done one three-day drive in May when we came home from our semester in Houston where I was a visiting professor at Rice University. Well the upshot was we didn’t want to do the drive. We cancelled—I hated doing that, and decided to attend the wedding of my brother’s grandson.

So off we went to Waukesha. The wedding was lots of fun. We got there a day early and Mike and Joanne arranged for us to tour Ten Chimneys, one of the homes of Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontaine, both of whom my mother knew because she was the administrative assistant for Dr. Earl Schulz and they were his patients in their old age. The tour was wonderful. Then the next day we did the wedding, which was held in Frame Park, much more lovely now than when I mowed its meadows in the 60s for the Waukesha Parks and Recreation Department. One summer riding up and down those lawns I memorized all the presidents, all the kings of England and of France, and even started on the Popes. Well, as I sat there at the wedding I could remember none of them, at least not any long strings. To know that Henry V followed Henry IV seems like not much of a prodigious feat of memory. Any way Tim and ssss were married. I was so impressed with his attitude during the ceremony and the rest of the evening. Unlike the surly teenager he was (I recognized the type; I was one too), he was young, confident, and pleased.

Finally the meal was over and it was time to dance. Years ago for Susan Palmer’s wedding to Doug Wardell Mary and I had taken dance lessons and I had learned to keep time to triple-time music and over the years I had learned a number of arm/body moves. So when the dancing started, I was out there having a ball. Mike’s nieces were also dancing and having a good time, so I grabbed them and swung them around and they caught on fast and we had a good time swinging. I was showing off and loved it. Then I felt a pop in my knee. I knew I had done something bad to it. I was right. The next day I could hardly move it. Mary drove us home. In the emergency room they told me I had a torn meniscus and would need surgery. I had never heard of meniscus and had never had surgery. I scheduled an appointment with the local xxx and he confirmed the diagnosis. The meniscus was torn, I needed it surgically repaired, and before I could do that I needed to have a physical from my GP, Mark Svendson. And that is what started my prostate cancer saga.

2-20
It was ten below when I got up this morning and the sun had filled the horizon with that wonderful pre-dawn pink. I showered, dressed. Today I tried a button shirt and belted slacks for the first time in several weeks. My stomach has gone down and the slacks are finally comfortable. After the surgery the stomach distended and I couldn’t get into my 36” waist slacks even though I lost five pounds in the surgery, from 198 to 193. Speaking of my stomach, I have six incisions, the longest one from my belly button straight up for about an inch or so, three on the right side and two on the far left. I am not sure which one the prostate came out of. Right now the scabs are beginning to pull away and they are almost impossible to not play with. At any rate when I went to get the paper up at Cut Rite, where I can get it for 25 cents rather than 50 cents at MarketPlace, why I don’t know, the sun was just rising, roughly 7:05. As I came off Broadway onto Meadow Hill and over the bridge that crosses Wilson creek, the actual meadow hill seemed to boom into view, the snow all reddish from the first few minutes of sun, the bare trees pointing straight up toward Klos’s house. I smiled and laughed out loud. In a minute I was home and watching the rest of the sunrise from the east windows. In just a few weeks I can check to see if I have Dave’s spring equinox marker placed correctly, but more on that later.

To return to the leg problem, I had to have a physical. So I made an appointment to see Mark. After the usual how are you doing bit of talk—Mark is great about that; he makes you feel welcome all the while he is probing to see what is on your mind, we went through the perfunctory physical, which as I recall mostly amounted to looking in my ears and throat and checking glands for swelling. Then he said I needed a standard blood test, and I suggested off the top of my head, that we do a cholesterol and a psa test. At the time I didn’t even know what psa stood for, only that I should have one regularly and I hadn’t for a while. He demurred. I really didn’t need them. But I must have insisted because he said yes.

I don’t remember what the cholesterol reading was. I have the letter, I could check, but the psa (prostate specific antigens, as I learned at my post-surgery exam with Dr. Sershon) had jumped from in the 3s for the past several years to over 5. In the letter he explained that if psa goes over 5, he wanted me to see a urologist. I got the letter on xxxxx. On xxxx I had an appointment to see Dr. Heth, a urologist who is the head of urology at Luther Hospital in Eau Claire, and who comes to Red Cedar Medical Clinic several times a week. We talked briefly. He was very definite. He wanted to perform a biopsy.

I was taken back a bit. I remember that I agreed readily—what else could I do? But I felt that it would come to nothing. I have had blood in my urine for the past 30 years and I have had two cystoscopies, both of which showed that I didn’t have prostate cancer and I figured that this would be the same.

The biopsy procedure took place on xxxx. It lasted about an hour as I recall and after I went home, took the rest of the day off. For the procedure first they perform an ultrasound on the prostate. That was easy. You lie there and they smear some goo on you and run the reader around so that they get a picture. He explained why they needed to do that, but, to be honest, I forget what he said. He showed me the ultrasound and pointed out various of my internal organs, but they all looked like blobs to me.

Then came the actual collection of material for the biopsy. They inserted a cylinder of some sort, I never saw it, up my anus about 6 inches I think, a ways. Then came the collection. 12 times 6 times up the right side and 6 times up the left side the cylinder sent a needle through my intestinal wall and into my prostate. I gotta say, that was the proverbial pain in the ass. The doctor kept talking and made jokes about he was going to give me more pain than I had ever had—which actually it wasn’t, since it had been anesthetized, but it was like getting hit solidly, as if there were a tough mean person up my ass punching me. The nurse watched the whole time and I guess helped but I was pretty focused on the next slam. Finally it was over. They removed the cylinder, told me I could get dressed and go home. They would call me when they got the pathology report.

The doctor left and I got dressed, then the nurse explained that they would call me by xxx. And she let drop something that I actually wish she wouldn’t have. It helped me later, but I had to lie to my family. She told me that if she called, it almost always meant that the biopsy was benign, but if he called, it probably meant there was a tumor and that he would ask me to come in to see him. He had repeated several times, rather to my annoyance, that I could bring anyone to the consultation that I wished, including a long list of relatives and my lawyer. Ha Ha. I left and went home where inspite off myself, I waited for the phone call.

After this procedure I had a lot of bloody urinations. They went on for about 10 days. No matter how much they tell you it will happen, the sight of blood emerging from my penis set me back a bit. I tried to be matter of fact, sort of well that’s what happens, but I wasn’t quite as blasé as I acted.

Then started an annoying game of phone tag, one that I knew the meaning of, but that my wife and children didn’t. They got furious on my account as the weekend wore on. Jane said she had some guys in school who could ‘make some trouble’ and Clare allowed that she knew guys who broke knees. I repeated these jokes to Mark later, and it was clear he didn’t think that they were funny at all. I quit repeating those lines. And haven’t repeated them until now.