Wendy and I were sitting in the Urologist’s office staring at her when she told me I had prostate cancer. Since there was no other place to look, seemed like the appropriate thing to do. The only problem was that she just looked back at us. Amazing how much silence can be packed into just a few seconds. Since we did not say anything, she eventually went on with what sounded like a well scripted monologue. She said all of the “I’m sorries” and so on while we just sat and listened. Then she went straight into my three options. The “do nothing” option…watch and wait with more testing down the road to see progression of the cancer. Surgery…remove the prostate. Lastly, radiation with a possible follow-up with chemotherapy. She did tell me that if I chose radiation, that surgery was pretty much off the table. There must be some medical logic there, but beyond me why that would be the case. After some more staring and silence, she obviously expected me to choose a door. When she saw that was not going to happen as fast as she hoped, she told me to think about it for a couple of days and then let them know. I agreed with that option. I told her I would think about it and call her office in a couple of days.
Since Wendy and I had a two hour drive to get home, we had plenty of time to think and talk. It did not take long for me to learn that Wendy thought surgery would be the way to go. “If your prostate has cancer, get rid of it.” And it did not take Wendy long, after my prolonged lapses of silence, that I was not so sure of surgery. So I did tell Wendy that I needed to think about a lot of things before I jumped into another surgery. I’m not sure if this is a generalization or not, but in my case, being paralyzed complicates surgery. I have only had two surgeries in my life. The first one was in 1997 on my back. Not the best moment of my life. And the second one was kidney surgery. That was supposed to be fairly simple…remove a large kidney stone. It ended up not to be fairly simple and I was in the hospital for over a week wishing that I would just die and get it over with.
But, think I did. A lot of thinking about many things. Some things were selfish in nature, while other things were more practical. Wendy had sort of dropped the topic knowing that pushing me into a decision would not work. I guess I am not built that way. If I feel pushed, I push back. So when I told Wendy that I had decided to go with the “do nothing” option, she was not all that surprised but also not pleased with my choice. And Wendy has that wonderful talent of expressing her opinion to me in a way that makes arguing back against it very difficult. Still, it was my choice and she knew it.
So I called the Urologist back and told her my decision. She seemed shocked that I decided to do nothing, and informed me that she did not like my choice. She then told me that I would have to talk with the head of Urology. And guess what?! He was the taciturn doctor that was direct in his opinions and never wrong since he had been a doctor for so many years. I thought wonderful, but agreed. So we made an appointment for the following week for Wendy and me to meet with the head of Urology.
A week later, Wendy and I found ourselves staring at the head of Urology. He was very good at explaining the results of my biopsy. A total of 12 samples were taken from my prostate and 8 of them came back positive with cancer. And then I learned about the Gleason Scale. The numbers go from zero to 10. All of my numbers came back as a six and one seven. He said that he would put my case on the high end of intermediate. He pushed for surgery and said that would be best for me. Now the doctor AND Wendy were staring at me waiting for me to say something. My personal druthers was still to do nothing. But looking at Wendy, and thinking of everything that I had already put her through over the years, I owed her this one. So I said I would do the surgery. After listening to the doctor prattle on some more about how much he knew, and that I could check with any doctor, or Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and I would get the same opinion as his. we finally went to the scheduling desk to make all of the necessary appointments.
And since there are a lot of “interesting” details ahead, I will end this post here and continue on with my next one.
Leave a Reply