Still trying to get caught up to now. And where better to start than with Sperm?
A couple of people--one pleasantly embarrassed union colleague--did have the guts to talk to me about banking sperm when the diagnosis hit. Neela and I were gearing up to 'try,' as the somewhat bloodless euphemism puts it, this summer. So Murphy's Law gets a point on timing there.
While there is always a chance that chemo doesn't permanently sterilize you, it is just a chance, and banking makes sense. You are supposed to 'abstain' for at least five days between 'gives.'
Off we go to the sperm bank--insert travel music here. The Sperm bank is in the Empire State Building, the largest phallic symbol in the universe. We choose to see that as a good omen as opposed to rank mockery.
The man running the sperm bank is named...wait for it...Romeo. I will leave you with that one and you can make up your own funny line for it. I'll wait...
I will now jump ahead 30 seconds, I mean 40 intense seconds, oh screw it I mean a minute, to when I emerge from the somewhat surreal sterile lust that is the room they provide. I walk back down the hall and round the corner, precious Tupperware in hand. I give the hopes and dreams of my ego and our life together to Romeo, and he goes "Yay!" like I just finished a little race, or I am a baby who managed to pick out the dinosaur from the other stuffed animals correctly. Very, very odd.
Because of pre-chemo timing I am able to bank another time, and it looks like the numbers etc are good. So if you all meet some kid of ours in a few years, feel free to maybe hold up a sippy cup or a casserole dish with an air-tight lid and say "Look familiar?"
While we are in my crotch, let's move on t the PET CT Scan. they take you into a room and inject you with radioactive juice that attaches itself to glucose-seeking cells, which means cancer cells more than the rest of your body. Then you sit for a while so it can circulate, then they scan you and see where the cancer cells are hanging out.
The toxic juice collects after its journey in your bladder because your boy is smarter than modern medicine and thinks maybe the radioactive shit should be disposed of as opposed to injected. This means that you are somewhat radioactive until 3 half-lives of the juice have passed, which is about 30 hours. So you are supposed to, if you wanna be safe, stay 6 feet away from people and pee a whole lot. Which is, I guess, better than being told to stand right next to people and pee a lot.
I spend the rest of the day trying angle my bladder region away from my wife, which means I am walking like an old Tim Conway character from Carol Burnett. And I sleep on the hide-a-bed to be sure. It looks like the PET CT came back good, that I have cancer but it is not rushing to any places that would be more worrisome. it has moved to the lymph nodes, but that was to be expected with this diagnosis. they are a bit swollen but not too bad.
A friend has hooked us up with a classmate by now who has gone through a version of what I have, and he is being very generous and getting us in touch with his Dr, who is out of an Upper East Side hospital, that, while being in the worst neighborhood in the whole world, may offer the best care. So Monday is meetings with Drs from the current team and possibly the new team, and we will make a decision.
Currently I am slated to start chemo Tuesday April 27, a day that will live in infamy...unless it changes.
My mother and step-father came up on short notice from Baltimore and have been wonderful, balancing care and concern with humour and companionship. And elbow grease. We took a whole Ford pickup load of crap out of here that they will drive back to Baltimore for us so that the apartment was easier to keep clean and livable. A friend of N's made killer lasagna--one meat, one veg--that didn't stand a chance against us.
N is still a sequoia in the middle of this, mandating and listing and reading and holding and frankly making me feel like maybe 'the one with the cancer' is the eaiser of the two jobs. I could start on the whole 'I don't deserve this kind of love and loyalty' thing here, but frankly it would sound disengenuous and affected...and she'd kick my ass. I'm just lucky and we'll leave it at that.
Mom and Jim head out again tonight--Jim managing to keep his reunion with his High School Basketball team, which makes me very happy--but that's probably good timing if that's when chemo starts. I will have enough on my plate, and as wonderful as it has been to have them, N and I will probably cocoon up in whatever reality medical poisoning brings and get used to the new world order.
Neela also has a dentist appointment Monday, which is a second point for Murphy's Law--it is either a cavity or a root canal. When it rains...
I think that pretty much brings everything up to now. I am sure there are things I have missed, and I am sure there are things to which I will refer as I go along that I was not nice enough to put in here so far. But that should get us all somewhere near on the same page. Except of course that I have cancer, and you don't. Unless you have it too, in which case I feel very bad for you, but you should be off writing your own damn blog, and not hanging around mine. Go on, shoo!
