One of my best friends from high school is a GED teacher for some really, really bad kids. He recently turned an act of classroom disrespect into a “teachable moment,” schooling the youngster in the art of writing an apology letter.
It’s all about the little victories, people.
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Those of you that know me well know that my sister and I love each other with a love that is tremendous, powerful, and savage. Like if Voltron were formed up out of grizzly bears and wolverines with killer beehives for hands.
I told a story about our relationship at The Moth’s GrandSlam a few months back — hope you enjoy it:
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Before I get to the cancer news, let me get something right up front: it has been a spectacular weekend. This weekend was like a commercial for weekends written by writers from the Wonder Years and shot by Robert Altman.
A bunch of my best friends came up to visit this weekend — two guys I’ve known since kindergarten, one guy since the seventh grade, and then my friend Mark Koch who’s been on the scene since ninth grade. He’s the new guy.
It was Mark’s bachelor party weekend. Nobody’s going to make a smash comedy hit out of it, as the whole enterprise was more bourbon and burlesque than blow and strippers. We had dinner at Peter Luger, hiked over the Williamsburg Bridge to have a look at the streetcorner that was the cover of “Paul’s Boutique,” walked the boardwalk from Coney Island to Brighton Beach and saw a hot and hilarious burlesque show at Bar on A.
My roommate and upstairs neighbor kindly gave up their rooms for the cause and let us spread out in the building a little, too.
Not too shabby at all.
I haven’t laughed that hard in a long, long time. And at points I had my hands over my incision, afraid I was literally going to bust a stitch.
Instead I just stretched. Stretched and healed. I haven’t felt this good in a really, really long time.
So here’s the doctor’s news from the other day:
I’m healing up fine, textbook perfection, basically. The CT/PET scans showed one questionable lymph node up in my throat, but he jabbed around in there with his fingers pretty hard and said “whatever, I’m not feeling anything in there, so let’s forget about that one for now.”
There’s these markers in the blood that cancerous tumors give off — they differ by the type of tumor. But for simplicity’s sake here, let’s collectively call them Carl.
Normal levels of Carl in a healthy adult male might be between 0-5. My Carl quotient was burying the needle at 1,250 before surgery. So they drew blood from me a week after surgery, and whatever my Carl levels were, that’s the baseline right there.
Say I’ve got a Carl of 100 a week after surgery. Then a week later, my doctor expects me to have half as much Carl — a level of 50. A week later, Carl’s supposed to be down to 25. Eventually, those levels will bottom out and kinda flatline. And if Carl flatlines at a level that’s higher than normal, we start chemotherapy.
Awesome. Really, that makes sense to me — it’s careful and cautious, and following the results scientifically. What I wanted was for my doctor to clap and dust his hands off, then say, “that’s it, you’re done!”
But that’s not gonna happen for a good while yet. As a wise man named Tom Petty once said, “the waiting is the hardest part.”
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Spotted on the side of an ice cream truck cruising up Knickerbocker Ave in Bushwick.
(I could teach you, but I’d have to chorge.)
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The good news is, the cancer’s probably not going to kill me directly. However, there is this:
I’m in a fair bit of pain from the surgery. It’s not like they gave me a belt of whiskey and a broomstick to bite while it happened, but still. I’m constantly hooped to the gills on Vicodin, which eliminates most, but not all of the searing yank I feel 4 inches below and 3 inches to the left of my navel every time I cough, laugh, or move.
My coworkers were colossally thoughtful and sent over meals for me and my mom for a week the day after I came out of the hospital. Included was a massive tray of velvety, sensual macaroni and cheese. I’ve been having a spoonful or two every time I have to take a Vicodin — you’re supposed to take it with food.
Thing is, Vicodin’s not exactly a laxative. Neither is mac and cheese. Quite the opposite, actually. Like drinking a glassful of Quikrete, really.
So I may not die from cancer itself. But I could well go out like The King himself: lit up on painkillers, chock full of mac and cheese and straining my way to an aneurysm hunkered over the can.
I am Elvis Aaron Presley, minus the hair and the hits. I’m either going to have a heart attack or all that mess is going to come streaming out of my incision in a hellish imitation of a Play-Doh Fun Factory.
On the other hand, my heart is soaring with hope about once a day. I either get a great phone call from someone, a letter, or a visitor drops by. Its been so great hearing from everyone, seeing everyone, and I really feel loved and supported. There’s no substitute for it.
Maggie came up on Monday, and we took a walk around Williamsburg, up to my favorite bookstore and back. It was magnificent. I could see every crag in every brick like it was the first time, loved every tag on every wall, every tiny broken beer bottle in the gutter was like a little pile of diamonds. Being out in the air, in the sun for the first time felt like coming up out of a yearlong stay in an undersea biosphere. Each breath was a jewel. We stuck our heads in bars, fiddled with pinball machines, got a cup of tea and browsed in little overpriced boutiques. It was magical. Like Disney World when I was eight.
Then on the way back I got the fear again, really bad. Felt this clenching inside, like my organs were making a fist. I broke out in a cold sweat and had to lie down. For about sixteen hours.
But that fog, that dog-breath malaise that’s been panting all over my life for a month is gone. It’s replaced by opiates for now, but that’s going to go too, and I’ll be myself again. And that feels really, really awesome.
Tomorrow we’re going back to Sloan-Kettering to get the biopsy results, the CT/PET scan results, find out if I’m done with all this or if I’ll spend the summer getting chemotherapy. But one way or another, I’ll be back in action by the fall, I think. I hope.
I keep joking about this because really, I can’t do anything else. I default to clowning around every time I open my mouth. And when I see other people laugh at the jokes I’m making about all this, it makes me feel better — because if they’re laughing at it, it can’t be that bad.
So if I can keep making you laugh about it, then you won’t be scared. And then I’ll see that you’re not scared, and I won’t be scared either.
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I’ve noticed that every time something awful happens, something really surreal happens, too. I saw a guy get a bumper upside the teeth at a demolition derby once, spinning his head around suddenly and breaking his neck. They had to bring a helicopter over the mountain from Charlottesville to take the guy away. And while everyone stood around gasping with horror, and old woman behind me said “this is an awful day. This is an awful damn sad day for the sport of the demolition derby.”
When my great-uncle died, all I could really notice at the funeral was that everyone’s face looked like a cartoon mask — like they were doing it on purpose.
The driver of the shuttle bus that took me across town from my urological oncologist’s to the pre-surgery appointment was CRANKING the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun” at maximum volume. Doctors and patients were yelling into their cell phones, fingers jammed in their ears and the driver, he didn’t even give a damn.
Tomorrow I will have had a pair of testicles for 32 years and 50 weeks. Tomorrow, a doctor will be breaking up the team. One day when I am in my late ’60s, I’ll realize that I’ve only had one testicle for longer than I ever had two. Hopefully I’ll be able to celebrate with a few jokes, an embrace from someone that loves me and a couple stiff drinks.
At this point, I’m okay with it. Or as okay as someone gets. I’ve been feeling fatigued and sluggish for the past several weeks, my crotch aching like I caught a bad one on the crossbar of a bicycle a few hours ago. All I really feel like doing is sleeping, eating, and taking Advil. I’m reducing into a shade. And even though the thought that my energy is waning and my spirit is dying is terrifying, at other times it feels so relaxing.
Once I catch myself thinking that way I feel like I’m harboring a malignant parasite that’s taking over its host. It’s all I can do not to snag my roommate’s scissors and take care of it myself in the tub, frontier-style.
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My friend Rob and I have this ongoing juvenile argument.
He loves to ask people:
Which is better, having one testicle, or having three?
He’d rather have one, he says, because
I’d rather be a little sad than a lot creepy.
I disagree. I’d rather be strange than pitiful, myself. But it turns out I might not have much of a choice.
A few weeks ago, I was doing a bit of a self-test — got to do these things once you’re in your ’30s — and I discovered that one of my testicles was the approximate size and weight of a Cadbury Creme Egg. I made an appointment with a GP who gave it a perfunctory juggle, shrugged, and put me on antibiotics for a week.
It didn’t work. I got referred to a specialist who I went to see today. He ran some ultrasounds, then frowned and called up NYU, sent me across town for an emergency sonogram.
“That can’t be good,” I thought as I got into the cab. But it was all moving too fast for me to think about it.
So there’s this mass growing in the center of one of my nuts, making it all big and really hard. It feels like I could pound nails with the thing. Or really surprise someone in my Muay Thai class. But instead of being useful it’s consumed a lot of the healthy tissue in there and needs to come out.
As the doctor says, if it’s benign, it’s a problem because it could keep growing. If it’s malignant — out it comes, too. The procedure’s called a Radical Orchiectomy, and it’s about as fun as it sounds.
Luckily it doesn’t seem to have spread anywhere, and it’s been caught early. This is one of the few truly curable cancers in the world. Lance Armstrong let his go WAY further than mine, and he’s fine.
But still. Ain’t THAT a bitch. I’m going to lose one of my testicles, sooner rather than later. And I’m not even going to get to lose it to a hungry octopus, or at the tip of a pirate’s saber, or some other cool way. Just to one of the most common, curable cancers in the world.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m getting a second, third, opinion. And I feel lucky that this isn’t gonna take me out. Or at least not for long. Reproductive health and hormones should still be ticking right along. That’s why we have two of these things, apparently.
But I’m reeling, feeling betrayed by my body and mourning the loss of a body part already. I know it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but I mean, SHIT.
So tomorrow’s going to be more doctor’s appointments and blood work, just to be sure. I’m told that I can get a prosthetic testicle put in during surgery if I want one. Not sure what to do about that one just yet. Does it even matter? Or, more importantly: does it cost much extra to get two prosthetics in addition to the real one?
**Update** I just had an idea. I wonder if I could get a musket ball from the Civil War encased in silicone and put in there instead. That could be really cool — keep a little Virginia with me at all times.
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