We Can't Believe We Have cancer

We can't believe we have cancer.

We have no symptoms.

We can still pee our name in the snow although there hasn't been much snow.

We only get up to pee maybe once a night and on some nights, despite the insomnia, we don't get up at all. Even the insomnia seems healthy, pretty much devoid of catstrophe.

It works something like this. Wow, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is such a great book. Definitely gonna be a movie. We wonder who'll direct it? Could be Redford but we kinda hope not. Eastwood would be better. We told Marty it should definitely be a movie and maybe he can have something to do with it of course that was over a year ago and a lot has happened in that year which means it's been about a year since the last Superbowl before the whole deflategate baloney started which nobody was ever gonna win and everybody was gonna lose like civil war in the leper colony; win or lose we've still got leprosy. When we wrestle with a turd win or lose, we still end up covered with shit and on and on and on and on and on and on usually ending up counting presidents which seems to go much faster after VanBuren and then vice-presidents which always slows down right after Smiling Schyler Colfax and picks up after William Wheeler and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on always looking for the handle.

We feel great, except for the fact that we have cancer.

Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln how did you like the play etc.

The fact lingers and everyday becomes more pervasive and believable.

The more we believe it, the more we can fight it.

All we have is the Gleason score and the biopsy results.

And the phone call about six days after the biopsy.

We wondered how the call would go.

It went like this.

We were still asleep because after we're up all night with the non-catstrophic insomnia, We tend to sleep whenever it is available. We have discoverd that sleep is a slippery yet graspable state so when we can get hold of it, we hold on for as long as we can no matter what the time of day or night..

The first words we clearly heard on the phone after a very brief greeting...."according to the results of the biopsy, I have some bad news. You have prostate cancer. We have graded it as a 7 on a scale of 10 for aggressiveness"

Meanwhile I'm all whiskey tangle foxtrot.

"....... not a death sentence like it once was. it is TREATABLE.....still because of your high PSA we need you to a bone density scan and a CT scan to see if it has spread. We'll set up that appointment for you....."

Still, all tangled up, we said our first and only words in the form of a question.

"who are you?"

"I'm Doctor somebodyor other. I'm in the practice with Doctor Somebodyelse, the Doctor who performed your biopsy. We're colleagues in the same office"

Oh.

"Thank you"

click 

foxtrot.

Starting to believe in cancer.

Later, it occurred to me what a great job Doctor Somebodyorother had done in conveying to us the concept that we have cancer. I realized that Dr. Somebodyorother was probably the designated "you make the call" guy in the urolgy office. Pretty sure Doctor Somebodyelse has proven that he's not real good with these conversations. I know he has been real bad every time he's talked to us which has been at least five fewer times than we would have liked as he doesn't return phone calls apparently.

Doctor Somebodyelse is the guy we'll be conferring with after all the scanning.

We hope Dr. Somebodyelse is a lot better as a surgeon than he is as a communicator.

Meanwhile our wife Lynn has listened in to the whole conversation.

We are immediately more us than ever.

Now she has cancer too and she can't believe it either.

Tomorrow is the day we go in for the scans. We bought us two dozen roses and brought them home an hour ago.

P.S. For those of you who are now us, we will no longer mention the word cancer in our titles. We're not trying to get sympathy here, we are doing this job and we ain't gonna give cancer any headline prop. We know there will be some bumps along the way but we don't want to oversell.

So if you are us, you will recognize our story by the image we use at the top. It's a forboding image but it's very beautiful. You will recognize us by this image and we will recognize you.

Meanwhile Ice Rivers who is one of us will be writing prolifically as he tends to  but he sure as hell isn't gonna write about cancer anywhere but a place like this. There's a whole other world to be enjoyed.