206

At some point on the morning of Wednesday, July 4, 2018, M missed a call on his cell. It was Texas Med Clinic. M called them back. Dr. Scalzi was with a patient, but would M mind holding? Yes, he’d hold.

A short time later, Dr. Scalzi got on the phone and gave us the results of the PSA test, as well as the bone scan. M’s PSA blood count was 206. What is normal? Normal is less than four. And the bone scan? Abnormalities spotted in several locations in the spine.

Dr. Scalzi was now pretty freely using the word “cancer” to describe what was happening, but said any kind of diagnosis would have to be made by the urologist. She said the likely next step with the urologist would be to perform a biopsy. She also seemed to almost be musing to herself about how we might have caught this problem earlier, but said she couldn’t think of a way, even if M had been having regular check-ups. PSA testing isn’t done on otherwise healthy, asymptomatic males under the age of 50. She asked if M had any family history of prostate cancer. M doesn’t on his mom’s side, but M’s dad has never really been in his life, nor has it ever seemed to have been one of those issues that either his dad or M’s siblings on that side has ever raised, so there’s never been a good way of knowing whether prostate cancer runs on his dad’s side.

Dr. Scalzi told us that she’d taken us as far as she could, and that the urologist would take the case from here. M asked her if she was breaking up with us. It was funny. We needed funny in that moment. She laughed. She told us to go do something fun, take our minds off all of this.

I went for a run after that. But before I did, I mind-fucked myself pretty thoroughly on the internet.

I researched what PSA counts mean. A PSA count of 206 is high, like, really high, and M’s prostate is enlarged. It’s hard to argue that something is very, very wrong with his prostate, even if it’s not cancer. But if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s probably a duck, right? So my assumption was–still is, until I’m told otherwise–that it’s prostate cancer. On top of that, there are also abnormalities in M’s spine, and reading the CT scan report, the radiologist went so far as to note evidence of metastatic disease in the spine. “Metastatic”…translated, it means shit has spread. If you spend any time on the Google, looking up prostate cancer, you’ll quickly discover that prostate cancer can and does spread, normally to the surrounding tissues, with the bones–the spine, in particular–being a notable jumping off point for prostate cancer’s continued journey.

I thought back to only two nights earlier, on M’s and my walk through the Red Lobster parking lot, feeling good about, yeah, maybe M has prostate cancer, but we were sure we’d caught it early. But if prostate cancer has spread to the spine, then have we still caught it early?

Let me pause here to point out the fifth lesson I’ve learned so far: WebMD is NOT your friend. According to my kitchen table research, prostate cancer is perfectly manageable, and the survival rates at 96% or higher, when the cancer is confined to the prostate and hasn’t spread. Once it hits the spine, according to the interwebs, survival rates plummet to less than a third, and on one site in particular that I looked at, less than 10%.

At some point, on some future blog post, I’ll explain my past and how M and I met and got married and all that. For now, suffice it to say that M and I met just over two years ago, and we got married four and a half months after that. He’s been married once before, I’ve been married twice before. We felt–still feel–so blessed to have found each other, and so profoundly like the Universe meant for us to be together. I have never felt so fully and totally loved by another person, nor have I ever so freely and happily given my love to someone else. When I met M, I felt such contentment, such fulfillment, such relief, such satisfaction. It was as though I’d been running and running and running, as fast as I could, no finish line in sight. And then there he was. I was finally done running. I had finally found the finish line. M is the rest of my life.

The information I’d found on the Google about prostate cancer and how and where it spreads sucked the air out of my lungs, dropped my stomach to the floor, made my hands clammy and my heart race. And there were tears, of course. It took 20 minutes to pull it together enough to get out the door to run. Once outside, it was hot and humid and sunny and I couldn’t stop breaking into sobs, which makes it very hard to run, or to give the Universe the very stern talking to I thought it deserved. I ran, anyway, and when I wasn’t sobbing, I was physically numb. But after a while, after the mental and emotional circus died down enough to manage coherent thought, the first thing that emerged in my mind was, “We are warriors!” M and I have both been through some shit, very different shit, one from the other, but loads of shit all the same. If we are nothing else, M and I are resilient, stubborn, tough mother fuckers.

“We are warriors, this is what we do!” I told myself, huffing and puffing in the heat. But then I broke down in tears again. I know this pattern will repeat, it already has in only a few short days. One moment, I will be a warrior, kicking ass with and for my husband; and in the next moment I’ll shrivel into a ball of snot and tears. What a fucked up version of yin and yang THAT is.

Later that July 4th afternoon, we took Dr. Scalzi’s advice to go have some fun. We went to the 4:20 showing of “Jurassic World” at Alamo Drafthouse. We had some beer and some comfort food. It was escapism and it was pleasant.

On drive home, though, M said to me, “I don’t think we caught it that early.”