I knew it was bad when…(part 1)

Disclosure: Michael lost his battle with cancer in February 2019, but he had asked me to tell his story–our story–and so I am. You can read more about why I’m doing so here. When I originally started this blog, I wrote about events and feelings in the moment, because everything was happening so fast, and everything was chaos. Now that Michael is gone, and I’ve had the time to slow down and look back, all future posts will tell Michael’s story in a more chronologically correct order…or mostly so, no guarantees. They’ll also include some insights and commentary forged from hard-earned hindsight.

I’ll start with a refresher, so you don’t have to read all the previous blog posts if you don’t want to. Michael had barely turned 44 years old when this whole cancer shitshow started. We’d only been together for about two years and three months, married for a year and nine-ish months. Someday I’ll tell the story of our whirlwind romance, but not today. I explain the duration of our relationship solely to provide context. In the relatively brief time I’d known Michael, he’d always had back and hip pain, and neither of us worried about it. After all, that’s a consequence of a being a lifelong athlete, or at least that seemed a perfectly logical explanation (I mean, I had, and continue to have, years’ long battles with my IT bands and Achilles tendons for that very reason). But on Sunday, June 3, 2018, Michael experienced a spasm of acute lower back pain that ultimately never went away. In fact it spread around: to his hips, his shoulders, up his spine. The month of June was hell to start with and only grew more hellish. Fast forward: by July 12, 2018, Michael was diagnosed with stage IV prostate cancer. His prostate specific antigen (PSA) count was at 206, when it should have been below four, and the cancer had metastasized to his bones, including a spot beneath his left eye, on his orbital bone.*

Before we got the official diagnosis, though, there was a nearly two week long speculation period, during which the term “prostate cancer” was being bandied about pretty freely (my previous blog posts cover this, so I won’t rehash the details). But my first indication that things were bad, like, legitimately really bad was in the wake of the phone call with the GP who initially speculated Michael had cancer–an absolute angel of a woman named Dr. Angela Scalzi–who set us up with all the referrals and initial labs and scans we needed in order to take the next steps toward a proper diagnosis. During the phone call, Dr. Scalzi told us she was now out of her depth, that she could not make a prostate cancer diagnosis, but she was nearly positive that’s what we were up against. Further, Michael’s labs and scans indicated cancer in his bones. After we hung up from that call, I left Michael to rest, and changed clothes to go for a run. But before I left for my run, I did what you are never, ever supposed to do in the situation we’d now found ourselves in. I got on the internet. And that’s when I knew it was bad.

Me: What does 206 PSA count mean?

Internet: Yeah, that’s bad.

Me: 206 PSA count with enlarged prostate?

Internet: No, for real, that’s really bad.

Me: Prostate cancer metastasized to bones?

Internet: *sucks in breath* Prostate cancer 96% curable when caught early and confined to prostate, less so when spreads to neighboring organs, especially if cancer jumps to spine. If jumps to spine, five year survival rates 10 – 30%.

Me: *gulp* So we didn’t catch it early?

Internet: You’re fucked.

*A few months before the back spasm episode in June of 2018–it might even have been a year before, I don’t know, but it wasn’t anything longer than a year–Michael had been at work, and he’d called me to check in, which he did every afternoon. He told me that he’d been getting some steps in, taking laps around the block outside work, and all of the sudden his left eye had gone blurry. Fearing it might have been a stroke or something, I asked if he had felt dizzy or noticed anything else was off, but his answer was “no”. Apparently the blurry eye thing cleared up on its own pretty quickly, and he never mentioned it happening again. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t a recurrence, but I’ll never know. Michael never wanted me to worry about anything. I wish I’d have asked if it ever happened again. I wonder if that little spot on the orbital bone was already there that day, so many months before.