Cancer Diaries IV: A Pained Sigh of Relief

Six days ago, I crawled under a man-sized spider-looking robot in a hospital surgical arena and surrendered to the gas. I came outta there sans prostate (and sans more blood than my doc expected; sorry about that).

I also had a tube jammed up my dick, a shaved midsection, and more holes in me than I care to or normally have.

I also have a very good prognosis, based on the pathology report that indicates very highly that all of the cancer was contained in the prostate with no escape, and since the prostate no longer resides inside of me, I should be cancer-free.

This result cannot be confirmed until I get a new PSA test in 3 months. Waiting 3 months kind of blows, but PSA has a long half-life in the blood, so gotta give things time to re-normalize.

Kinda feels like having a shotgun permanently aimed at the back of my head but eh, that's kind of what life is, no?

The recovery has been annoying but easy if that makes sense? I am fortunate in having decent health insurance in the American sense (this has still cost me a fortune, but a fortune I can afford, which I realize many cannot), an amazing spouse without whom this would've been so, SO much shittier to endure (I genuinely cannot picture being one of the many much older men who deal with this cancer without a spouse in the mix to just help with the cleaning and care and all of the household shit that needs doing that I usually do but cannot at the moment, etc.), so I am able to be fully off-work with some (not all) of my regular income still coming in, and we can easily make do with the lesser amount. Given that my primary recovery need so far has been for an ASTOUNDING amount of sleep, this has all worked in my favor. The pain is receding, this gods-cursed tube comes out of my dick on Friday, and I can proceed from there to the 3 month test mark without having to focus so much mental, emotional and physical energy on this fucking... thing? process? Fuckin' cancer, man. All-growing and all-consuming, indeed.

Can't say enough for having a good family (born-to, found or otherwise) and friends network; people have been amazing with checking in, providing food so the wife can at least not have to worry about every meal on top of everything else she's managing, etc. and so on. Feels good to be able to reasonably assume you'd be missed if you actually checked all the way out.

At this point, I'm going to finish up recovering, focus on all the dick therapy that has to happen when they cut through that part of a man's body, and generally try to not think about this 'til I get that 3-month test result. Wish me as well in that as I wish for you in everything. See ya.