Life inverted.
Cancer is a word not a sentence.
This girl returns to the blog, albeit somewhat reluctantly. I’ve still a lot to say, but life has changed. As the title implies, life has been inverted. It’s been turned upside down, sideways and all sorts of ways my husband and I never expected.
That’s what happens when cancer enters your life. Yes, that’s the reason. Four months ago, my husband was diagnosed with stage 4, metastatic prostate cancer. How’s that for a gut punch.
Our life was turned upside down by those dreaded words, “You have cancer.” It all started with severe back pain. Two trips to the chiropractor did not help. Neither did a regime of pain medication. Our neighbors, wanting to be helpful, loaned us this inversion table under the assumption that hanging upside down somehow relieves back pain. As you can see, it was more a toy for our granddaughter than anything that could have helped Mike.
Eventually, a CT scan revealed the prostate cancer and the cause of the pain – fractured vertebrae in the spine due to the cancer having moved into the spine. Ugh!
By now, you’re probably wondering how we missed this disease. Doesn’t an annual physical and accompanying lab work monitor things like PSA numbers for the prostate. Well, yes, they do if they’re done. Enter COVID. Like many individuals during this pandemic, Mike postponed (or literally forgot) the annual exam, focusing instead on getting vaccinated. We’ve gotten mixed reactions from doctors on how and why the cancer advanced so quickly. But at the end of the day, but we have both decided it serves no useful purpose to look back. Best to move forward with positive treatment and attitude.
Four months in, Mike has been on what’s called hormone therapy — four Abiraterone pills taken daily to stop the creation of testosterone. In addition, monthly shots and infusions for bone health. The hormone drug appears to be working. At the time of his diagnosis, Mike’s PSA count was an off-the-charts level of 1,100. The lab work in December showed it down to 6.8. (normal is about 4.0). We considered the results a minor miracle. Or in our estimation — the power of pills and prayers.
It has been startling and gratifying to feel the love and reaction from family and friends once they learned of Mike’s cancer. Heartfelt phone calls, text messages, get well cards, on and on, remind us that lots of people care about him and are praying for him. We fully believe prayers make a difference.
Still, at the end of the day, it is stage 4 cancer, and we know there is no stage 5. But the doctor was encouraged with the PSA numbers and gave this advice: “Mike, go home and live. See you in three months.” So as best he can, Mike is following the doctor’s order. Certainly, there are moments of defeatism — “why try, I’m going to die anyway. I just don’t know when.” So when he starts to feel either overwhelmed or depressed about his disease, we call in the troops. One of those soldiers is a therapist we see via zoom who allows Mike to vent but then helps him get back on a more positive track.
Wife and daughters are “soliders” in cancer
combat.
Fortunately, Mike has retained an element of his great sense of humor. He quipped to someone recently, “The best thing to do when you get cancer is surround yourself with a bunch of women. They take good care of you.” Thank you, dear husband, that’s what we try to do — me and our two daughters. One daughter lives far away in California, but she was here for some of the initial visits with the oncologist, and the notes she took then have proved invaluable. (Mike and I were both truly in brain fog mode at that point). The other daughter is a practicing mental health counselor. She’s now become our resident therapist.
What else do we do to fight the good fight. We’ve tried a support group with limited success. We read books, surf the web for information on prostate cancer, and occasionally I listen to podcasts by cancer survivors. But let me tell you, there’s only so much of that one can stomach before you feel yourself (and I know Mike feels it, too) descending into a well where you’re drowning in information.
It’s a process and certainly a journey that we’re on, a journey where the road is uncertain as well as the destination and ETA. The best we can do is take one day at a time, reminding ourselves all along that each day truly is a gift. Mike has officially retired from the Bank but remains chairman of the board, so we’ve set up an office for him in the dining room.
I still keep most of my routines — reading, exercise, trying to restart blog posting. We’re even getting ready for a little break from the Nebraska winter by going to California for a while.
I don’t know what lies ahead. In reality, most of us don’t. I may chronicle the journey in this blog, but it won’t turn into a cancer blog. Cancer may be a part of our lives now, but it’s a word, not a sentence. We’ve got some living to do — doctor’s orders.