Cancer!

Everything in life teaches you something. Here are some things I’ve learned from cancer: mine, and others.

Oh, you didn’t know that I had cancer? Sorry. Forgot to tell you. Actually, I didn’t know myself until yesterday. Not yesterday, yesterday. Yesterday, when I wrote this. Which is at least seven years ago. And by then, I didn’t have it anymore. Or I didn’t have that particular cancer anymore. I probably have others. Which sucks. But they are likely not bad. Which mitigates the suckiness.

Let me start over.

Bobbi and I were in Florida visiting my brother, the doctor. He saw something on my head that he didn’t like. Aside from my face, haha.

What he saw was a little scabby thing on my forehead. He asked me about it. I told him that it had been there for a while. I kept picking at it. It would scab over. But it never went away. So he said he wanted to take it off. The scabby thing. Not my head.

Ha ha.

He’s a doctor and can do those things. That’s us in the picture. He’s the one whose face you can see. He took the scabby thing off and sent it for a biopsy. A couple of days, his son, the other doctor, called and told me the report came back. Basal cell carcinoma. Clean margins (which means he got it all). But still. Cancer.

As I said, my brother is a doctor. Technically, he’s a retired doctor. Even more technically, he’s a retired doctor with cancer. In the picture, technically, both brothers have got cancer. You can’t see mine because of the thing covering my head. You can’t see his because it’s not one of the visible, easily removed kinds. If you ever insist on getting cancer (not something I advise), then get my kind rather than his kind. He’s been diagnosed with it for six years and counting. And get his kind rather than the kind that pretty quickly and fairly horribly killed our friend Tom.

My kind is called basal cell carcinoma. I’m calling the one that my brother took off Basil. Basil the basal cell carcinoma. According to Wikipedia, It’s a very common kind of cancer that develops very slowly, and there are things that you can do about it. Like, chop it off. But also other things. From the main symptom I associate with this one (little scabby thing that won’t go away), I’m guessing I’ve got at least one more, maybe a couple. Concerned? Yes. Worried? No.

His kind is called myeloma, and it’s bad. Right now, what he’s got is called “smoldering myeloma,” which means “wait around until your myeloma bursts into flames and then watch the clock.” The median survival rate once you are symptomatic is 4.5 years. Crap!

Mine is nothing. Well, not nothing, but not much. I can, with some difficulty, think the thought, “I’ve probably got more cancers growing in my body,” and set off my limbic alarm system. But it’s not very loud, and I have to work at it to keep it on. Like I’m trying to do as I write this.

And I’ll stop ignoring those other suspicious places and have my skin (lots of moles) checked by a doctor again this year like I’m supposed to do every couple of years. I do check myself, and the one time I found something that I didn’t remember having THAT turned on the full limbic alarm system to the degree that I couldn’t wait a week for my doctor to see me and went to a local walk-in clinic because swapping $90 for either peace of mind or a one-week-earlier start seemed like a good deal.

So I’m not worried. I was more worried when I found out about his cancer than I was when I found out about mine. I mean, worried about me. Of course, I was concerned about him. I am a certified asshole, but not that bad. But as he described the symptoms, I thought: “My god! I’ve got that, too.” And rushed in to my doctor for some tests and did a lot of thinking about mortality.

He’s getting a checkup at the cancer clinic in Arkansas right now. (Right now as I wrote this. Not right now as you’re reading. Jesus, that would be terrible. If he was getting a checkup at the cancer clinic in Arkansas every time someone read this.)

He’s been going there every six months since he got the news. His condition is progressing, but very slowly. For which I and all the people who love him (and there are many of us) are grateful. Coincidentally, we’ll be driving through that area tomorrow on the way to the Coast.

I have no personal experience with dying—that I remember—but I’ve heard we all die someday. There’s no way of getting out of here alive, they say. But until then, we will do the best we can. And right now, today, this is the best I can do.

Update: Mark (my brother, I didn’t tell you his name) still has myeloma. It’s still smoldering, or smouldering, if you are British, or can’t spell or are trying to put on airs. Meanwhile, another friend got myeloma (not from Mark. It’s not contagious.), and died shortly after the diagnosis.

Cancer sucks.

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