Note: I know that many of you already know this news from Twitter and/or Facebook, and if you are one of those people, thank you again from the bottom of my heart for the love and support you have shown to me.
And apologies in advance for any offensive language. But I'm not holding anything back right now.
Last Thursday, I took my husband in for a simple cystoscopy and ureteroscopy. He'd been having bladder pain and urgency, so they were going to take a look to see what the cause of his symptoms were.
Remember this post? The one where I was a wreck over the spinal surgery he was facing? And everything ended up going perfectly smooth?
Well, irony is a real b*tch. Because I was not worried at all about this procedure. I was sitting calmly in the waiting room, checking emails on my laptop, when they called me back to the conference room to talk with the doctor.
Rob's biggest fear was that everything would look normal and they wouldn't have an explanation for his symptoms. But I sat there confident that they would tell me something "simple"...maybe a kidney stone that was stuck.
The doctor came in the room and said, "Well, we ended up doing a lot more in there than we planned." Again, I'm thinking this is probably a good thing. He was in a LOT of pain. So a lot of work must mean he was all fixed now.
"We ended up finding a tumor in the bladder," he continued...and the rest of what he said is kind of hazy to me. I just know he was going on and on about the tumor without telling me exactly what he meant by "tumor."
I stopped him and said, "Wait...a tumor? Is it cancerous?"
"Yes."
And just like that, my world came crashing down on me. I know it showed on my face because after pausing, he started to reassure me. I heard words and phrases like, "superficial," "only on the bladder wall," "we were able to get it all," and "it's not as bad as it seems."
He went on to tell me about a stone they found, a stricture in the uretha, etc. but I really did not process much of it. He then told me, "I talked to him but he won't remember any of it. So you can tell him all of this when you go back to him."
Lovely.
When I was called back to his recovery room, I met his eyes and wondered if he knew. He had a look on his face that made me think he might. I would learn later on that the look I had on my face made him think bad news was ahead. But again, he thought I was going to tell him that everything was normal.
The nurse was in there and I didn't want to say anything with him in the room. He was so wonderful and again...the eyes can say so much...because he kept giving me a look that told me he knew what I had to do. But he kept talking about mundane things like recovery and diet and I just wanted him to leave so I could get it over with.
I did ask Rob if he'd talked to the doctor and he said, "No."
"So you don't know anything about what they found?"
"No."
When the nurse finally left, I leaned over the bed rail and held Rob's hand. He just kept looking at me, anxious to hear what I was going to say. I said what the doctor said to me. "They ended up doing a lot more than they expected to."
I took a deep breath and started to say, "Honey, they found..." and I couldn't finish. I couldn't get myself to say the words.
"What? Just say it. What?"
I kept taking breaths (breathing seemed to be fairly hard for me that morning), and said, "They found a tumor. And it's cancerous."
I think the look on his face was probably the same one I had on mine when I was told.
I immediately started trying to reassure him with everything the doctor had told me. And I think at that point, he began to do what he does best. I think he saw my fear, as much as I tried to hide it and he said..."It's going to be fine. I will be fine."
But as he lay in the recovery bed he started shaking really bad. I asked the nurse for warm blankets and they gave them to him. The nurse kind of mumbled, "I think the shaking is from what he's been through with this surgery," and he gave me that look again.
"Is it from the surgery itself?" I asked, knowing that happens to me frequently during recovery. The nurse said it wasn't...they hadn't given him the type of drugs that usually cause that reaction.
So as brave as he was being, I knew that deep down he was scared. Still, this is him after getting dressed:
Smiling. Friggin smiling. He? Is amazing.
Here is what I know: This is Stage 0 bladder cancer. It is very treatable. It has not spread. The doctor told Rob on the phone, "If you had to have any kind of cancerous tumor, this is the kind you want to have."
Rob was very lucky that the other problems caused him to have symptoms, which ultimately got him in for this procedure and led to them catching this early. "If it had been another couple of years," the doctor told me, "I would be telling you a very different story."
Here is what I also know: This type of cancer almost always comes back. The doctor believes he will have a recurrance within five years. He will need cystoscopies every three months for the first year, every six months for the next year or two after that, then every year for the rest of his life. (after an emergency catheter in the ER years ago, Rob said he NEVER wanted to go through that again. "It's like someone took my worst fear and said, 'Now you must do this for the rest of your life!'")
Here is what you should know: I have lost more friends, family and loved ones to cancer than I can count on both hands. I have been on the encouragement end, talking about beating statistics, defying the odds, etc. After about the fifth time, I knew it was all sh*t. I knew it was all sh*t when I told my late (step)FIL when he was first diagnosed that it would all be okay. And I watched it proven as I sat by his side when he passed.
Even when its starts out innocent, it always rears its hideous head somewhere else in the body, or pops back up where it was killed worse than before. Like a friggin Freddy Kreuger, only uglier and scarier.
Out of the 14 people I know personally who were diagnosed with cancer, most of them young, only one survived.
So as I sit here trying to be positive and optimistic, I can't help but have that in the back of my head. I don't want to be the one that everyone smiles at and says, "It will be fine!" when they know it might not be.
But most of all? I don't want to add my husband to the list of loved ones I have lost to cancer.
About that post I wrote before his spinal surgery. Remember this?
"I keep getting this feeling that my life is about to be changed forever, in a not-good kind of way. I keep trying to tell myself it's just my fears but it won't go away."
I remember.
So, yes the odds are on his side. But they were also on his side for never getting this stupid disease in the first place. Less than 1%. I read that those who are diagnosed with superficial bladder cancer, just as my husband has been, most likely die from it at some point in their life. But because it's an "old person's disease," people mostly die from other causes first.
Rob is only 41.
Screw odds. Screw statistics. He just better be okay, despite our experience with this over and over and f*cking over again...despite my fears.
Because I will not accept it any other way.
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