A week ago he had a routine physical. He's been worried that "something's wrong" because he's so damn skinny, which means he's worrying about having cancer. He is skinny, that bastard, while I wrestle with adipose. But he doesn't have cancer. That was confirmed today when his primary care FNP called with the good news that he has a kidney stone. Compared with cancer, a kidney stone is like learning you have to eat potatoes for a week rather than learning that you have to eat shit forever.
And when Mr. Kennedy learned he had brain cancer last year, he became one of the millions whose fate was not much changed by the cancer war. Despite billions that have been spent, the death rate from most cancers barely budged. New York Times, Sept. 4, 2009But back to the beginning. A routine physical. A clean bill of health declared—or surmised. Then, a few days later, a confirmation that his test results were "all normal". And then, a few days later, an urgent notification that blood in the urine was discovered and an appointment for a CAT scan would be made for him the following day. And so he went to the hospital and was slipped into the CAT scanner for a few minutes, at a cost of about $1,300, of which we will pay a $750 deductible regardless of paying over $1,000 each and every month for private health insurance. But you do these things and pay this money because it could be cancer.
We go right to the Internet. There are no good options for blood in the urine, especially for a man of his age. Bladder, kidney, or prostate cancer. It could be a bladder infection, or a few other non life-threatening and unlikely options. We zero in on the idea that maybe he's pressed his privates into bicycle seats so often, including a 25-mile ride a few hours before he had the CAT scan, that blood was somehow forced into his urinary tract. We clung to this idea. But we saw not a word about kidney stones on the Internet.
So what do you do? You have the CAT scan. You await test results. You put your life on hold. If the call comes, and the news is bad, your life changes. Your focus is directed entirely at battling the cancer, which, of course, is a battle in which humans have not gained much ground since statistics have been compiled. I've seen too much cancer already, and I know this.
I'm writing on the same day that we learned the test results. (If the FNP had the results yesterday, why didn't she call?) I'm writing now because I know that by tomorrow, I'll have almost forgotten. Just like I've almost forgotten the time that I had "post menopausal bleeding" and was threatened with one of those horrible uterine biopsies, but didn't have it for reasons that include the availability of detailed online info about almost anything medical. And then there's every mammogram. And every Pap smear. The body can turn bad at anytime, and as we age, it most certainly will. But we hope later rather than sooner. And we hope it isn't cancer.
