My First Cancer

Life is good: Curry Reunion, Memorial Day Weekend, 2014, Cincinnati: Seven (of many more) first-cousins, yukking it up. Our family matriarch, Aunt Betty, is in red.

In the written record here over the past three years, you can find a pattern to my regular cancer check-ups: January, April, July, October. Then repeat the next year. JAJO. So you might ask, where’s the report on my April 2014 check-up and PSA test? Is something wrong? Am I OK? Or as I was asked several times at a Curry family reunion over Memorial Day weekend, “How are you doing?”

In a sentence, my oncologist gave me a bye on an April check-up.

I had, in fact, “graduated” to semi-annual, as opposed to quarterly, check-ups, after two years of being no-evidence-of-disease. And then a smidgen of PSA was detected in my January blood test; but at 0.03 ng/mL, that level wasn’t sufficient to warrant regressing to quarterlies, wasn’t enough to shout “biochemical recurrence!” In fact, “we don’t make anything of such subtle differences in a test that is not perfect,” my oncologist said in response to my alarm at January’s (barely) detectable PSA results. (Remember, the presence of PSA and its amount tell me how well I’m doing in my cancer journey. In four words, more is not merrier.)

And (my reasoning here, not my oncologist’s), an April test, whatever its outcome, most likely wasn’t going to provoke any change in treatment or its timing. Waiting until July will give us much greater clarity into what’s going on with my cancer, whether it’s actually recurred, and, therefore, what — if anything — we need to do next.

I’ve walked the road of recurrence before, for a year starting in July 2010, and every cancerian knows the marrow-deep fear of recurrence: One more therapy has been exhausted, is no longer an option, and still the embers of cancer continue to smolder on. For me, I’ve now had surgery and radiation, and they are treatments available to me no more. Thus, if January’s test results do indicate recurrence, I’ll move on down the line for the next in what is a finite number of treatments.

So in April, I escaped the anxiety that accompanies any impending cancer test and the wait for its results — only to know instead the worry of waiting, the prolonged posing of a nagging curiosity:

“Is my cancer back?”