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Fried Chicken and Champagne

January 12, 2014 by Bill Curry 18 Comments

Tuesday was my quarterly cancer check-up, and we had decided some weeks prior to celebrate the occasion with fried chicken and champagne, a special gift bottle from Sue, a lovely lady and friend at the gym. Fried chicken has become a rare and special meal for me, given the low regard that fried foods must hold in my nutritional pyramid. And champagne because – well, it’s still thee beverage for a Special Occasion.

We made this decision to cheer my Jan 7 check-up – regardless of its outcome — because:

  • Test results indicating ‘no evidence of disease’ (NED) would warrant a celebration of two years with no evidence of disease.
  • Test results reporting a recurrence of cancer would still prompt an appreciation for the 21 months that I was cancer-free.

Either way, NED or no, Sue’s champagne and the Colonel’s chicken would speak to us on a milestone day. Odd, yes, but not all of life’s choices are even.

So that’s what we did, we savored our fried chicken and hoisted our glasses of champagne. But what, exactly, did we celebrate?

As I’ve written, PSA test results tell me how I’m doing in my contest with cancer, and PSA levels of less than 0.03 are considered ‘undetectable’ – no evidence of disease. Higher than 0.03 is a pisser, as I experienced with my first recurrence of cancer from mid-2010 to mid-2011. So what to make of test results that come back at exactly 0.03?

For that’s what the number was last Tuesday: 0.03. Call it barely detectable or call it essentially undetectable.

Either way, I confess to having the mean reds over this outcome. I had hoped – Oh, how I had hoped! – to be no evidence of disease: to be two years’ NED as I approach the seventh anniversary of my diagnosis, that would have been huge to me. Still, I can’t call it ‘bad’ news, because it certainly could have been (much) worse. ‘Borderline’ thus seems to me to be the appropriate label, the descriptor that, for now, best applies. Not really good, not really bad; neither here nor there but on the border between. So we’ll check me again in July to see what’s more, and then we’ll proceed as necessary.

“Thrilled to hear u are still celebrating,” daughter Stephanie texted in response to my PSA news. “Enjoy life!”

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Cancer
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Survivor

July 8, 2013 by Bill Curry 16 Comments

Press Card

Press Card

As a cub reporter at The Washington Post, I wrote my share of obituaries, and, back then, The Post required a cause-of-death in every obit. “He died of cancer,” a family member would sometimes offer, “but we don’t want that in the newspaper.”

And more than once, after I explained The Post’s policy, families preferred there be no obituary — nothing at all — over a mention of cancer. Better to let a cancer victim’s passing go un-noted than to have the scarlet C sewn to the legacy of a loved one.

That was the late ‘60s, early ‘70s. Today, of course, we’re wearing wristbands color-keyed to specific cancers: blue for prostate, pink for breast, yellow for Lance and living strong. We blog about our cancers, we wear ribbons and t-shirts in solidarity. We’re activists who lobby and go to public hearings to argue our cause. We walk and swim and run and bike on behalf of cancer friends and family.

Ashamed no more: Cancer’s been outed.

And we’re no longer victims; we’re now “survivors.” That’s what we cancerians used to be called: victims. Yes, those were the days when cancer was a death sentence, and a shameful one to boot. (I’ve certainly never thought of myself as a cancer victim any more than I consider myself a victim of right-handedness. It’s just a fact.)

In the argot of cancer, “survivor” is neither a definitive nor a conclusive term: It doesn’t mean you’ve won, doesn’t imply you’re cured, and certainly doesn’t announce that you once — past tense, here — had cancer. Survivor, in fact, applies to all cancerians, every one of us, from the beginning point of diagnosis to the end point of death. Standing tall or standing small, with cancer, you’re officially a survivor.

Survivor is a term, therefore, of such length and breadth that it cannot possibly posses any meaningfully descriptive depth: It’s just spread too thin. It is, quite simply put, merely the anointed successor to victim. But many cancerians question the use of “survivor” and object to it (sometimes fervently so), while others simply reject it outright. I have to admit I’ve been taken aback by how rigidly some people feel about this business of how we describe ourselves (survivor, warrior, fighter) and the cancer experience (slog, journey, process, battle, dance).

Truth be told, I’ve rarely used the term “survivor” to describe myself — or any other cancerian. To me, it’s always had a hokey, politically correct vibe to it. Ergo, my term “cancerian,” a (hopefully) deft side-step of not only victimhood but also survivorship.

So it’s odd that, today, I somehow have this sensation, in the seventh year of my cancer journey, of being a…cancer…survivor. Why?

For one, and for the nonce, I’m not now a “patient”; I’m not undergoing any treatment for my Stage 4 prostate cancer. No pills, no shots, no infusions, no radiation, no chemo, and the last milligram of hormone therapy washed out of me well more than a year ago. In fact, my quarterly check-up today came back as no evidence of disease (NED). For those keeping track (and I most certainly am), this marks 18 months of NED.

So I’m now living in an interlude I call “between treatments.” Because of the cancer found in my lymph nodes at surgery, it’s highly likely (inevitable, even?) there’ll be recurrence and more treatments at some point in my future.

And that’s why calling myself a cancer survivor seems deceptively — OK, I’ll say it: early, premature, even presumptuous.

But cancer, as I’ve noted, is not just a physical disease but also a mental one. We cancerians know the coiling of the nerves brought on by a looming test; we feel the visceral gnaw of what dark truth those tests might reveal; and we all can visualize the sword of recurrence dangling above us.

“I don’t think we’re ever really cured of cancer,” I’ve heard more than one cancerian say, “because you always have the fear it’ll come back.” Or as my lymphoma blog-friend Jennifer put it: “We are always emotionally a little bit in that oncology waiting room, no matter what our [cancer] status.”

Maybe, then, being a survivor is not about outrunning the physical disease we have but about all the attendant, cancer-related fears we harbor, treatments we endure and side effects we bear — however long, however brief that time between those end points of diagnosis and death.

I’m living through — I’m surviving — the cancer experience.

Cancer

S.R.O.

April 14, 2013 by Bill Curry 13 Comments

Monday at the Cancer Clinic—I’ve never experienced so much cancer on display, never witnessed so many visible signs of it.

It starts in the parking garage at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. I am in space D353, and the couple in D352 walk with me to the elevators. She is chemo-bald. Straight to the lab services waiting room we three go, I for my quarterly blood draw.

While waiting to be called, I notice another chemo-bald woman, and then another, and still another. Highly unusual. So I begin surveying the crowded waiting area — it’s standing room only (“I’ve never seen it this busy,” one regular declares) — and start counting the women without hair: five, six, seven, eight, nine…I’m distracted by four people sharing their stories of stem cell transplants…”he’s 59 days out and, see, his hair’s growing back”…10. Finally, number 11 takes her place in the queue for check-in.

Behind 11 is a young boy, probably about 10 years old, in a wheelchair. His father is reviewing the day’s schedule of appointments; it spills across two pages. The boy’s pre-pubescent alto voice, loud with excitement, abruptly calls hello! to the phlebotomists. They return the greeting; they’re all — and how many appointments does this take? — on a first-name basis. The obvious glee among them torques a round of laughter from the serious and silent rest of us.

My turn. My blood is drawn so quickly (or my mind is so elsewhere), it is over before I even sense the prick of the needle’s entry into the crook of my right arm. As I leave for the quarterly appointment with my oncologist, chemo-bald woman number — no, wait, I can’t count this person as woman #12: This person is so young, so hairless, I can, on passing, discern no identifiers of gender.

I’m in a snow globe of despair, but instead of flakes, it’s cancer swirling around me.

***

Upstairs, two weeks into the seventh year of my cancer journey, I report for my check-up; my PSA is once again undetectable. I remain no evidence of disease (NED). But my oncologist and I talk not about a cure but about how much longer I can go before my prostate cancer comes back. (I did, after all, have cancer in two lymph nodes at surgery.) He tosses out markers: another year, three years, five, and why each increment is better than the previous.

It was a hopeful discussion about an uncertain and unknowable future. Very much unlike my April 2012 check-up, which brought the despairing, hollowing out news of possible recurrence. With that came a sense of futility we cancerians know all too well: No matter what I do, I can’t get a break. It’s the point in your disease where you think you’ve hit bottom, and then someone shows you to a door leading down.

But today, my oncologist — who cautioned me a year ago not to read too much into those disappointing test results — actually sees me as NED since January of last year: Despite the scant and receding traces of PSA measured in April and July of 2012, I’m 15 months no evidence of disease.

From despair to hope — what a difference a year makes.

***

My visits to the cancer ward tend to be emotionally uneventful, but this time, I knew both despair and hope, raw and in full measure: despair that so many lives are marked by cancer; but hope that the wizardry of modern medicine can, if not save, at least meaningfully extend our lives. And that is why we were all there on the morning of Monday, April 8, 2013.

Each of us had an appointment with the doctors of hope, standing room only.

Cancer, Commentary, People, Prostate Cancer
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Heck Cancer

January 7, 2013 by Bill Curry 8 Comments

Jan7PSAIt happened again, this time at the gym.

Karen inquired, sincerely — not one of those ducks and drakes how-ya-doin’s — about my health, about how things are going for me, and it was with some reluctance that I confided that my October cancer check-up was “as good as it gets”: no evidence of disease. She expressed her genuine delight for me, waved and was off with the usual bounce in her athletic step, her work-out over.

But as I remained to trod the treadmill, I once again had that old frisson of fear over saying (or even hinting at or thinking about or hoping for) words like “as good as it gets.” Am I tempting, even challenging, the fates? Am I putting a hex on myself — rank Indulgence to be smacked down by deserved Comeuppance? I’m really not (too) superstitious, but I guess I’m wary of the vengeance of retributive fates: “Oh, you think you’re doing well? Take this!”

Cancer likes to do that to you, likes to keep you from experiencing joy because it always has another proverbial shoe at the ready. How dare I luxuriate in the good when, for all I know, the bad is but one test result away?

And that’s when I have to tell myself to just let go, to sow reticence to the wind and say: Heck cancer. Just heck it.

When you’re no-evidence-of-disease, enjoy it for all that it’s worth. It is a princely sum and one hard-earned.

When a treatment ends, have a glass of champagne — another bodily insult is over, no matter that you don’t yet know whether it did you any good. You endured.

And when a treatment’s side effects finally abate, celebrate. Despite the seeming inevitability of what my friend Patricia calls “late effects,” mark every moment of your passage from perdition.

They say that cancerians have a higher sense of nowness, of living in the moment, and this is what it means, I suppose: finding, making and taking pleasures in the here and the now. Bad news may, indeed, be but one mere test result off, but don’t go there ‘til you get there. Own this moment, however long this moment might prove to be. And heck cancer. Someone once said that living well is the best revenge.

But when you have cancer, just enjoying the life you have is the best revenge.

Cancer, Prostate Cancer, PSA
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Waking NED, Divine!

October 23, 2012 by Bill Curry 18 Comments

My quarterly PSA tests have always exerted a gravitational pull on me well beyond their intrinsic strength. That’s because they tell me how well I’m doing in fending off my Stage 4 prostate cancer. Call them my report cards. And yesterday’s test had no more, no less gravity than any of the 22 other PSA tests I’ve had since surgery.

But the results, so patently unexpected, took me with such surprise that my reaction sounded, even to me at the time, more like a shrill complaint than an outburst of innocent incredulity. “What?” I said. “Can that be right?”

Indeed it was. My PSA was “undetectable.” And that’s good.

PSA is a biochemical indicator of prostate cancer, so whatever PSA there might be in me, it’s an amount so scant, so negligible that it just doesn’t show up in the test (my lab can detect only 0.03 ng/ml or more of PSA). And this “undetectable” was down from July’s reading of 0.03, which was itself down from April’s 0.04. And the lower the number, the better.

So what to make of it?

As we say in the cancer community, I am — at least for now — NED, no evidence of disease. You can poke me, you can scan me, and you’ll find not a farthing of evidence of prostate cancer.

We hurriedly improvised at dinner: cheap champagne that was on hand in the fridge.

True enough, I’ve been down this “undetectable” path before, only to see my PSA return and signify cancer’s recurrence. So while we toasted this one test result, I’m taking no victory lap, flying no checkered flag; the race is not yet run. At surgery in 2007, remember, pathology found cancer in two of my pelvic lymph nodes; my cancer metastasized long ago, and it’s virtually certain that some cancer still remains somewhere within me.

Or as my oncologist once told me: “We’re not trying to cure your cancer; we’re trying to manage it.”

“Undetectable,” though, is as good as “managing it” can get, and I’ll take it — gladly — even though I can’t say how, exactly, it might speak to the longer term. The only thing certain is that we’ll test again in January.

And as any cancerian can tell you, the most important test is always your next one.

Cancer, Prostate Cancer, PSA
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Keeping Abreast of Cancer

September 15, 2012 by Bill Curry 7 Comments

Virginia Mason Medical Center

Cancer is a disease of the body, but it also afflicts the mind.

In the body, it grows at the expense of normal cells, healthy tissues and functioning organs. From the mind, it steals. Steals security, normality and a presumed sense of well being. I’m not alone among cancerians when any random ache, any inexplicable pain or any unanticipated discomfort provokes the questions: “Is that my cancer?” “Is it spreading?”

Prick a cancer patient and she or he can bleed bright, red fear.

I’ve had this painful-to-the-touch growth behind my left nipple. I first noticed it on July 24, after I had checked into the Beijing Hilton. With time, it got not better but more sensitive to the touch, and it grew noticeably. Since it had begun with a skin eruption, I waited to ask my dermatologist about it at my regular, annual skin-cancer exam. She wasted not a nanosecond in queuing me up for a closer look, Friday.

In the time leading up to my Friday appointment, I rode an emotional carousel of painted horses, up and down. White horses of hope up: It isn’t male breast cancer. And black horses of fear down: It is male breast cancer — and this is the horse I rode most of the time.

It was eerie for me to be in the Virginia Mason Medical Center breast clinic for my mammograms. Left and right, vertical and diagonal. A slip of the tongue telegraphed my dark state-of-mind to nurse Kim: “This is my first mastectomy.” No: first mam-mo-gram. So afterwards, Kim, a lovely and loving nurse, took me quietly to the ante-room to whisper the diagnosis to me in private: Not breast cancer. Instead, I have a side-effect of my hormone therapy: gynecomastia.

I’m growing a left boob.

Breast Cancer, Cancer, Hormone Therapy, Prostate Cancer
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Hope

September 12, 2012 by Bill Curry 1 Comment

Saturday’s program in Washington included a documentary filming of a men’s prostate cancer retreat. In the center, in the blue sweater, is our host, Trip Casscells.

As a young reporter for The Washington Post, I had many memorable times in Washington, D.C., but this past weekend (Sep 7-8) was my most special time ever in the city. I was honored (and humbled) to participate in the Milken Institute’s “Celebration of Science” as a guest of Dan Zenka and the Prostate Cancer Foundation. Dan both works for the foundation and is a prostate cancer survivor himself. With him, about 10 of us who are also making the prostate cancer journey represented all PCa survivors to a community of researchers working for better treatments — and someday a cure — for prostate cancer.

I don’t ever want to say that I’m lucky to have prostate cancer, but it has exposed me to many wonderful people and life-shaping experiences; this past weekend brought both, and for that, I am lucky — and grateful.

I’d like to share with you this link to Dan Zenka’s post about the weekend from his blog, My New York Minute.

Cancer, Commentary, Prostate Cancer
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Waiting

July 17, 2012 by Bill Curry 25 Comments

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July 16, 2012: Zometa Infusion

I’d be lying if I said I had looked forward to yesterday’s quarterly cancer check-in.

The day dawned with dread, heavy dread, born of a certain conviction that my blood test would confirm an increasing presence of PSA — and, therefore, evidence of cancer on the advance. My only jot of hope lay in how little my PSA might be up since April.

It was to be a long day, 11 hours’ worth, at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. The medical agenda also included a follow-up with the radiation oncologist, a bone scan for osteoporosis, and, at day’s end, an osteoporosis drug infusion. With my mind focused on the PSA test, though, I took my lunch break at a nearby Irish pub, perhaps a subconscious quest for some luck o’ the Irish.

At 4:20 p.m. the PSA news came in. I had been weighed, my height taken, my blood pressure read, and I was now in exam room number G4315 — waiting for the results of the PSA test from my blood drawn in the morning. Every cancer patient will tell you of the mind churn, the anxiety, that comes with the wait for test results, however long, however brief that wait. The imagination seeks out, even creates, the darkest of cubbies to deliver you. A fellow cancerian has suggested we edit our t-shirts from Cancer Sucks to Waiting Sucks. Despite lots of practice over the past five years, I’ve still not gotten very accomplished at waiting for test results.

But then, I’ve had enough tests come back with unwanted news that maybe, by now, finally, and at long last, I’ve merely become conditioned to dread test results: I’m down, just go ahead and kick me.

Now the results were finally mine: April’s PSA reading was 0.04, and Monday’s was 0.03.

And there, in exam room number G4315, we traded celebratory high-fives.

Cancer, Prostate Cancer
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