My Story: Recurrence
It had been six months since my RPLND. I had what I felt was going to be another routine follow up visit where I would get my clean bill of health, then I could head off to Greece and Turkey on vacation. What happened instead was that my doctor brought me bad news. I had a recurrence in my lung. I stared at the round mass on my CT scan pictures in disbelief. Still in shock, I talked to my urologist as well as a thoracic surgeon about my options. I wanted to know if I could still go on vacation, and postpone the inevitable operation for a week. The doctors agreed that it would be fine, and I left the clinic. I called Allyson, who was out of town, and I told her the news, sobbing. She thought I was joking. When she realized I wasn't, she hopped on the next plane home.
We scheduled the surgery and went on vacation. We did our best to enjoy ourselves, Allyson dealing with morning sickness, me dealing with my own mortality. Fortunately, we were with great friends in a great place, and we knew had no choice but to live fully in every moment we had.
We returned home, and I returned to the hospital for my lung thoracotomy, also known as a wedge resection. This time, I had a successful epidural, which is a miraculous form of pain control. I was in intensive care after the surgery with over thiry tubes coming out of my body, and I felt little to no pain. I spent the next several days recovering, and found out that the removed tumor was, in fact, a metastasis of my testicular cancer. I was introduced to my oncologist, who agreed to a three week recovery period before starting me on chemotherapy.
Me showing off what I affectionately call
my shark bite and gunshot wounds