A Slow Growing Cancer
But one I can live with.
My wife and I were on the way to Taco Tuesday at the Salty Pelican when the doctor called.
“Dude, you got cancer. But don’t worry. You don’t have much and it’s growing really, really slow.”
Maybe he didn’t put it quite that way but the message was essential that I had a very small tumor that he expected to grow very slowly.
Slow-growing cancer sounds like a curse you would put on your worst enemy. But on the other hand, I guess it’s better than a fast-growing one. And when looked at that way, being diagnosed with slow-growing cancer doesn’t seem quite so bad.
I have “man cancer”. Cancer of the prostate. It didn’t come as a surprise. I have what my doctor calls a full history. My father, both grandfathers, and both uncles had prostate cancer, so every year, when I went in for my yearly physical I wondered if it would be my year to get the news.
As a cancer diagnosis goes this one really isn’t that bad. It’s a lot better than the one my youngest brother received. That one required surgery and a lengthy round of chemotherapy. My diagnosis is that I have a little itty bitty (that’s a medical term) spot of cancer in one of the twelve samples taken during a prostate biopsy. My doctor says it is the smallest amount of cancer you can have and still call it…
