My Story

I took the day off from work because in this surgeon’s office they numb you up and lop these things off right there. It sounded a bit gruesome, but oh well, at least I wouldn’t have the thing on my back anymore.

I got into the room with my wife as my moral support. The Doctor came in, I took off my shirt, and he examined my lump. “Ok, you need to get an MRI” he said. “What? I was told by my Doctor that you were going to take it off today”. “No, I won’t touch that without an MRI and that is an outpatient surgery procedure”. Needless to say, I left the appointment a bit steaming, having just wasted our time.

We had health insurance, but my co-pay for an MRI was $1000. I didn’t want to spend that just to remove a fat deposit. I joked with my wife that maybe I’m growing a second head and maybe it will be better than the one I have as we got into the car to drive home. 

I went back to work and kept going with life. 

I started seeing a chiropractor in January of the same year. I was working, carrying some items and I sneezed and felt a pop (many months latter I realized my rib just broke right then). Intense pain in my back followed that. I also had been having pain on the right side of my sacrum and been having sciatica pain. The chiropractor did x-rays on me and told me that the curve of my spine was off and set me up with a treatment plan to fix it.

I’ve had back challenges since I was a young teenager. Pain and dealing with the pain is something I’ve had to deal with for years. This is why none of this seemed that out of the ordinary for me.

With the chiropractic treatment, the pain would sometimes get better, sometimes it felt worse. As the days went by, my tailbone starting hurting, and I was having a hard time sitting comfortably.

I bought a lower back brace to use while I was at work. Having the extra compression and support helped. Beginning in April, I was starting to lose my appetite at times and I started losing some weight. At this point, we decided it was time for an MRI.

I left work early one day and headed to the basement of the hospital, where all the radiology was located. I got checked in and changed into the drafty hospital gown and sat in the pre procedure area waiting my turn.

As I was laying on the MRI table, I was still holding out hope that I just had a damaged disc in my spine. They finished strapping me down and into the tube I went. Listening to the loud clicking through my earplugs, I tried to take my awareness in my mind elsewhere. We hadn’t been at it for very long, and they pulled me out. I was thinking that was quick, and it was nice to be done. Instead, the tech said they see something, and they needed to add contrast to get better pictures. Grrr…. That sucks, I thought.

Of course, they wouldn’t say anything beyond that and I left the appointment in the dark, almost as much as when I arrived. A few days later, they called telling me they needed a biopsy. “Well that sounds like fun”, my sarcastic humor coming through, but I wanted to get to the bottom of it. The next week, I was on a table with them sucking at my lumpiness.

Waiting was the hardest. I knew something was up, and it probably wasn’t good. My wife and I tried to go about the days trying to live normally. Checking our email or phones to see if there were any messages that we missed. Sitting in my cozy brown chair, the phone call finally arrived.

“You have cancer”. After hearing those words, my hearing went quiet. “Me, how could I have cancer?” I thought. I’m active, vegetarian, no drugs, alcohol, smoking, not overweight only having a bit of muffin top.

I immediately started working the problem in my mind. How to fix this? 

To show my ignorance, I blurted out, “Myeloma? Can we just cut it out?”, thinking of the tumor. “No, we can’t answered the doctor. I’m going to refer you to an oncologist to answer all your questions.”

I laugh at myself now. I mean, who ever heard of myeloma cancer? Certainly, I didn’t think of cancer much. Of course, myeloma is a rare blood cancer, and therefore it would be pretty hard to remove it surgically.

We hung up the phone and my wife and I sat there in shock and disbelief.

Ten minutes later, the phone rang again. It was a hematological oncologist. “I saw your test results, and I’m not quite convinced it’s cancer” he said. Can you come down, and we can do more testing? “What? Maybe it’s not cancer!!” I thought, and we hopped in the car and headed to the cancer ward for more testing.

I haven’t finished writing this yet, but don’t you love a good cliffhanger??

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• https://www.instagram.com/carrots_over_cancer/