At Seidman Cancer Center

Seidman Cancer Center
Beachwood, Ohio

January 14, 2020
9:30 a.m.

Joyce and I are sitting in the Starbucks at Legacy Village. We have about a two-hour wait before we must be back at the somewhat-nearby Seidman Cancer Center, where I will undergo a nuclear bone scan. Right now, nuclear material (via a recent injection) is flowing through me, and pretty soon, I’m sure, I’ll be able to shoot webs across the room and maybe swing my way back to Seidman.

We’ve already had a pretty busy morning. We reached Seidman at 7:30 so I could get a blood draw (a PSA test + some others). They check my Prostate Specific Antigen level every month now, just to see if it’s rising. If it is, that means my cancer is back in business. My score's been lower since I underwent  immunotherapy about a year ago + a sequence of radiation treatments, zapping one of my vertebrae that had been glowing in bone scans.

Anyway, after the blood draw, it was time to head downstairs to drink some “flavored” water (seemed to be a couple of gallons—but it wasn’t) in prep for my CT scan (they’re checking my abdomen—any cancer-spread going on down there?).

After my consumption of that luscious liquid we headed back upstairs to get the injection of nuclear material that I’ve already mentioned. Then ... back downstairs for my CT scan, a process that has me lying on my back and going through a large machine that whirs and speaks to me (TAKE A BREATH AND HOLD IT. [pause] BREATHE). The scan doesn’t take all that long, but it does involve the ... pleasant ... experience of having to, uh, “drop trou.” Always fun to do when you don’t want to do it—like in front of strangers!

After all of that we drove over here for the required two-hour wait while my Spidey sense begins to tingle ever more intensely. Then we’ll drive back to Seidman for the nuclear bone scan (which takes about a half-hour or more), and, to end our glorious morning, an injection of Xgeva, a drug that helps move calcium from my blood into my bones.

My bones need help, for that is where my prostate cancer has been moving. Also, another powerful drug I’m on (Trelstar—which kills testosterone, a favorite food of prostate cancer) has a number of unpleasant side-effects, one of which is the weakening of my bones.

That damn Xgeva shot, by the way, I receive every two months in my quadriceps. And for some damn reason (notice the deterioration of my polite language) it hurts more than any other shot or injection I get.

Joyce is reading FranKissStein, Jeanette Winterson’s 2019 riff on Frankenstein and A.I. I read it a while back and loved it (Joyce is loving it, too). (Johnny Mathis is coming through the sound system right now--flashback to Hiram High School soc hops!)

I’ve been sitting here with my iPad—reading the New York Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the Akron Beacon-Journal online. Found a couple of funny cartoons that I shared on Facebook. I’ve consumed a blueberry scone already—am sipping a Grande Pike. (I’d rather be at Open Door Coffee Company—but here I am.)

I’ll finish and post this when we get home, which should be sometime in January.

Oh—I don’t see my oncologist until next week—so I won’t know until then what all these tests and procedures have discovered.


1:40 p.m.

We got home about 1:00--so we were up there for five hours this morning: 7:30-12:30 (with a break for Starbucks mid-morning). And it's all over--for now.

The nuclear bone scan always takes much longer than I want it to--and is more uncomfortable than I want it to be: holding positions for a long time, trying not to move at all. But ... that's over.

And the Xgeva shot went better for me this time--never my favorite thing. But ... that's over.

As I said, we'll see my oncologist next week and find out what all of this uncovered ... and, of course, I will post the news here, good or bad.

I'll close with an observation I've made before--the astonishing capacity of people to help one another in this place. The young helping the old, the old helping the young ... it's incredibly moving. Although I've been dealing with this disease for fifteen years now, I have never been as distressed as so many folks I see here. Nothing more humbling in life.