Return to Seidman Cancer Center

Seidman Cancer Center
University Hospitals
Beachwood, OH 

Yesterday it was time, once again. Joyce and I drove up to Seidman for my quarterly visit with my oncologist. We talked about my latest test results, about the future ...

Oddly, it was almost exactly thirteen years ago--on June 9, 2005--that I underwent a prostatectomy (removal of the gland) at the Cleveland Clinic. Back in early January of 2005 a biopsy had found what they thought was a mid-range cancer, and no one seemed too alarmed. Waiting till June for the surgery would be fine. (I wanted to wait until I'd finished the school year.)

But the post-op pathology told another story: a serious cancer (a 9 on the 10-point Gleason Scale)--and it was not long afterward that my real journey commenced. When my cancer numbers began to rise, I underwent 30 radiation sessions down at the Clinic in 2009. My cancer came back. By then I had decided to shift to UH (for a variety of reasons), and it was under UH direction that I began my hormone-deprivation therapy about three years ago: taking drugs that smoosh my testosterone (prostate cancer LOVES testosterone).

When my numbers began to rise again last year, I went on an additional drug.

And now--as of yesterday--my numbers are again climbing the ladder, and I am nearly ready for yet another drug--a drug that, my oncologist warned me, is very expensive. Great.

Over the past years I've had numerous MRIs, bone scans, injections; in January and February this year I underwent some immunotherapy sessions. (I wrote about them here. Not fun.)

I'm now scheduled for some more blood tests (monthly PSA tests) and bone scans in the near future, for prostate cancer loves to shift venues. And in my case, it has moved into my bones, where only these very unpleasant drugs are, for the nonce, retarding its progress.

There is no cure for me. Not now. Only ... delay.

And so I cling to Delay like a life raft, which of course, it is.

So--in all--yesterday was a discouraging day. It was a day, of course, that I knew was in my future--I had just wanted it to be a bit farther (okay, a lot farther) in front of me.

But it's not.

And so I'll do my best to cope. I will--fiercely--grab Joyce's hand, for she, as I have come to learn in our nearly forty-nine years together, will never let go. Not until that hand vanishes.