One year marks the day...

Incidently, today is the one year anniversary of when Hubby was
diagnosed with cancer. I don't think I ever wrote about how we were
told, but it went like this:

Urologist: So, what can I do for you today.
Hubby: Well, we were told to get this checked out. [Hands over
ultrasound and CTscans].
Urologist: [Puts them on the light box]. Hmmm. Okay. Well, there's a
95% chance it's cancer. With the testicles, we can't do a biopsy
because of the risk of it spreading so in cases like these, we just
remove the testicle.

[beat]

Jezzy: What?
Hubby: Did you say 95% chance it's cancer or 95% it's not cancer?

[beat]

Urologist: Oh, didn't you know?
Jezzy: I knew it was a tumor from the report, but not that it was malignant.
Urologist: Tumors in the testicle are almost always malignant.
Jezzy: Oh. Okay.

[beat]

Hubby: I had a tumor? What's malignant mean?
Urologist: That you have testicular cancer. Hope on the table so I can
examine you. [Hubby gets on table and the surgeon examines his balls.
All I can see is Hubby's toes wiggling. His toes always wiggle when
his balls are being touched.]

Urologist: Okay, it definitely has to be removed. Hop down. I can book
you in on Friday for the operation. First of all, we need to
determine whether it's a seminoma or a non-seminoma as they're treated
differently - we can't tell until we remove it and send it to
pathology. If it's a pure seminoma, you'll probably need radiotherapy
afterwards. If it's mixed, you may need chemotherapy too. The CT shows
that it's spread to his abdomen, so it's stage two. If it's seminoma,
it will be responsive to radiation. If not, we may have to do another
operation.

(Note: none of what he said remotely made sense at the time - it was
just words - like blah, blah, blah, blah, cancer, blah, blah, blah,
chemotherapy, blah, blah.)

Hubby: [Starts crying] Why do I have to have cancer? I'm only 27. (At
this point I start crying too.)
Jezzy: [to Urologist] Don't you have any tissues?
Urologist: [finds a box in a cupboard] Sorry, here you go (I remember
thinking that it's weird he didn't have tissues within reach on his
desk. After all, he's probably having to give loads of people bad
news.) What I need for you to do now is go across the hall to get some
blood taken [hand over referral form] for the tumour markers. Then
come back and we'll sort out the surgery time.

And that was that.
Sorry to be such a bummer, I'm really quite okay, it's just that I
think it's important to share such things - particularly so other
people can understand what it's like to go through this stuff and for
people in similar situations to find this post and know that they're
not alone.

I remember that day very clearly - it's not something I'll forget
soon. As cliche as this sounds, it completely changed both of us and
it forever changed our attitudes towards a whole assortment of things.

These days, I really can't sweat the small stuff anymore. I can't take
it when people get hung up over things that don't really matter. So in
a way, i'm less tolerant of silly people, but I'm more understanding
of people who are faced with real challenges in their life. I'm also a
whole lot more grateful for the way the experience allowed me to see a
new side to me, my husband, our family and our friends and I'm truly
appreciative of all the support.

Thanks, as always, for all the comments and emails I got from you guys
when we were going through all that crap. I know now that people need
to talk about these things.
It's uncomfortable when you know someone's had something bad happen -
you know how it is, someone from work had chemo or their mum's died
and they've come back and they look like shit. Instead of giving them
smiles that say "oh, poor you", it's better to say something, to say
*anything*, even a "so, how are you coping?" means a lot.

Also, it needs to be ongoing, not just a hospital visit with flowers -
for us, the worst part was when Hubby was going through radiotherapy
in January this year - it was much, much worse than his actual
operation last November. Yet we had loads of support from people for
the operation and very little support during the radiation. I'm not
blaming anyone - they probably though we needed space. I suppose we
did. But we just needed to know that we weren't alone. And I'm glad I
had Mum to cook and freeze meals and stuff. It was a terribly
isolating time in my life. I'd just started a new job and had no one
to confide in during the day.

But I'm glad we got through it all and I hope like hell that it never
comes back. Once we get to the two year mark, we can celebrate,
because after that, there's much less chance of it returning.