November 22, 2009

Cancer survivor

Originally published June 19, 2004

Lookie here. I've been invited to join a Cancer Survivors Group. I wonder how they got my name and address? I also wonder what in the hell a cancer survivors group does. Do people stand around, swap horror stories and compare scars?

I don't believe that I want to join. First of all, I agree with Groucho Marx-- I don't want to join ANY club that would accept ME as a member. Second, I don't think of myself as a cancer survivor. I didn't do anything heroic or brave. I got lucky, that's all.

Having cancer damn sure changed my life in ways that will never be repaired, but the only real struggle I had during that time was keeping my head on straight while my not-yet-ex-wife moved her dope-smoking, unemployed lover into my house. That was a bitter pill to swallow. It also was the most heartless, bloodless thing anyone has ever done to me in my life.

Jennifer knew how frightened I was by the high PSA test and how I watched my father and my best friend die from prostate cancer. She knew how worried I was about the biopsy results. Still, she picked that time to become an adulteress, throw me out of my home and start a torrid affair with a person not fit to kiss my ass. She's a class act all the way.

I remember the night before the surgery. I had to be at the hospital at 5:00 AM and I didn't sleep much that night. I did a lot of thinking. I wasn't afraid of dying--- the thought of dying has NEVER frightened me. It's gonna happen some day and I hope to spit in the Reaper's face when he comes for me. I just didn't want to be ALTERED and live as only a part of what I once was.

I had a radical prostatectomy. It knocked me flat on my Cracker ass for a month. I wore diapers for three months after that while I practiced Keagle exercises to relearn how to control my continence. My dick was dead as a doorknob. I was one miserable sumbitch. I'll NEVER be right again, but I appear to be cancer-free. August 16th will make three years since I received the positive report on the biopsy. My last PSA test was a big, fat zero.

If I had it all to do over again, I'm not certain that I would consent to the surgery. I probably could have lived a good 10 to 15 years with the slow-moving cancer I had, and I believe that I would have been a lot happier, right up until I died, than I have been since the surgery.

Am I supposed to be PROUD and join a club because I didn't die (yet) of cancer? Am I supposed to consider myself as a "cancer survivor?" I don't feel proud and I don't consider myself to be a survivor. In fact, I wish now that I had never gone to the doctor for that biopsy.

I wouldn't fit in with a group of cancer survivors. I would rather have my old body back and die wearing it.