A shameless act of self promotion: my brush with death

No sooner than I decide to engage in another exercise of shameless self-promotion by writing about “my brush with death” than football legend and television celebrity, Sam Newman and his media machine, steal the limelight with his television crew and a story about prostate cancer. Nevertheless here, as they say, is my story.

February 19, 2008 - 4.35PM. “That looks a bit nasty!”

I was in the doctor’s waiting room for a 4.45pm appointment. I needed a review of my medication and was well overdue for a check up. As well as a medication review I wanted the GP to check out a mole on my back. My wife suggested that it might need to be seen.

I was in the doctor's office by 4.55pm. His opening gambit was to ask what I needed. I started with the mole. Shirt off. A bit of a prod and a closer look with a magnifying glass of some sort.

“That looks a bit nasty” he stated. “Any history of sunburn, blistering?” he went on to ask.

“Not for years. But as teenager I was as stupid in the sun as the next kid in the late 60s and early 70s I guess” I replied.

“Well, I don’t like the look of this at all. No time like the present. What’s say we take it off now?” he asked.

“Sure” I said.

Take it off? Excavate it might have been a more precise.

Ten minutes later I am on my stomach stripped to the waist with my GP and his nurse fussing about next to me. I could hear packets being opened, instruments clinking, the gurgling slurp of local anaesthetic from ampoule to syringe and gentle directions being delivered in low doctor-to-nurse tones.

So there I was. Shirt off, trying to nonchalantly read the book I had taken to the surgery in case I had to wait. Not much waiting now though. A bit of local anaesthetic then bit of prodding, poking and pulling, a lot of suturing followed by a dressing and a comment from my GP that he had to use every stitch he knew under the sun in order to bring the wound together as he had to “carve” out a pretty big ellipse of flesh!

Good for him I thought; the last thing I needed was a gaping aperture in between my shoulder blades just because he lacked a few variations on a half hitch.

Given the time, it was approaching 6pm, the GP asked if I would courier the biopsy to the pathology laboratory myself as the routine delivery run had already left the surgery. “Not a problem” I said.

My doctor added, “It’s just that it if it is a melanoma we need to know sooner rather than later.”

Yes. That would be handy.

Musing he added, “It’s Tuesday today. We should know the results by Thursday.”

My doctor assured me that he felt he took a pretty big chunk out of my back and got all that was there but considered it would clearly need an expert opinion to establish if the lesion was in fact one of the nasty variety.

Of course it was of the nasty variety. It was always going to be of the nasty variety. I knew it in my bones! Clearly this is a case of divine retribution for being a ne’er-do-well, I thought to myself.

As I walked one way in the corridors of the surgery and my GP the other he told me we would deal with my other issues once we had the results back and I needed to come back in two weeks to have the sutures removed.

Terrific! I just can’t wait to find out what he discovers next.

I got home at about 6pm. I told my wife what happened, “oh!” she said.

“We will get the pathology results by Thursday or Friday” I added.

February 21, 2008 - 2pm

“He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news” Berthold Brecht, 1898-1956.

My family always accuses me of being a grumpy bastard and one who is getting grumpier with each passing year. I am criticised for not smiling enough. I concede I do not smile much. I prefer to think of myself as being a person with a stony countenance but a heart of gold. On this particular Thursday I was at my desk, not smiling now for obvious reasons, waiting for my GP to call.

My mobile phone rang and my GP asked me if “I had time to talk”. My immediate thought was that he damn well should have said, with a triumphant ring in his voice, “Good News Kym! I just re-sected a harmless freckle! A big one as it happened but basically harmless! Better safe than sorry, hey?”

But he didn’t say that. He asked me if I had time to talk.

Just as he said that my mobile beeped and I quickly told him to ring on the landline as my battery was about to die. As might I, I thought; those television ads paint a very gloomy picture indeed. But then again I always tend to get ahead of myself.

He said OK and hung up.

One minute later the receptionist put through a call. It was my GP. I had a fair idea what he was going to say.

“It was just as I thought” he said. ”It was a melanoma. I want you to see a specialist at the Alfred Hospital in the next two weeks. I will contact them and you should be forwarded an appointment soon.”

He rattled of a brief scenario of what may happen. And we left the conversation in the understanding that I should expect a further and more extensive resection of the affected area and maybe more depending on what the specialist felt needed to be done.

F**k! I said to myself. As expletives go that one seemed appropriate for the moment.

I resisted the temptation to Google “Melanoma, Prognosis and Treatment” for about one minute. Then when I caved in, not liking what I saw I shut the screen down.

Clearly I had myself dead and buried. I needed to get organised. And what a morbid bastard, when faced with this little dilemma I turned out to be. Perhaps the kids are right and I am just a grumpy old man.

I selected at least four songs I would insist on being sung at my funeral. I planned to not leave a dry eye in the house. Crying would be compulsory for all, followed by a celebration of my life. I am a bit of a control freak as it happens and if any one was going to have a say in my send off it would be ME!

I rang my wife to tell here the news. “S**t” was what I think she said. Much more restrained than my initial response I must admit. I mumbled the usual rubbish about none of us being able to do much about it and lets see what happens when we see the specialist and the GP thinks that he got it all, blah blah blah.

I of course believed little of what I said. I was doomed!

I asked my wife not to tell the kids just yet. I didn’t for a minute expect that she would but it was just a reason to say something else while I was speaking with her. I wanted to keep her on the line but I really had nothing more to say.

“Hey honey, by the way I’ve got the cancer!” seems not to foster much in the way of conversation I must say. We hung up and I went back to feeling gloomy.

A sat there quietly for a while. I rang my wife again for no real reason. I said I would go and see the priest. I felt I had to tell someone else. After all this was, no matter how bad, exciting news. I have no idea why I felt that way but the information was too much for me to contain.

I even had second thoughts about telling him. I mean people must dump this sort of problem at his doorstep daily. So who am I to add to his burden? Perhaps I would be better off just shutting up and getting on with things.

In spite of all that I still felt I needed someone other than my wife to unload on if things started to escalate. Who better than the parish priest?

I left work early that day, full of myself, full of self-pity and full of drama. I drove back towards Benalla in order to see the priest only to find him not at home. Damn. Just like policemen. Priests are never there when you need them. I should have gone to a Rotary meeting that night also, but to be frank I just couldn’t be stuffed.

I arrived home around 6pm. The girls were out. Denise and I just recapped what we had said earlier. I felt I had nothing else to say. And if she did I figured she didn’t know how to say it.

I told Denise she needed to find someone to talk to about this also. I thought, like me, she might need a third party with whom she could spill her guts if she had to.

She said she would tell her boss at work, particularly if she needed to take time off. There might be medical appointments and what-have-you for me to attend and she would probably like to tag along.

That night Denise went to her Rotary meeting. Denise is a member in the town where we live while I am member in the town where I work. As Denise left for her meeting she asked me if I wanted her to bring home a bottle of wine to have while we watched TV later that evening. I was sure that my Lenten commitment could be relaxed under the circumstances

“Sure”, I said. “Why not?”

She asked me what to get. “Anything” I said. She pressed me further “Red? White?”

“Champagne!” I said.

February 22, 2008

I figured I might have to have some time off work with one thing or another and felt obliged to tell the Chairman of the Board of the health service I worked for just what was going on. If things did go pear shaped - and let me hasten to add they may not - this sharing of information was a first step in succession planning.

But maybe this all just another example of me getting a little ahead of myself. It is hard to say as I have never been diagnosed with any form of cancer before.

The Chairman of my Board is a nice guy and a fellow Rotarian. I felt comfortable letting him know what was going on. I saw him before I got to the office. It was a pleasant exchange and I felt better for telling him. We talked a little about the matter at hand. I told him the lay of the land and he was, not surprisingly, genuinely empathetic.

I told him I had not spoken to the kids as yet; we have four of them; two girls and two boys. It was too soon and there were too many unanswered questions. I had felt that talking to them would be the hardest part of the entire exercise.

Protecting my children and just how I can do that has never really kept me awake at night until now. Protecting them from what ever I could has always been my raison d'être. It has always been what I do. If I had my choice, and I am being perfectly frank here, it is what I would like to do almost to the exclusion of all else. It has always been within my capability. The prospect of that state of affairs changing leaves me feeling very cold indeed. I know I cannot protect them from this new information but I know I would if I could.

But there I go again, getting ahead of myself. Do other people fell this way? I wonder?

Clearly I am not unique and maybe this way of thinking is what a lot of people go through when told they have cancer in one of its many manifestations. I don’t know. But for someone who either has always known the answers, or to be more honest has always pretended to know the answers I am deep into un-chartered waters. All this represents a new adventure and I feel very uncomfortable indeed.

March 5, 2008 - Melanoma Clinic 4th Floor: The Alfred Hospital Melbourne

It is 8.45am. My wife and I are at the designated place at the designated time waiting to see the specialist(s).

The waiting room is at the cross roads of a set of parallel corridors intersected by another leading to a place called the “Main Wards” indicated by a sign hanging from the ceiling. Similar signs tell me the waiting room is also the waiting room for physiotherapy services, prosthesis, orthotics, speech pathology and the ear, nose and throat services. The Melanoma Clinic has no sign.

The television above my head is tuned into whatever program Kerry Anne Kennelly hosts. Time is passing slowly and my new book is more for show than a distraction. The seats are far from comfortable and I find the whole waiting thing a monumental pain in the backside. My wife senses something is wrong. She knows me too well.

“Are you getting angry?” she asks

“Nope. Just bored” I answered.

Several names are called and several people around me leave to go who knows where. My wife reads her book and I try to read mine. I felt as though we should have brought a thermos of coffee as well.

Eventually, a young brunette tastefully dressed in black calls my name. She turns out to be the dermatology registrar. She was all at once friendly, warm and drop dead gorgeous. Things are looking up!

She leads us to Cubicle 6. We go through the 20-questions routine then on to the examination. You would not believe how many spots and dots, lumps and bumps the average person has on their body until someone has a really good look. Even my scalp got a thorough going over.

Next came the heavy weights. The consultant dermatologist and the surgeon. Just as the registrar was young, so too are these guys. Again, the dermatologist poured over my skin while the registrar sought some clarification on the various flaws in my outer covering. There are it seems an endless supply of weird blemishes on me, and most other people too I am reassured. And every dot and spot has its own peculiar name.

After the brief tutorial standing there arms outstretched and semi naked I feel as though I have done my small part for the betterment of the medical profession - as embarrassing as it all was.

The surgeon was less obsessive. He just needed to know which bit he had to carve off me. As I stood there he drew imaginary lines on my back advising me and showing my wife the scope of the incision he would make just to make sure I was completely cleared of the problem tissue. It was likely he would need to mobilise some of my skin from a non-effected area and drag it over the incision to fill the gap left. It would be a day surgery procedure only. I bought new PJs for nothing!

Within an hour I had a date for further surgery on March 18 (today). I left reassured. I was at greater risk than the average population of developing another melanoma but the odds are still in my favour of not being brought undone by this disease. If I remain sun smart (maybe investing in a bee keepers suit might be they way to go) and commit to regular skin surveillance I should be OK; but there are no guarantees. Having said that I felt I had all the information I needed to tell my kids what was going on and some confidence that they would not need to worry too much.

So there. Nothing much to get hot and bothered about; I told you that I do tend to get ahead of myself sometimes.