Is Kevin Dying Of Cancer?

Possibly. (But probably not.)

I have been diagnosed with prostate cancer. A lot of it, actually. When they did a biopsy of my prostate, they took samples from 16 different areas of the organ. 14 of them had cancer cells!

(The prostate surrounds part of the urethra between the bladder and the penis. Its function is to store and secrete a fluid that comprises 20-30% of the seminal discharge upon ejaculation.)

But it is not as bad as it sounds. Really. My urologist thinks it is highly likely that the cancer is entirely contained to my prostate; that is, it has not spread to the surrounding organs or entered my bloodstream or lymph channels. This means that if we remove the prostate - and that looks like what will happen - the cancer will be removed from my body. I will be completely cured. (Of course, I will have to be medically vigilant for the rest of my life to verify that remains the case. But that will just be periodic blood tests and maybe bone scans.)

You see, in the minds of most people, Cancer = Death (and it is bolded just like that in their minds, too). But that is often not the case, and I am pretty sure that will be true for me, too. As I said, I expect to be completely cured of this cancer. So let's please not have any of those scenes where you have to look sad and say, "Oh, Kevin, I'm so sorry!" and I have to look sad and say, "Well, I'm trying to be strong..." I'm just not very good at looking sad. Remember, one of Kevin's Absolute Truths is "Life sucks, but is mostly worth living."

So, of course, there are real reasons for me to be annoyed and/or bummed out. The first is that I will have to have an operation and one of my organs will be removed. That will involve a hospital stay and weeks of recovery and some pain and hassle. More importantly, the surgical removal of my prostrate will have a 30-60% chance of leaving me with impotence/erectile dysfunction (the inability to get an erection) and a 5% chance of incontinence (inability to control urination). Even if I do not ultimately end up having those problems for the rest of my life, I will definitely have them for a period of time after the operation.

I think I would really miss my erections. They and I have had a lot of good times throughout my life. And, whether or not I end up impotent, I will no longer be able to ejaculate (wow, that will be weird) or reproduce (well, "normally", anyway; all the more reason to invest in cloning research!).

The idea of lifelong incontinence problems sounds like a real drag. I am glad that the odds are very much in my favour to avoid that and I sincerely hope it all works out.

But either or both of those problems would be preferable to being dead, or even experiencing the health complications that would accompany the cancer spreading. So the operation seems like a no-brainer to me. (With regards to other treatment options - radiotherapy, hormone therapy, cryotherapy, high frequency ultrasound, etc. - my urologist believes, and I concur, that because the cancer is so widespread in my prostate, it is likely that non-surgical treatments would not get all the cancer and I would have an unacceptable level of ongoing risk.)

OK, time for some good news!

My urologist has years of experience with treating prostate cancer and performing the surgery, and he is widely respected and seen as the "go to" guy for this by my general practitioner and some other doctors I know.

Also, I have accrued enough paid sick leave at my job to cover the time required for the surgery and recovery. More importantly, my boss is totally supportive of me doing what I need to do to take care of myself.

And Australia has an excellent Medicare-for-all system that keeps medical expenses within acceptable levels, which is further helped by the private health insurance I carry to cover hospitalisation expenses. So this should not break my and Ann's finances. (However, we do have a concern for how this "history of cancer" will affect my ability to get appropriate health insurance when we eventually move to the USA.)

Finally, one benefit of having cancer is that I can use it to get out of the difficult social situations in which I occasionally find myself. Because of my "unique" way of looking at the universe and human relations, I occasionally (inadvertently) rub some people the wrong way. When I detect that someone is thinking "Kevin is a jerk!" I should be able to get myself some slack by saying, "You know, I have cancer..." (Hmmm, it may work better if I look sad, though, and that might be problematic.)