2: It all happened so fast

The beginning of the end with a trip to urgent care. In my mind, I was getting a referral to Urology, getting a cyst cut out and I'm back in the saddle before the snow melts.

I left Claire at home for this particular visit. It was going to be awkward enough dropping my pants in front of whomever is lucky enough to be working today, let alone have my girlfriend in there. I finally get called back to my exam room, vitals are taken and I explain for the third time, why I'm here. The young, fairly new female PA walks into the room and asks me to explain for a fourth time whats going on. Timidyly, she tells me she has to take a look and to get into a gown. I stopped her before she left the room and said " I'm sorry, if you're just taking a peak at the big ball, I'm not putting a gown on, i'll just drop em now". She chuckled and agreed to let me keep my clothes on. I showed this poor girl what I had been living with for the past year and she let out a reactionary "Oh my god". She quickly apologized and we both laughed it off together. She wrote me a non narcotic prescription to help with this newly developed kidney pain that I have been experiencing and said to be expecting a call from Urology within the next 2 days. The medicine helped me get some relief and sleep over the next few days util the hospital called. Two days later I get the call and scheduled my appointment with Urology the following week.

My consultation with Urology took place inside the Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center, a place Im going to get very familiar with over the next few months. I met with a young, down to earth PA who asked me to tell him my story, again. He looks up from his computer and says drop 'em. I do and he lets out a sigh, feels around it for a second and grabs a flashlight from the wall. He tells me he doesnt think this is a cyst and this the "poor mans" method of ruling that out. If the light shines through the growth, its a cyst, a simple procedure and back at it, if not... well you'll get to find out. He turns the lights out, turns the flashlight on and presses it against the growth... nothing, not even a weak, you left your lights on car overnight kinda glow. He turns the lights back on, says hang tight while he gets his boss. He brings back Dr Salkini and with no small talk and a brief introduction he tells me he needs to remove my entire testicle and hands me some consent forms while he begins to explain them. Excuse me, you just told me you need to remove a part of my body, let alone THAT part. Any man, I dont care who they are, is going to need at least a brief minute to rationalize what has just happened. I come back down to earth and my new surgeon and I, decided that a right orchiectomy was best for me and we scheduled a date, January 17th. Thats fine, totally fine, I can be a little unbalanced as long as this pain goes away I told myself. And it wasnt like I had to convince myself that is what was best, I knew it was, but man, Im losing a testicle at 28 years old. Before I had time to even process that, the question quickly turned to, do I want kids? If so, we need to think about visiting reproductive medicine to bank some sperm. It was something I had thought of, like briefly, real fucking briefly, but now my hand is being forced, a speak now or forever hold your piece type of thing. I still wanted that option and thats not to say, after this is all said and done, i'll even need the banked sperm, but I wasnt having that decision made for me, So we made an appointment to visit them as well.

I like to think I'm a pretty prepared person, I do my research, critically think about the situation and make the best decisions I can based on all of that. I was NOT prepared to drive home and tell Claire that there was a good chance I had cancer. Luckily my drive was short so I didnt have much time to panic. I opened the front door and everything was still quiet, dogs and girlfriend sleeping in the bed. Cool, I had 15 more seconds before I had to do this. I sat on the edge of the bed and woke her up as gently as I could. "howd it go" she said, with the cutest touch of sleep still in her voice. I didnt know what to say and it kinda just fell out, "they think I have cancer and im scheduled for surgery next week". If she wasnt awake she was now. We spent breakfast talking about whats next, its not our style to sit and cry it out...well not my style anyway, shes a big cry baby. A good possibility its cancer, a small chance its not, so we're going to hope for the best but prepare for the worst. We called my mom, Vic, my dad, letting everyone know what was up. Mom and Dad both said they were coming down despite my protest. Like I said, I dont have kids, and it was a same day procedure so it didnt make sense to me as to why they were coming?

I had 8 days until surgery and had a ton to do in the mean time.