As many of you know, I was forced to skip my Cysto last year due to COVID-induced flight cancellation. This year is much the same, so we drove over 2000 miles to chase down Dr. Hopkins and got the job done this year. Today is Wednesday, and we arrived in Medford, Oregon two days ago. Monday (arrival day) saw blood work done. The Asante Medical Group is very efficient, and a couple hours later the results were online - routinely, boringly normal. Good start!Then on Tuesday I had a CT Urogram, and again the results were available in a couple of hours. Not so good - the Radiologist was extremely thorough, and noted some benign cysts in the lining of one lung, some more and likely benign small cysts on the liver, some deposits from coronary artery disease, and something called hepatic steatosis or "fatty liver disease." All of these are somewhat normal for US citizens over 60, and verified to me that I am only a few days away from turning 62. The fatty liver is partly a result of 15 months of weight gain and near-total inactivity thanks to fucking COVID.
Buried in the details of the results was a single statement about my bladder: "Urinary bladder is grossly remarkable." What this SHOULD have said, and always had said in the past was: "grossly UNremarkable." This change caused quite a bit of consternation. I freaked out for a while, then took a 2 hour nap to calm down, and finally called Dr. Chuck (a good friend from college), and read him the entire CT report. He calmly reported that it was clearly a typo - nobody would bury anything important and refer to it only once. They might talk around it, but anything of concern would be mentioned two or three times at least. This reassurance helped A LOT and I was able to get a peaceful night's sleep.Medford, Oregon is beautiful and completely locked down due to COVID. Restaurants had been allowing up to 25% capacity dining, but the Friday before our arrival the governor of the state decided that so much freedom must be squelched and, citing rising cases, shut down restaurants again. I learned that Asante Group's 3 hospitals had only 40 COVID cases between them with about 20 in ICU, far below their capacity - these places are HUGE. But no matter, we did carry out or dined on the sidewalks outside of places and had a good time anyway.
Photo below is stock photo of cystoscopy - it is NOT me and not Dr. Hopkins, but fairly represents the procedure.
We discussed BCG, as my final scheduled maintenance series had been planned for 2020. He pointed out that I was doing exceptionally well, and that BCG supplies were very limited, so they were not doing maintenance BCG at all this year. He said we could declare BCG maintenance officially complete, and I was eager to concur. Good news all around.
We returned to our stunning AirBnB apartment for some celebratory wine and another nap for me - I can only pretend there was zero stress. After the wine I needed about an hour of good REM to recover from the ordeal of the buildup to the morning. Now rested, refreshed, and jubilant - I am happy to announce I am officially 13 years CANCER FREE.God is Good - All the Time!
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