No Triposy...

One morning in mid-February, as dad was getting dressed, Eli noticed blood on dad's under garment and also on his penis. When I called to make a doctor's appointment the doctor didn't have any openings for a few days, so he asked us to bring dad in for a urinalysis in order to have the results back before the appointment.

A few days later when we saw the doctor the results of the urinalysis showed no signs of infection. As the doctor was getting ready to examine dad, he said he had two questions for me. The first being, "Has he been in much pain?" To which my answer was that it's hard to tell, because most of the time when dad complains about any kind of pain, by the time I get him an Ibuprofen or Aspirin he has forgotten what I was getting it for. The second question was, "If this is not an infection and proves to be something more, how would you proceed?" Knowing that "something more" meant cancer, my answer was that we would let it run it's course and manage dad's pain and discomfort. (I know that might sound harsh, but dad was always so proud of his memory and to see him getting more lost and confused every day just breaks my heart.)

After hearing my answer doctor Duros said, "This is not an infection. It is something more." He ordered a blood test to check dad's PSA levels (PSA stands for Prostate-Specific Antigen and is used to detect prostate cancer), and a CT of dad's pelvic region. The doctor's office has a lab, so they were able to draw his blood after the appointment. We scheduled the CT for a week later.

The CT scan was scheduled for 1:00 on a Friday. It took quite a bit of time too, dad had to drink some stuff over a 45 minute period and then wait another 15 before they took him back; then he had a reaction to the dye during the procedure, so they wanted to watch him for another 1/2 hour after the scan was done. As I was waiting in the dressing cubicle, the radiologist walked someone else out from having something done. He was telling him that usually he gets the results to the doctor within 24 hours, but since it was Friday, he probably wouldn't get the results to the doctor until Monday.

It was 3:00 as I dropped dad off at the house and headed back to work, and just as I was turning off our street I remembered I'd left my cell phone at home. I considered going back for it, but decided I would be back home in 2 hours and anyone that might need to get a hold of me would also have my work number...I should have listened to that prompting to go back! At 5:15 when I got home, there was a voicemail on my cell. The doctor's office had called at 3:45 to discuss the results of the CT and wanted me to call back. Darn, I had to wait the whole weekend.

I called the doctor's office first thing Monday morning, but the girl at the front desk said she couldn't give me any information and I would have to wait for the nurse to call me back...she never did! Tuesday morning I called again and when the receptionist tried to tell me the nurse would call me back, I told her that's what I had been told the day before, but she never did, so was there someone else that I could talk to. I was on hold for a while, but the nurse finally came to the phone...only to tell me that the doctor wanted to discuss the results in person. Really? Why couldn't the receptionist tell me that? Doctor Duros had an opening that afternoon, so I took it.

Dr. Duros informed us that dad's PSA was at 6.71 and normal for a man dad's age is 6.54, so his PSA was up, but not much. It was the CT scan that had Dr. Duros worried. It showed his prostate to be rather enlarged, a dark mass in his left kidney, and dark spots of "unknown origin" throughout his bones. He said he was surprised dad wasn't in more pain, because it looks like he might possibly have prostate cancer that has already metastasized to his bones. He said studies have found a connection between prostate cancer and testosterone, and discovered that an anti-testosterone therapy can slow or stop the development of the cancer. He said a Urologist would probably want to do a biopsy before starting any therapy though, so his nurse made an appointment with a urologist for us.

I hadn't told Suzy or Norman about any of this. I was waiting to get the results of the CT scan, just in case it wasn't anything to worry about. When I called Suzy, she said it was going to be Spring Break for them next week and since Ryan and Spencer had birthdays coming up they had been toying with the idea of coming to Provo. So since they were in town, Suzy came with dad & I to the doctor's appointment. We figured she could help to distract dad while I spoke with the doctor, because I don't want dad to know he's got cancer. Even though dad's memory is getting shorter and shorter he has a tendency to fixate on one thing and ask about it all day long. I really don't want to be answering questions all day long about who it is that has cancer.

Dr. Crowley, was very nice even though he didn't really understand my not wanting dad to know about the cancer. When Dr. Crowley pulled dad's CT scan up on the computer and started showing it to me and explaining what I was seeing, Suzy started asking dad about his shoes...she's so clever! The scan showed that dad's prostate is so big it is crowding out his bladder. Dr. Crowley explained that if a normal prostate held 50 liters dad's had 180, so I could have an idea of just how oversized it was. He said he wanted to do a biopsy of the prostate, but that probably the only way of telling what the dark mass in the kidney was would be to go in and cut it out. I told him that I didn't think we would want to put dad through surgery, but the biopsy would be a good way to get some answers. He then asked if it was okay to tell dad he wanted to perform a biopsy.

Dad always worries when I take him to the doctor's that they are going to want to "cut on him." So when Dr. Crowley rolled his chair over to be sitting across from dad and said, "I would like to do a biopsy on you to see if we can get some answers about what is wrong with you. Would that be okay?" I was not surprised at all by dad's answer. Dad told him, "Well just as long as that's all you do. I don't want you saying you're going to do a biopsy and then getting in there and doing a triopsy." Of course Dr. Crowley promised he wouldn't.