Emotional Wreckskew

The day of the biopsy was probably the first inkling of how I discovered how I would be dealing with all of this. I have a very...delicate yet volatile emotional constitution to begin with and I was wondering how all of the stress and depression would manifest itself. That day I had two responses.

I'm a big believer in bringing levity to grave situations. It's how I deal with stuff. If I can lighten the air just a bit, it really helps me to relax. I discovered this 20 years ago when I suffered a lacerated cornea due to a random street mugging.

Once the ambulance delivered me to SF General, I noticed that the excitement level by the doctors that were attending to me was pretty darn high. Specialists were brought in and it just seemed that the whole hospital was looking at my eyeball with grim determination. It was unsettling!

It got to a point where I just couldn't handle all those furrowed brows. So I said "Stop for a second!". They stopped. I said - "Am I going to die from this?"
They answered "No". I then asked "Is my other eye OK?" They said "Yes". Then I asked them to please lighten up just a tad - they were freaking me out. I know they were just doing their jobs, but the moment I saw a few of those brows loosen up just a hair, I felt more comfortable.

Well, during the prostate biopsy, I have mentioned that I was joking around with the hot babe nurse. She was a good audience, and to some degree, so was the doctor. While I can't think of many things that are as serious as a biopsy looking for cancer in one's body parts, it can just get to be too much!

Once the work was done, the nurse took me back into the waiting room where Stacey was. As I walked towards my wife, the nurse said "He did great! I've been doing this for 5 years and I have never had a better patient for this procedure than Mr. Ray!"

And then something very strange happened - tears filled my eyes. For reasons I'm not completely sure of yet, I thought that was the absolute sweetest and most touching thing in the world for that nurse to say. Maybe it's as simple as me wanting my caretakers to really...care about me. I just don't know.

The second set of tears came about 10 minutes later as we were in the car driving home. I looked at Stacey and told her that this felt like the journey has now officially begun. I didn't need the biopsy results. I knew I had cancer and I was overcome with sorrow that I would be putting my loved ones through all of this. And this is something a little bit of levity cannot lighten up.

Until I found a safe-word!

It didn't take long for me to come up with some sort of ridiculous way to express how fucked up all of this is. When it gets rough for me, most of the time some pressure can be relieved by me shouting out a very specific set of curse words! No need to share them here, but they are indeed some very bad words...

And they make us smile.