Tag Archives: cancer

Shit in a box…

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I’m not going to lie, one of the things that has changed unexpectedly since I turned 45 has been how often I’m required to shit in a box… for science. Admittedly, the total number of times that’s happened in the last 15 months is twice, but that is exactly two times more often than it happened in the previous 45 years, so it feels like a significant deviation from the norm. 

The first of these experiences was to check for any underlying gastrointestinal issues causing my acid reflux. The second was as a screening tool for early detection of colon cancer. Both are worthy objectives and I support the goal entirely. That doesn’t make it any less weird when you have to spend some part of your morning packaging up your own shit and then driving it over to the nearest UPS store. There’s something intensely surreal about the whole process.

Despite the warnings that “things change after you hit 40,” I’ll admit I was entirely unprepared for some of what that was going to entail. In some ways, regularly shitting in a box and then posting it off for someone else to analyze is, perhaps, not even the strangest part of this brave new phase of life. I’m equal parts curious and terrified of whatever comes next.

Sickness, health, and the curious mind…

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I’d mostly made my peace with always having one healthy dog and one sick one. Eternal sickness of one kind or another is just what you sign up for when you take on a bulldog. It’s as much part of the territory as their snoring and gas problems. The never ending care and attention was somewhat offset by the fact that the other was perennially healthy – generally only seeing the vet for a yearly checkup and vaccinations. It wasn’t an ideal arrangement of course, but it was manageable. It was manageable right up to the point that it wasn’t. And that’s where I’ve started getting twitchy.

I’ve gotten disturbingly accustomed to hearing my own doctor’s warnings of doom and gloom. Getting a “this could be an issue” from the vet, though, now that sends me into a completely unreasonable level of panic. Tonight we’re sitting just on the wrong side of a veil of ignorance. By this time tomorrow I expect to know a little more than I do now, but probably not yet enough to make anything approaching informed decisions. There’s a lot of white space between “unusual pigmentation” and “cancer,” but my brain obviously races off in the direction of all possible worst case scenarios. For the record, don’t let anyone ever tell you that living in my head is easy. It’s bloody well exhausting more days than its not.

I’m giving it my level best effort not to dwell on those things I can’t do a damned thing about. It’s one of those times having a curious mind is a damned nuisance.

For the cure…

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It’s Saturday. I was finishing up the mad dash around southern Cecil County that included trying to get get gas, get to the bank, stop at the vet for bulldog meds, get what’s probably the last of the summer fruit from the roadside stand, stop at Petco for dog food, hit Walmart for people food, and then get back to the house before noon. I’m a man with a plan… and a schedule. Usually that schedule runs like a well built Swiss watch and it would have today, too, if the picture postcard town of North East hadn’t been overrun by people wandering in and out of traffic on the one street in and out of town. With every minute that these asswagons plod around, I have frozen stuff turning into thawed stuff… and that doesn’t make me a particularly happy traveler.

With every car length I inched down Main Street, my usually sunny disposition degenerated further into a seething rage. I mean here I am trying to be productive and get shit done and there’s a town full of people wandering around like they don’t have a single thing to do or a care in the world. People like that make me crazy, or maybe I should say they make me more crazy than the run of the mill people you can’t avoid on a daily basis.

After ten minutes of swearing a blue streak at everyone who had the audacity to cut between me and the car whose bumper I was riding, I felt vaguely bad about driving past the Race for the Cure “finish line” set up at the far end of town. I’m sure all of these people are perfectly nice and they’re trying to do a good thing, but it seems to me that they could have managed to plan a route somewhere that didn’t tie up traffic coming into and out of town in every possible direction. Today I got to see a whole lot of people with a whole lot of heart, but there’s not a jack one of them that knows a damned thing about logistics or route planning. Clearly, I’ve gotten past the part of the day where I felt bad yelling at them.