My Semicolon Life: Finally, a cancer test I can pass

My doctor isn’t fazed at all when I ask if I can bring a camera crew to my endoscopy. Guess that’s Nashville for you.

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This week, the local Fox affiliate ran a report about me and this column, given I appear on its nighttime newscasts to talk about American Idol during the show’s season. I figured, as long as I was having a camera on a tube stuck down my gullet, they might as well tag along.

My doctor says, believe it or not, that endoscopies are actually less flattering than colonoscopies. I think it has to do with the possibility of gagging and throwing up during the procedure. I tell him I gave up any illusions of privacy the minute I signed up for Facebook: If somebody really wants to show that on television, it doesn’t much matter to me.

Since I went public with my cancer diagnosis this summer, several people have told me they’ve been impressed by my attitude and my sense of humor. Honestly, though, it’s fairly easy to keep a good attitude when you’ve been as fortunate as I have.

Through almost random choice, I found doctors thorough enough to discover my cancer and informed enough to recognize my Lynch syndrome. Other than a brief visit to the emergency room after a bad response to my first pain medication, my surgery and recovery have gone as well as they possibly could have. Friends have encouraged and taken care of my family and me at every step of the way. I look better than I have in years. I haven’t had a severe reaction to anything I’ve eaten since the surgery (though I’m still working my way back to Prince’s Hot Chicken).

As for the humor, I view it as a macabre form of confession. If I voice my fears, they’re no longer secrets. If I can turn them into jokes, I take away some of their power. My preacher’s fond of saying, “We’re only as sick as the secrets we keep.” He doesn’t mean cancer, but I still like the philosophy.

The endoscopy is the first time since the week of my surgery that things potentially could go south. As a carrier of the Lynch mutation, my risk for developing stomach cancer is 13 times higher than the general population’s. Along with the annual colonoscopies I can look forward to as long as I still have some colon left, I can also expect an endoscopy every couple of years.

There’s no reason to think there’s cancer in my stomach or the upper part of my small intestine, the places the endoscopy will check. Then again, there was no reason to think I had colon cancer, either. And we all saw how well that worked out.

I think I know now why I hated going to the doctor before I got sick: It was a no-win situation. One of three things could happen, none of them particularly good. He could tell me I was sick, which I didn’t want to hear, or he could reinforce things I knew that already made me feel guilty (I needed to lose weight; I should quit eating all that junk food). In the best-case scenario, I’d be perfectly healthy, in which case I’d feel as if I had wasted my money.

Now, I get more nervous when I go in for some kind of test or screening. We’re looking for bad stuff now, and odds are strong that some kind of cancer will show up eventually. And it’s not like anybody’s going to tell me that I have cancer when I don’t go to the doctor. But the sooner I catch it, the better off I am. And an all-clear now sounds less like “Yeah, you’re fine” and more like “You’re going to live!”

Of course, somebody always manages to make things worse. With the colonoscopy, it was my gastroenterologist. I knew about only one person who’d had a colonoscopy between the day that I learned I needed one and the day I actually had it done. He had complications, started bleeding and wound up in the ICU. I told this to my doctor and, without either of us ever naming the guy, he recognized the story and said, “I think he had that done here.” (Thanks, doc.)

This time, it’s a friend at church, who, despite having had multiple conversations with me about things you shouldn’t say to people facing illnesses and medical procedures, decides to tell me about a time when he didn’t get enough Versed to put him under and stayed awake through his entire endoscopy.

Versed knocks me out almost instantly. The last thing I remember before my colonoscopy was seeing my nurse put the syringe in my arm. But my friend’s story gets in my head, so I insist on working out a hand signal for the nurse in case I don’t go under.

I hang on a little longer this time. I not only see the syringe, I remember feeling my arm relax. After that, I’m gone for a good hour, even though the procedure takes maybe 15 minutes.

When I come to, the camera crew is gone. My doctor has come in, given my wife the results and moved on to the next patient. With my colonoscopy, he’d made sure I was awake enough to hear that I had cancer. This time, he doesn’t feel the need to stick around. Fine by me. That means I’m clear.

A couple of days later, his office e-mails me digital images from both my endoscopy and my colonoscopy. Now, the day after my surgery, I posted a picture of my tumor to Twitter — at breakfast time. So you guys are lucky I didn’t get these until after the sedative wore off.

Music that makes me want to live

Cancer has changed the way I hear music, more than any other life event except my marriage. Songs I once appreciated only on a surface level now strike deep at the core of my soul. Some inspire me; some terrify me. Others that I might have liked before, I’ve got no use for now. I’ve also got more time to listen, whether it’s during my morning exercise time or while lying in a hospital bed. These songs form part of the soundtrack to my cancer story.

1. Goin’ Down Rockin’, Waylon Jennings

2. Heart of Rhythm, Ryan Bingham

3. That Time Is Gone, The dB’s

4. Gone, Gonna Rise Again, Kathy Mattea

5. Land of the Living, Matthew Perryman Jones

Next week: Six weeks after surgery