| lgbt cancer project A furious week of reading and education of all the options before our next appointment.
Option#1.... Observation with Monitoring: Exam+PSA
Okay, lets do nothing? I’m forty-seven? How long before the cancer gets out of the prostate and into the surrounding lymph nodes and tissue? That is if in fact it has not already spread? Damn!! Jeez!! Lets see, uhm? do I want death now? or later? Lets take a big pass on this one.
Option#2.... Radical Prostatectomy
Oh wow, I can be neutered and never produce jizim again? I don’t quite understand? Nerve sparing surgery technique? How in gay hell do you spare the emotional trauma after surgery when you have to learn to piss again? To orgasm without cum? Possible impotence, and incontinence? I’m more confused than a one legged cat trying to bury shit on a frozen pond!!
Option#3.... Radiation Therapy, External Beam or your choice of Radioactive Seeds? Say what?? Would I like fries with that? I can only decipher that if they fry all the nerves, there is still no guarantee that cancer will not return, and then have to have a salvage prostatectomy with no chance of nerve sparing? Oh jeez, the possibilities are endless? A bottle cap cock and a sack of scrotum wrinkles with balls that retract into the body cavity? Impotence to boot!! What a pretty picture!!
Option#4.... Cryotherapy? Comparable to radiation by freezing the cancer cells to death. A new treatment with no long time results yet? OINK..OINK. me? A guinea pig ? Lets not even go there!
Option#5.... Hormone Therapy. This involves removing all the testosterone from the male body, and treating with female hormones that cause the cancer to go dormant! Now, most of our friends would say anyone who kept a large feathered boa under the skirted table in the living room was “NELLIE” enough. Oh great.. Like the world needs another approaching fiftyish overweight drag queen? Just not an option. I am sorry. As a gay male? I fit more in the “Butch Bull Dyke” category. Femininity is for camp humor only. Not a life style.
Our next appointment day arrives. Now as an Older homosexual with an experienced past, one learns to take nothing for granted concerning our lifestyle. There always seems to be some “NATZIE” Christian right spirit leering about with a rule book entitled “THE HETERO RULES OF GOD AND MAN” just waiting to remind you that your rights are second to their self appointed, but confirmed fucked up lifestyle. At this point only the healthy spirited gay person who in longevity has survived that sicko morals and dogma would understand the threat. Hey who are we to judge? Its okay to slap your wife and kids around as long as your in the pew on Sunday morning and the rent on your mistress’s apartment is paid in full. And your two ex-wives and children are to blame for your mis directed poisonous state of self loathing. Sure, go ahead society will turn its head while you direct your anger at our lifestyle cause you feel guilty about jacking off some boy during puberty that you never really got over. And truth be known? If you could suck your own hetero cock? You would! Sure you would!! But then what we would call you? Hey, in answering, I become the same as you. I’ve spewed too much already. In the past I have just called you “precious” and showered you with butch soap before sending you home to your wife.
So, back to appointment day. That soap box has a splinter in it anyway. In preparing the questions for answers derived from self education week, we decided the good doctor was right. Radical Prostatectomy was the best
course of permanent treatment for me. So now the good doctor is going to saw me in half and remove a precious part of maleness. We should make sure he is one of the “enlightened ones”. These are the truly good people on this earth who spare the world personal judgment and kindly go about treating equally all they encounter in life. But, just to make sure? We should use precaution. If we were in fact heterosexual? All these issues would just be a given. I decided that a man going that far in my body cavity from the opposite side deserves the truth. For myself, I did not need to wake up from surgery scarred, or disfigured by way of a rednecks scalpel. So I composed this cover letter with a list of clinical questions attached. The following letter was to inform the good doctor with courtesy, so as to save any conflict, or neglect that might affect myself or significant other during the treatment.
10 January, 2002
to: the good doctor
After reviewing the treatment options, I agree that the best direction for my prostate cancer is Radical Prostatectomy. I cannot imagine having the job of informing a patient of the diagnosis and suggested treatment. I applaud the manner in which I was informed. Thank you for the direct approach. I must admit, that I remember little of the facts presented as my body found denial mode and was trembling in limbo for most of the session. The complete melt down did not occur until reaching the car.
With complete confidence in you, as urologist, and surgeon, we feel you are the best man to approach curing my prostate cancer.
There are questions and conditions of which must be addressed. With respect for the Doctor/Patient boundaries, there are individual and personal issues that cannot go without answers. Bruce, whom you met at the appointment is my significant other, my next of kin, family, power of attorney, life partner and caretaker for near Twenty years now . It would be expected that he receive all spousal rights, information, and courtesies extended to married couples. If for any reason, personal or otherwise, these terms are not acceptable to you, we would accept a referral by you to another competent urologist.
We have just been through Papillary Squamous Cell Carcinoma this summer with Bruce, and are still in caretaker mode. Our hospital of choice is St. Johns, as we have always been pleased with care there. Not to mention we actually live next to their parking garage.
We have decided to deal with this prostate cancer positively with laughter, jokes and giggles on the surface. Not for one minute discounting the seriousness of condition and cure. With all that out of the way, there are a number of questions concerning the cure itself.
Wow, now that's out of the way. His reaction to the letter he read in our presence was classy. Extremely classy and professional. So much so, that I ask him if he understood verbally, and was glad to hear his side smile response, that he had no problem with that at all. An enlightened one. Thank you Jesus!! And with that behind we went on to the questions feeling much at ease. He with us , and us with him.
I’m not much of a drinker these days, as my youth was filled with many a staggering party. I could feel the need to just let go and perhaps an episodic slouchy drunk was just what I needed to cope. Bruce takes over the shop at 1:30 most days and this Friday I pull in the drive way to find our long time friend and housekeeper Gary there arranging and tending to our home and life as he has now for many years. The usual back door greeting “honey? I’m home” jokes and a very personal discussion about my predicament over a cigarette. I suddenly became even more depressed and suggested that Gary drive me to the neighborhood gay bar so that I might stay out of his way, and do some woeful self pity shit. Gary hesitated at first, not wanting to be an enabler of bad deed. None the less, his submission was safer than letting me drive myself. As I said Gary has known us a very long time. He pulled up in front of Renegades bar at two-ish in the afternoon, and would not even let me go in by myself.
He walked me in, sat me down on a stool, mumbled to Dancer Greg the bartender, then checked on me one more time before his exit. I knew full well, that Greg now knew my story, but not my intoxicated intention for the afternoon. It was not long before he had to tuck his skirt for my adventure.
As I sat at the bar at two o'clock in the afternoon it dawned on me that I was the only customer. Now how in gay hell can you have a “pity party” without innocent unsuspecting souls to commiserate with? I ask dancer Greg when the bar started to get full and he said not for a couple of hours. Well, “GAY DADDY” aint having that shit. In proper queenly manor I retrieved my cell phone and called every number on the save list. Without explanation I said “just quit whatever you are doing and go directly to renegades bar in gay haste” I would explain when they arrived. Several shots of straight sky chased by water glasses of cranberry and vodka later the masses began to arrive. There was, Mike, and Daryn, Justin, Bruce, Doctor Dan, Doc john, along with others they had called in concern. Not to mention, the entire cast of the movie “PEARL HARBOR”.
I was such a mess by this time I cannot remember them all, but Greg ask me to come back everyday at two o'clock as I was good for business. Bruce swears I was on the floor at times. I don’t doubt it. He thought I was the happiest drunk he had ever seen, as well as the heaviest. But everyone that mattered knew the story from that afternoon on. We had a surgery date and prepared to process the last jizim filled weeks.
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