I thought about the possibility of death, but that wasn’t what bothered me the most. It was the feeling of helplessness. I just couldn’t see myself lying in bed, not being able to help myself. That, to me, was worse than the fear of death. John Wayne after beating “The big C”.

I found out at the end of last week that I have cancer of the bladder. More accurately, I most likely have cancer. The conversation went something like this: Dr. Sean Berquist, “You have a tumor in your bladder, and it might be cancerous. Well, it most likely is cancer. Actually, for a person of your age with a history of smoking, I’ve never seen it not be cancer.” Steve, “Is there a chance it could be benign?” Dr. Sean Berquist, “If you were eight years old, I would say ‘Yes’, but not at your age.”

The good news, the great! news is that the tumor is pretty small and can most likely be removed by fishing a cystoscope up my dick into my bladder and, according to Dr. Berquist, “scooping out the tumor and treating the inside of the bladder with a chemotherapy solution”. It is a simple procedure and almost always successful. The operation is late next Wednesday afternoon.

I know I have had a lot of medical problems, but counterintuitively, between medical emergencies, I feel fine. As far as the bladder cancer goes, I’m very optimistic and pretty upbeat about this whole thing. Still, I feel like this post is too short and too blunt. On the other hand, I don’t want to pad it, so I’ll just leave it at that.