Post-Op: 60 months, 29 days

You can't wear your own face covering into Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. At the entrance checkpoint opposite the darkened gift shop, they take your temperature electronically (96.8) and give you one of their masks, one of those pale blue ones, and ask you if you know where you're going. 

So much has been moved around and altered since I spent nine days here in 2015, I can't be sure. No longer does someone play piano in the atrium. The Tim Hortons has given way to a Spot Coffee. Nevertheless, urology is still at the back of the ground level and radiology is still one floor up. 

What's also different are the automatic door openers. Now they're touchless. In place of the ubiquitous blue push-buttons everybody whacked with their elbows or the backs of their hands, there are little glowing sensor squares, awaiting activation with a wave. 

This is my testing visit, a week ahead of my annual consultation with the genial Dr. Khurshid Guru, the man who saved my life. All this was supposed to happen back in April, but ... well, you know. 

The radiology routine hasn't changed, aside from additional attention to antiseptic practices. I ask the nurse, Colleen, if she expects that all this extra caution will continue after the current situation is over, presuming that it ever will be over, and she didn't think so. I bless her when she succeeds in finding a vein on the first poke to insert an IV connection and draw blood to check my liver function. Good news. It's functioning. 

There's no return to Roswell on the following Thursday, though. My July 2 visit will be by phone, the urology office informs me on Wednesday. And it turns out not to be Dr. Guru at all. The face on the screen is Elizabeth Fiorica, one of the nurse practitioners. 

Everything is fine, she says. I still need to ask her my big question, though. Prior to the surgery, if I recall correctly, Dr. Guru had said this would give me five years. Now that the warranty has expired, what happens? We'll be seeing you, she says, for another five years. 

Post-Op: 45 months, 2 days

In my little curtained-off waiting area in the radiology department of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center last week, it suddenly feels like 2015 again.

I’m a patient.

Everyone who steps in asks my name. And my date of birth. I’m cold. I’m hungry. I’ve been fasting all day for the CAT scan. And despite my best efforts at super-hydrating to swell my veins, finding one for the IV isn’t a slam-dunk.  

The next poke in back of my hand stings more, but at least it works. Then the injection and that familiar warm sensation. First in my nose and mouth, then in my butt.

I have no aversion to the scan – hands over my head, the slide into the machine’s doughnut hole, the instructions to hold your breath. I’m less fond of the second IV injection – the dye which highlights my internal plumbing. As I wait for a return visit to the machine, this time lying on my stomach, there’s dull pain on both sides of my lower back. The kidneys are not pleased, but they get over it.

I mention it three days later when I return to Roswell Park for a visit with the man who saved my life four years ago – Dr. Khurshid Guru, the master of robotic surgery. Back then, he said I’d have an 80% chance of living five years. Now, after nearly 80% of those five years, the tests continue to be good. I’m still cancer-free. Dr. Guru says he’ll see me again in 12 months.

Post-Op: 32 months, 12 days

          It's Thursday, Feb. 15th, and Michelle, the nurse practitioner with the 19 tattoos, is bubbling with blonde good cheer as she arrives in the examining room in the Urology Department at what recently has been renamed Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.

She has the results from my visit two days earlier. The blood work that had to be redone because the first sample wouldn't test. The chest X-ray. The CT scan.

         "Would you be this cheerful if you had bad news?" my health care proxy, Bill Finkelstein, asks.

         Actually, yes, she says. But this news is good. All the blood indicators are well within their limits. Nothing showed up in the scans.

         Dr. Guru, the man who did the surgery and saved my life back in 2015, steps in a few minutes later and he's beaming, too, as he shakes our hands. Everything is fine. 

         I have a couple questions. One of them is: "See you in six months?" No, he says. It can be a year now. I'm simultaneously relieved and, well, a little disappointed. I've grown accustomed to getting reassurance every six months. Then again, hey, it's a year! I'll take it.

        

Post-Op: 18 months, 10 days

Good news. I’m still cancer free.

The official word came from my surgeon, a most jovial Dr. Khurshid Guru, late Thursday afternoon in one of those little examining rooms in the urology clinic at Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

All those tests I took at Roswell Park on Tuesday came back good. Blood, X-ray, CAT scan, everything in there looks fine. Kidney function is excellent. My stoma thing is in great shape. Good cholesterol could be better, however. We’ll have to work on that from now until the next exam around the time I’m celebrating my 75th birthday six months from now. 

Post-Op: 10 months, 18 days

       “You look good,” my surgeon, Dr. Khurshid Guru, says as he appears in the examining room Thursday. I feel good, I tell him. What also looks good, he continues, is my blood work. And my CT scan. I’m still cancer free. Hallelujah! He’ll see me in six months. October.

        Meanwhile, this is my fourth day in a row at Roswell Park Cancer Institute. I’m ready to paint my name on a slot on top of the parking garage. Tuesday they drew blood (thankfully, those hard-to-find veins cooperated on the first poke) and did the CT scan (veins didn’t cooperate for the IV needle – needed a second nurse, a second poke).

The other two days were for Monica. Monday was a consult with breast surgeon #4 – Dr. Helen Cappuccino, recommended by Dr. Guru – and she said a double mastectomy was unnecessary. There are too many mastectomies, she contended. At this stage, Stage Zero, the outcome would be just as good with lumpectomies, plus radiation. Maybe better. We were incredulous. Everybody else had been saying mastectomy, mastectomy, mastectomy.

This was news that Monica had so much wanted to hear. Me, too. A great dark cloud of major surgery, reconstruction and months of recovery had suddenly been lifted. Now she would be out of work for only a few days. She could go back to swimming, playing volleyball and riding her bike. She wouldn’t have to miss the 21st annual Ride for Roswell at the end of June. She’s ridden in all 20 so far.

Wednesday we were back. First for a talk with the anesthesiologist, then on to the mammography clinic. There they inserted radioactive seeds to mark the boundaries for the surgery, a procedure that will be considerably shorter than a mastectomy. It’s an hour and a half. It’s next Tuesday. She won’t even have to stay in the hospital overnight. 

Post-Op: Six months

How surreal to think back to June, when a walk down a hospital hallway was a major effort and my internal works were still readjusting after the surgery, which was six months ago today. Now (knock on wood), I’m good.

Good for full-time weeks at The Buffalo News, where I’ve been writing a lot of obituaries. Good for bridge games five or six days a week. Good for a few beers or wines on the weekends. Good for everything except lifting more than 10 pounds, climbing more than two flights of stairs and staying up past 2 a.m. In some ways, it seems like I’m better than before. For instance, no more getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.

        Sure, I’m still taking three medications for blood pressure, which seems to be under control, along with a statin and a baby aspirin for my stent-enhanced heart. But as far as the doctors are concerned, I’m cancer free and the ticker’s doing OK, at least until the next round of checkups in the spring. I wake up in the morning and say to myself, hey, I’m here. I’m grateful. Every day really is a blessing. 

Post-Op: Third month plus a week

   I thought that going back to work Tuesday after 13 weeks of extended sick leave would mean that I'm totally recovered. But it doesn't. I started getting a little ragged around the edges as I watched the 10 p.m. TV news. When the city editors suggested that I go home early, it seemed like a really good idea. 
   It turned out to be an evening of exhilaration and stress. Exhilaration at the applause with which the newsroom greeted me when I walked in shortly after 5 p.m. Joy at seeing all my colleagues again and discovering that they still thought I should continue as the Candyman. (Thanks to Barb O'Brien for providing a starter supply of sweets.) And then there was satisfaction in getting organized to once again tackle one of my primary assignments -- the Reporter's Notebook column.
   But it was not a matter of simply settling back in front of the old familiar computer screen. The massive reorganization of the newsroom had gotten to my desk, which had been packed up and moved. It took an hour to find and activate things that I didn't want to do without -- the cordless phone, the wireless mouse, the mini electric fan, the drugstore spectacles. It took another hour to do a rudimentary restoration of the settings that were lost during the installation of the new Dell laptop computer, which is attached to an outboard keyboard and display screen. It took more than one try to find out which of the copying machines was doing the printouts of my Reporter's Notebook e-mail.
   Setting up the files for Reporter's Notebook turned out to be as astute move. At 9 p.m., 45 minutes before the first edition deadline, the editors realized they did not have a column for Wednesday. I was able to whip one together and transfer it to the city desk just in time. After that, though, I was beat. Guess I've got some more recovering to do.