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.

Post-Op: Three months

The CT scan today (Wednesday) at Roswell Park Cancer Institute confirms it. No malignancies. Cancer-free right now, and everything looks good for the future. Come back again in six months for another CT scan, says the oncologist, the dapper Dr. Saby George. CT scans every six months for three years, then once a year after that. 

The blood test looks good too. Everything within normal levels. Cholesterol is down. Liver and kidney functions are fine. The CT scan also shows the heart looking normal, Dr. George adds. Is my urostomy arrangement doing OK, he asks. I assure him that it is. I note that all we have to do now is bring that high blood pressure back to where it ought to be. Sooner or later, we'll find the right combination of meds to do the trick.

And so next Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, I go back to working nights at The Buffalo News. My long extended sick leave is over. What can I say after I say, "Hallelujah!" 

Post-Op: 2 months and 4 days

Ask me how do I feel and if I were a bell, I'd be ... the Liberty Bell. Not quite the way I came out of the casting mold, but still ringable in the right circumstances. 

I've been playing bridge regularly, to be sure, though I hit the gong there only about half the time. Gardening would be more of a bell-ringer if I could go more than 60 to 90 minutes before needing to quit. 

I wasn't up doing for our annual party during the Garden Walk July 25 and 26, either. Sitting on the shady front porch in the afternoon was more my speed. Even so, thanks to a rainy June and some help from my friends, the yard once again was at its best, except at the corner, where the concrete had been dug up for installation of a new handicapped access sidewalk. Bad timing. 

Although I'm not supposed to lift things that weigh more than 5 or 10 pounds, I managed to broom and scrape out the crappy topsoil the city installed after the new sidewalk was poured. The DPW guy in City Hall had agreed to let me handle the landscape remediation, but word apparently didn't get down to street level.  

The replumbing for my bladder, meanwhile, seems to be working fine. (I wonder, however, how long it will take for the incisions to stop being red and crusty and become just scars.) Heart issues, meanwhile, are looming as the bigger concerns at the moment. After a revision in blood pressure meds, I'm pumping numbers that stray into the danger zone. On the plus side, there don't seem to be problems with the newly-instituted statin. No side effects that I've noticed so far. If that's all there is, I'll ring another bell.

Post-Op: Month one, week two, day two

Good news from my first visit to a new primary care doc -- Dr. Jon Kucera at the Northwest Buffalo Neighborhood Health Clinic, who is health proxy Bill Finkelstein's doc. My vital signs are all good. And some not so good news. After comparing my EKGs from December and April, which is what revealed that I'd had a heart attack, he said I should be on statins. 

Now I've resisted suggestions of statins for several years. I'm leery of the side effects (Monica's old boss was hospitalized by those side effects) and because they just seem like too much of an article of faith in the medical community. One of these days, they'll discover that they're actually harmful, like Tylenol. Nevertheless, us heart attack survivors are at high risk for a repeat episode, so if anybody should be popping a statin, it's somebody like me, a point driven home during the conversation about statins on "On Point" on NPR this morning. Like it or not, it looks like Lipitor ahead after the next visit to the cardiologist. 

Meanwhile, I seem to be gaining stamina. Wednesday began with an hour of cloudy, cool-weather weeding (the big Buffalo Garden Walk is a little more than a week away) and ended at the Sportsmen's Tavern with a rollicking show by Rosie Flores, the Rockabilly Filly, who I know from the days when I was going to the South by Southwest music conference every year in Austin. What's more, she still recognizes me. "You're so cute," she said.

Thursday, which also started cool, began with another hour of weeding, this time in the shade, (front yard is starting to look pretty good), followed by a visit to opening day of the annual Italian Festival in North Buffalo. Then, after a much-needed nap, it was off to the weekly free concert (the Buffalo Philharmonic playing Stevie Wonder songs) at Canalside downtown, which gave Traci, my niece visiting from Phoenix, a look at our revitalized waterfront. Big crowd. We all took lots of photos. Attached is a pic of Traci in the one of the Canalside attractions -- the giant Adirondack chair.