Sailing on the Big C

I watched the epic Grand Final on a big screen in O’Donnell Park in St Kilda, in the happy company of two thousand Saints fans. They played Collingwood in the final and St Kilda was the only place in the City safe from the nasal toned hell of Pies supporters.

The game ended in a draw which is about as rare as a Collingwood fan with a full set of teeth. As soon as the final siren went and the delirium of the crowd was reduced to anti-climatic mutterings, the Gods decided that we had frolicked in the sun for long enough.

As the crowd drifted towards the trams and the welcoming glow of St. Kilda beach hostelries, a great tempest moved in from the bay, hurling sand in its wake and changing the colour of the sky to tar.

“You have tested and tasted too much my friends”, God seemed to say. “Now its time to go home”.

It’s now Friday after the Grand Final (and the day before the replay that has gripped the City’s imagination all week) and I feel like God is passing on the same message to me. About ten days ago I found a lump in a place where men are not supposed to find lumps. I went through the whole gamut of emotions from despair to denial before finally presenting myself to a doctor. I was immediately subjected to indignities involving long needles and a stranger fondling those parts of your body that should be reserved for mothers up to the age of four and after a gap of twelve years or so, girlfriends and wives thereafter. When the doctor kept saying “oh dear, oh dear” I knew something was up.

But despite the ever increasing sense of doom that these procedures induce, there is a strange sense of calm that settles over you once you have handed over responsibility for your care to the professionals.

I’m quite happy now to sit back and be prodded, injected and cut open by a host of medical practitioners. It’s as though it is their problem now and not mine.

That was on Monday and events took on a surreal life of their own thereafter. I had stepped on to the medical rollercoaster and all I could do was hold on and wish for the best. I went for an ultrasound on Monday afternoon where a nice man chatted to me while he ran a warm nozzle over my little fellows. Then his tone changed and I knew that he spotted the fatal flaw. He didn’t want to tell me but I caught a glimpse of the screen and even to my untrained eye, a picture painted a thousand words.

The next stop on the roller coaster was the Urologist, a nice man in an opulent suite in the Freemasons Hospital. In the past, Freemasons were as popular in my Catholic family as the Klu Klux clan but believe me that feels irrelevant when you’re sailing on the stormy waters of the Big C.

He became the third person in two days to have a little fondle. It didn’t take him long to make a diagnosis. He sat me and my partner down and calmly explained that in two days time he would be cutting me open like and extracting my left testical. Then he asked if we had any questions.

Looking back I wish I could have thought of something smart to ask. Such as, “what led you into this line of work?” or “Will I get to keep it afterwards”.

But truth be told, I was a mass of confusion and could only mumble out some idiotic enquiries about whether it would hurt or not. Thankfully I had someone with me who could ask the important stuff and between us we managed to come away with a clear idea of what lies ahead.

Then I did what all right thinking Irish people would do in a situation like this. I went out and got drunk. We had a sort of wake for lefty and a promotion ceremony for righty who has agreed to take on sole responsibility in the future now that I am dispensing with the joint CEO model.

Thankfully, I’d sobered up by Thursday morning when the operation was due. I had rarely seen the inside of a hospital theatre before this year. But 2010 is swiftly becoming Annus Horribilus. I am now an expert on the Australian health system and I could probably be trusted with carrying out some simple operations myself at this stage.

The surgeon came to see before they put me to sleep and asked if I minded if a work experience student sat in during the operation. I said it was fine as long as he wasn’t holding a scalpel. It turned out to be a 16 year and I can only assume that he was given the job of holding my Willy while they shaved me. It’s a dirty job, but somebody had to do it.

I woke up a couple of hours later and felt pretty sore and a little lighter. Lefty must have weighed more than I thought. For such a life changing operation, they don’t waste time. I was out of hospital by 5pm and back on the sofa where I expect to spend a lot of time over the coming days.

While I wait for the wound in my groin to heal, I’m a little bit of limbo. I have to get a CT scan done next week to see if the cancer has spread. There is a good chance it hasn’t as they say that testicular cancer is one of the better ones to get if you are looking for full recovery. Although at the moment that’s like telling me that having one leg cut off is better than two.

I’ll get some more blood tests and then revisit the nice specialist in his opulent suite in two weeks. He will tell me which fork my life will take from here on. I hope it’s not the one less taken.