Growths

When I began this blog last June, I aimed to write a series of posts describing aspects of growing old. If these essays are to reflect my own experience, at least some of them must present the medical issues with which, like most people my age, I have to deal. The ones that concern me at the moment are cancers.

After a routine physical examination uncovered a colon cancer in 1991, it was quickly removed before it could penetrate the colon’s wall. I thought that I’d be similarly lucky with the prostate cancer that was found in 2007 and radiated for 42 sessions. For four years it seemed as if the radiation had beaten the cancer into submission, but last September, a malignant growth in my urethra was discovered. The prostate cancer wasn’t dead after all. My urologist excised the new tumor. Last Friday, he discovered two more tumors near the one he had taken out and even that one presented evidence that it might be growing back.

“These will have to be removed,” he told me, “because they’re highly aggressive and if they’re not cut out, they’ll penetrate the wall of the urethra.” They can be taken out now and subsequent ones removed from time to time. Alternatively, the entire urethra, as well as the prostate through which it travels, can be removed. The latter operation is a big deal, one not to be undertaken lightly at any age. It would require lifestyle changes, including weekly emptying of a small external bag into which urine would flow through a tube constructed from a piece of small intestine. But if it is to be undertaken, sooner is better than later. My urologist will, he said, present my case to a group of his colleagues and solicit their advice. If there’s a consensus in favor of the major procedure, he will call me. Otherwise, I will see him in three months. He said that the removal of the growths can wait until then.

I’m the one who used to present papers at conferences, but now I’m becoming accustomed to being the subject of a conference. The conference on my urethra will not be the first at which one of my medical problems is to be discussed. The first concerned a large pancreatic cyst that has long existed and was found to be growing. If I were a lot younger, my primary doctor told me, my pancreas would be removed, “but this is a very major operation,” he said. “It would require removing not only your pancreas but also several surrounding organs, and at your age and with your many other medical problems, it’s not clear you would survive the procedure.” He sent me to a gastroenterologist, who told me he would consult his colleagues. After some time, I learned that their consensus, with which he agreed, is to do nothing. So now I know of growths involving two different organs, one of which is clearly malignant and aggressively so. If the other is malignant, it is, at least, growing slowly.

Friday night, after digesting the news about more growths in my urethra, I slept poorly. But Saturday, Shabbat, I determined to concentrate on living each day to the fullest and to stop worrying about what will come in the days after. Worrying won’t help, after all, and there’s still much to be enjoyed.