irony
noun, plural
1. the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, “How nice!” when I said I had to work all weekend.
2. taking a class on ADHD and suddenly realizing that you haven’t been paying attention and have instead drawn a picture of a duck riding a saddled-dolphin.
Humans are curious people when it comes to fulfillment, and nothing points to this conclusion more obviously than how people reflect on events in their life.
If I was asked to name a few times in my life where I have been genuinely angry at the time, when I recall them they often make me smile because they’re things that seemed like a big deal at the time that no longer hold the same weight as they once did. I recall being furious at the time the events happened – getting a car totaled in an accident, not being able to find another job while stuck selling insurance, being passed over for a promotion, etc.
Every single one of these instances makes me laugh in hindsight. This is partly out of my naiveté at the time, and partly out of the fact that each of these situations felt like the end of the world when, in fact, they were just points in my life in which I felt it was appropriate to get mad.
The more I laugh at the person I used to be, the more I wonder to myself as I live in the present an obvious question – of the things I get mad about right now, how many of them are going to be laughable moments in the future?
I honestly believe that most people are inherently happy. Sure, there are a few that seem to thrive on misery or drama, but for the most part, humans are a happy species that take enjoyment out of simple things…eating, dropping toast and having it land jam-side-up, finding a parking spot close to a building entrance in cold weather, etc.
The odd thing is, when we’re really upset, nobody on Earth can convince us that we’re not going to be upset about whatever it is we’re upset about in five years. Sure, there’s always one smart aleck who says, “some day, we’re going to look back on all of this and laugh,” but nobody ever believes them…mainly, we just want to punch that person in the face.
Yet, sure enough, looking back on these incidents years later, it makes me laugh. I think about my anger at the time and my lack of understanding of what was coming up, and I laugh. I can’t even imagine looking back on an incident long after the fact and saying, “Yeah, I was completely justified in my anger then and it still makes me angry now.” That just doesn’t happen…none of us areBruceWayne, carrying revenge around for years before deciding to rectify it by, for some reason, dressing like a bat and going out to take revenge on criminals.
So if we’re destined to simply laugh at our anger in the future, what’s preventing us from doing it at the time? Why can’t we stop for a moment and take a long, hard look at the reason for our anger and ask ourselves if we’re blowing something out of proportion? What’s the point of getting angry about something if we’re going to find the entire situation laughable in the future?
It’s questions like this I think about as I watch somebody pull into a handicap parking spot and jog into a building.
“Calm down,” I say to myself as I step out of the car and begin walking towards the vehicle, pausing to bend down and pick up a chunk of concrete from the parking lot. “You’re going to look back on this someday and laugh.”
I think there’s few things more appealing to people than an easy fight.
Now, I’m not talking about physical fights (people don’t usually find appeal in strapping on some gloves and taking on a small child in hand-to-hand combat), but I am referring to verbal sparring. Actually, that likely is not the correct term, as sparring usually implies that there’s somebody to spar with.
People enjoy picking fights with large, homogenous groups that will in no way offer any sort of rebuttal. These groups are extremely large, have no spokesperson in place to offer rebuttals and are often unjustly lumped together for the sole purpose of an attack. The most common example of this is the media.
“The media is reporting on this story and completely ignoring this certain aspect.”
As a member of the media, working for a small town newspaper, when people say this in front of me they often look at me and clarify that they’re talking about “the national media” or “television media” or “I didn’t see you standing there.”
The bottom line is, they’re looking to make a declarative statement about a large group of people without anyone being in place to offer a rebuttal.
It doesn’t matter who “the media” is, they’re pretty much evil. Now, if you wanted to get specific, “the media” would include Brian Williams, Hunter Thompson, Dan Rathers, the guy that writes “Jumble,” “D.J. Dave and the Party Pack on K-103.9 in the mornings,” Wayne and Garth from “Wayne’s World,” a small-town journalist in Idaho and Malcolm Gladwell doing a piece for “The New Yorker.”
To be honest, I don’t think them and everyone in-between that works for a media outlet are getting together in weekly meetings to try and figure out exactly how we can keep Sarah Palin (who’s also, technically, a member of “the media”) in the news, or how we can fabricate stories about global warming. If there were such meetings, the talk would likely be based on how little a majority of them get paid and probably wouldn’t work over to the topic of how a massive conspiracy can be implemented.
Also, “the media” has no spokesperson. When somebody randomly says, “it’s all perpetuated by the media,” they know there is going to be no rebuttal. Dan Rathers will not appear and offer his side of the story. Rush Limbaugh will not suddenly appear and patiently explain why you’re wrong. Donald Kaul will not suddenly appear and ask for clarification on what “it’s” is referring to.
In short, you’re picking a fight with nobody.
Having worked for different media outlets, I can always offer an explanation on coverage decisions from the perspective of a newspaper in our town – our coverage is always unbiased (print journalists are actually hyper-sensitive to this almost to a fault), it’s local (we don’t cover national politics once they drive out of our town…although that doesn’t mean we don’t care about them), and if a story didn’t receive coverage, a majority of the time it’s because our news staff (Jon and I) are currently writing or reporting something and can’t do 12 things at once.
Of course, people that attack the media are often quick to explain, “I’m not referring to you. I’m talking about the national media.”
I imagine if someone from the national media was present, they’d offer the explanation of “I’m referring to television media” or “I’m referring to Fox” or “I’m referring to MSNBC.”
Truth is, most media outlets cover news that people are curious about, and statements about media coverage of these events doesn’t reflect those that are covering them, they’re a reflection of the interests of our society. A majority of the time, stories that people don’t want to hear about are often the stories the reporter doesn’t want to talk or write about, but has to because that’s their job…to report the news, good or bad.
I’m not saying not to criticize anything – criticism and skepticism are two things that are vital to keeping people and organizations honest – but if you are going to be critical, be specific. State your frustrations and name a specific source, and if it’s causing frustration for you, chances are it’s causing frustration for others, so tell them about it. E-mail, write or call the media source and tell them what you didn’t like or ask for answer about coverage.
Don’t pick one-sided fights with large groups that can’t offer any sort of rebuttal because it’s a lazy way of having an opinion. Such sweeping generalizations often breed opinions that don’t vary from the norm and can’t be explained on the rare occasion that someone asks you to clarify.
Casting generalizations about large groups are wrong, and I say, with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek, that all who do so are buffoons.
I don't understand...they use the Internets for what now?
I love politics in the way that most people love watching reality television – they know it’s trashy and they know it’s not benefitting them in the least to watch, but they just can’t take their eyes off of it.
This past week I got a chance to attend a town hall for Sen. Chuck Grassley. I love Grassley events because, since he’s been in politics longer than Iowa has been a state, he has that curmudgeony old guy look and usually tosses out some pretty entertaining quotes (“We put out a Twitter on that yesterday, I think.).
My favorite part about Sen. Grassley is his constant look of anger, confusion and disgust when he’s not trying to shake hands and look presentable. If you’ve never seen the look, imagine trying to explain to your 95-year-old grandfather that served in World War II and lived in an era of radio programs and decency the premise of “sexting.” At the point you get into the crux of what “sexting” is and why kids do it, that look that’s on your grandpa’s face is the look Chuck Grassley has 90% of the time, and it’s always hilarious.
If it was 1997, and a 29-year-old version of myself pulled up next to my then-1980-something Nissan pickup in a time-traveling Delorean and told a 16-year-old version of me that someday they would invent a website that connects nearly everyone I know and had met and lets me keep track of them, and that the site was used nearly exclusively for:
…then it’s 99% likely I never would have bought another computer and this site wouldn’t exist. The fact that you’re reading this is also indisputable proof that in the future, I will never own a time-traveling Delorean, because I would do just that.
Nineteen percent of young adult phone owners have dropped their phone in a toilet.
That statistic isn’t meant simply to inform readers, to be stored away and recalled again if the question is ever brought up on Jeopardy or, more likely, a morning radio show involving someone using alliteration in their moniker (“Loudmouth Larry” or “Raucous Rick” both are possibilities). This statistic is shared as somewhat of a test to split those of you reading it into two categories.
Allow me to detour for a minute. I despise people that use the phrase “There are two types of people in this world,” because, like people that use the word “literally” after something they only mean “figuratively” (“I was literally sweating bullets.” Really? Because that could be a profitable venture for us…I’m going to go turn up the heat), using this phrase is rarely correct. Usually it’s used to discern the people that enjoy a specific TV show, which is wildly inaccurate. If there are really two types of people in this world, the people that enjoy “The Jersey Shore,” and the people that don’t, it would require everyone in the world to know what that show was…a frightening possibility because I don’t think it would cast the United States in a very flattering light, and it would leave us open to people in other countries that generalize as much as people that ask that question do (“Everyone in the U.S. drinks, fights and then passes out on twin beds from IKEA. Literally.”).
It’s for this reason I won’t use that statement, but I will use it to divide up a good majority of the people that are reading this by saying that a majority of people that hear “Nineteen percent of young adult phone owners have dropped their phone in a toilet” will have one of two thoughts. First, many will think, “That’s disgusting. How does that happen?” Secondly, many will think, “That number seems kind of low…does that include people that don’t have cell phones?”
For the most part, I’d be willing to wager that most of us fall into that second category, but if we were in public we’d feign the first response for a simple reason: most people don’t admit that they’re using their cell phone when using the bathroom.
This is understandable.
It’s jarring to think that we may be receiving text messages or reading a status update from someone that is in a stall, but to be completely honest, a majority of us do it. For me, this is somewhat discouraging.
I don’t have a problem with people using their phone while in the bathroom – I do it all the time – but it’s the cultural trend that this is creating and what this ultimately suggests that is somewhat disheartening. I can describe this thought in one sentence:
We live in a society where people now expect to be entertained while using the stool.
Think about it…how many young adults have you seen go more than an hour without using their cell phone? Think about the places where young adults are required to wait… waiting rooms, oil change places, Kentucky Fried Chicken (“Oh, you want chicken? That’ll be about a five minute wait.” That’s a legitimate quote I’ve heard from them.), etc.
Look at any of these places, and you’re bound to see nearly every young adult with their head down, thumbing away at a screen.
Really, I can’t blame anybody for this. I’m the exact same way in that, if given a few minutes, I tend to check my phone for new e-mails, news, Facebook updates and anything else that tends to keep me entertained. I try to remember what it was like to sit there without anything to keep me entertained and just let my mind wander, and it’s difficult to do. Usually, young adults just experience this these days on that one day each year when they forget to plug in their phone the night before and it goes dead. This is usually a traumatic experience.
Is this a change in human behavior with the introduction of a device that allows us to simultaneously use a toilet while “liking” a friend’s status about how they’re going to go work out after they get off of work, or have young adults always had the urge to be entertained, but just didn’t have the means? I suppose that would explain growing up with magazines next to the toilet, but I don’t recall those being used so frequently that they were dropped into the toilet with 19% regularity, even with the smaller “Reader’s Digest” versions.
We’ve reached a point in our society where we have begun to expect to be entertained at every moment. Interests shift as quickly as thoughts pop into our head…we’ll go from checking baseball scores to going onto Facebook to wish somebody a happy birthday to checking a new e-mail that just came in – all in the span of two minutes – and not give it another thought. This is because the technology is available.
I’m betting there are many like me and has tried to remember the name of the lesser-known Ocean’s 11 guy that was in “Enemy of the State” that was on TV, so you look it up on imdb.com and then find out that he’s the son of James Caan, who apparently is working a lot on several projects and has a long film career, but what the hell was he doing between 1983 and 1987 where he was in nothing, so I Google “James Caan 1984” expecting to find a stint in rehab and somehow stumble across a page of horse memorials where I find that he owned a palomino stallion that he named “Golden Caantender,” which makes me feel a little ill, and now surprised that there is a page dedicated entirely to horse memorials complete with a cheesy quote at the top by Stanley Harrison, which makes me wonder if he wrote exclusively horse poetry, and so I Google “Stanley Harrison” and find only that same quote about horses on other horse pages, so I broaden it and Google “Stanley Harrison poet” and find that, indeed, he was nearly exclusively a horse poet, which leads to the obvious question of “how much does a horse poet make” and “what other oddly specific types of poets are out there.” I consider Googling these briefly before remembering that I’m at work and don’t want our network guy approaching me asking why I’m Googling horse poets, so I go to the bathroom to use the stool and Google “donkey poems” on my phone.
There you go. I just went from Scott Caan to donkey poetry in about five minutes due entirely to the accessibility of technology. Fifteen years ago, I would have abandoned the urge to visit the library to find a reference book to look this information up, and would have gone about my day. That just doesn’t happen today.
We live in an age where technology allows us to look up literally (yes, that’s used correctly) anything we want in just a couple of minutes. Life has become far less philosophical and far more concrete, and this quest for knowledge has brought us from the library into a bathroom stall. The problem is, we rarely use it for self-betterment. There’s nobody learning Latin while on the toilet or learning about World War II while waiting for an oil change or trying to bust age-old math problems while waiting for a KFC to cook some chicken, which should be ready, because it’s already included in their freaking name. We use it for the most ridiculous questions that we never would have wasted a ride to the library for in the past, but now will gladly sacrifice two minutes to find out.
We need to learn what it’s like to simply sit there and do nothing, and give our mind the freedom to wonder what would happen if someone did, indeed, fill up a swimming pool with Jello. Go ahead and Google it…I’ll wait.
I can’t imagine what life will be like 50 years from now, as technology improves and, eventually, leaves me behind at the point where most 80-year-olds are…a bit intimidated by multiple buttons and not wanting to inadvertently blow up Cuba while trying to send a “letter” to my grandson. I imagine at that point that I’ll find myself in the former rather than latter category when posed a statistic about what people are doing in the bathroom with technology (re-reading that sentence, I think I’m as disturbed with how that’s worded now as I will be when I’m 80). Maybe technology will reach the point where it’s just normal to access information constantly, maybe people will grow jaded by technology and abandon all of it in the future, or maybe our brains will be assisted by electronics to recall the information without using handheld devices.
No matter what happens, if we hold on to our old practices and habits the way our elders do now, chances are people using their phones in the stalls is something that will happen the rest of my life. I’m just hoping that someday they develop the technology to make the damn things waterproof.
Editor’s note: This post I originally wrote for my cancer blog (http://lessthannuts.blogspot.com) a short time after I was diagnosed with testicular cancer and had surgery. Not wanting this site to sit empty while I waited for inspiration to write something, I’ll repost it here. Enjoy!
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Well, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about my “cancer thing,” so in order to share information with long-lost friends and avoid the awkward phone calls with very little information (“Old buddy from college? It’s Greg. My tumor markers dropped a little! OK, I’ll see you at VEISHEA in five years!”) I decided to start this blog and share my overly personal experience of losing a testicle to cancer. Just imagine…before blogs, this would have taken hundreds of overly-personal Christmas cards.
Anyways, it was August 15 when I first noticed something was amiss. I was sitting in a city council meeting when I noticed that one of my testicles was hurting (that was a fun sentence to type knowing fully well my grandmother will likely read this…HI NANA!). I’m not one to put off pain because I’m scared of hospitals at all. I’ve got health insurance, so I’m going to use it if there’s anything I’m worried about, but this situation was unusual. I had rode a horse the day before (the first time I had done this since I was small enough to be lifted on top of one), and not being used to being jostled up and down, I figured I had landed weird while the horse was galloping and had bruised one of them. “I’ll give it a day,” I thought.
The next day I noticed a fruity sensation. This was entirely attributed to the Fruit Stripe gum I was chewing, however, and the pain in my testicle was gone. I completely forgot all about the pain and my reference to a chewing gum popular in the mid-90s and went on with my life.
It wasn’t until two weeks later that the pain returned, same testicle. I made several jokes with my wife, including a few about it being cancer, and made the same promise: if it’s still there tomorrow, I’ll get it checked out.
The next day the pain remained, so I called up a local physician. I hadn’t been to the doctor since moving to Boone except for a physical for the fire department, which was paid for by the city. When I inquired about returning to the doctor I saw that day, I found out my insurance didn’t cover that provider. My wife, however, had received a tetanus booster from a doctor that did accept our insurance – Dr. Mehlhaus.
This leads to something that is a new subject all in itself…small-town life. When I had my fire department physical, I was holding a urine sample when I passed my next-door neighbor, who thanked me for the cookies my wife and I had made for them a few weeks earlier (tip: if you don’t own a snow blower, but your neighbor does, learn how to bake). It also turns out that I’m in Rotary Club with Dr. Mehlhaus (typing that sentence, I feel like a 90-year-old telling a story that they are making purposefully long). Eating lunch every week with a person that you make an appointment to look at your testicle is difficult, but I’d heard good things about him, he was a very nice guy in Rotary and I had a high opinion of him. To summarize, living in a small town is funny…chances are if you’re holding a container of urine or having a bulge on your nut examined, you’re going to run into someone you know, so modesty is something you learn to live without.
My opinion of Mehlhaus being a decent guy nearly changed when I was led to his Iowa Hawkeye-filled patient room. I felt like I was being recruited and wondered silently if any patients were offended by this. I reminded myself that Iowa State didn’t have a medical school and waited for the doc. (Note: Despite his Hawkeye allegience, I now view Mehlhaus as the best doctor in the world)
Mehlhaus showed up and we spent about five minutes shooting the breeze about a recent bond issue, which was cut short by him asking me to drop my pants…an odd conversation shifter. He inspected, had me pull my pants back up, and immediately hopped on the phone trying to set me up with an ultrasound at BCH. Apparently everything in the city was booked up that day because he left the room and spent 15 minutes on the phone, using his skills of negotiation to get something set up.
He came back in the room and didn’t mince words: he was worried. It was either very severe epididymitis or testicular cancer. He told me if it was epididy-whatever I’d take some pain medication and they’d monitor me. He said if it was testicular cancer, survival rates were 95-98 percent and I’d have surgery. He said he had set me up with someone he knew in Des Moines and wanted me to drive down there now. Not in four hours, not tomorrow…go get in your car, tell people at work not to expect you today and leave.
This was an unexpected turn, but I nodded along with him as if I was given a cancer diagnosis all of the time. I asked about the epididymitis, as if he were a mechanic telling me my car had either a chipped windshield or a blown transmission and I had responded with, “Oh man, does it look like the crack has started to spread at all?”
I thanked him, left, ran home to swap cars with my wife and share the news, which I actually gave her over the phone on the way home. I stressed the high survival rate, told her not to worry and met her at home looking for my iPod. She asked if I was in shock, and I told her not really…I fully understood the risks, and I absolutely did. I was more concerned with making a 45-minute drive to Des Moines without my 160 gigs of music (as usual, on any given day, 98% of my music is crap, but I have to skip through it all).
I stopped at work and gave them the news, which is not easy. Telling a newspaper staff that the person who usually does all of the layout, writes a couple of stories (I had two I was in the process of writing for the next day) and alters the photos that instead of doing that today, he’ll be leaving, eight hours before deadline is…tough. Obviously the possibility of cancer is a flawless excuse, but I still felt bad.
I showed up in Des Moines and was told to meet my urologist. I showed up at the lobby, was given my sign-in stuff and delicately asked a question to the clerk. “I need to use the bathroom. I assume, with this being the urology department, you’ve got, like, 50 of them. Can you point me to one of them?”
They only had two, but one was unoccupied. In there, with it being urology, I noticed a tray of urinalysis cups. A sign prompted visitors to leave a urine sample if they could. “Wow, just like a fancy hotel,” I thought to myself. “Why not?”
I left the bathroom, and my urine sample in the metal cabinet, and went back to the paperwork. I had filled out quite a bit of paperwork that day and was getting tired of it all. This paperwork was ridiculous…all questions focused on my urination habits. Do you have trouble urinating? Nope. Get up frequently at night to urinate? Nope. Reason for visit? Cancer. Allergies? “Cats, but I do not ingest these orally,” I wrote.
A nurse came out and got me and we went through the routine – she takes my height, weighs me, I make the same stupid joke I’m sure all patients make about how the patient questionnaire I’m holding must weigh 10 pounds, and I’m led to a small room.
My urologist was awesome. He checked me out, said the same thing Mehlhaus told me, sent me to an ultrasound tech in the same building, and it was there that I started to get slightly nervous. I walked into the ultrasound tech place, signed in, and sat down amongst a crowd of about 25 people. Not two minutes later, a nurse came out for me…not a good sign.
I threw on the gown, laid down and looked around at all the maternity pictures of mothers with their babies as the tech put ultrasound gel on my nuts. I’m sure it was awkward for the both of us, but it gave me a chance to leaf through the latest copy of Parenting magazine while she went over my testicles with something that looked like an airport security wand. I resisted the urge to ask her if it was a boy.
From there, she left, leaving me in the room for about 15 minutes and I was sweating a bit. It wasn’t until this point that I started thinking about how this might be somewhat serious and asking myself if Mehlhaus and my oncologist were simply telling me the best odds and not the most practical odds of beating this. Fifteen minutes in a room normally reserved for people excited to find out the sex of their baby when you’re facing a diagnosis you’re still unsure of is an eternity.
When the tech came back in and told me to go back to my urologist, I was nervous. When I got back to the crowded urology department, signed in, and my urologist came into the waiting room to get me himself, I knew.
Sure enough, there was a mass. The urologist was 90% sure it was testicular cancer, and said there was a 10% chance it was just a mass. Surgery was scheduled, I was given no options on time, I was to show up for surgery the next day at 8:30 a.m. I immediately called my wife, who understandably was freaking out, but kept it together very well in front of her daycare kids. Next I called my parents and brother to let them know, which is an interesting experience. “Hey, mom? What’s going on? Oh, really, Amy’s doing good in cross country? That’s awesome! Anna’s doing well also? That’s great. Anyways, not a big deal, and I don’t want you to freak out, but I’ve got what looks like testicular cancer and I’m having surgery tomorrow.”
Obviously, my parents freaked out. Anybody hears cancer and they think the worst, but I honestly wasn’t all that worried at the time. I had asked questions, and based on the odds and the state it was in, testicular cancer to me was like the Detroit Lions of cancer (post-written edit Sept. 27: I’m starting to regret typing that looking at their record so far this season). It’s this reason why I don’t really look at myself as “battling cancer,” a term that’s used a lot these days. It’s difficult to describe, but being a huge fan of metaphors, it’s like when top clothing designers do a line for K-Mart. “Is that Gucci?” “Technically, yes.” That’s how I feel with my testicular cancer. “You have cancer?” “Well, technically, yes.” That might be the most non-heterosexual metaphor I could throw out there, but I preceded it with a football reference, and I only have one testicle, so cut me some slack.
My favorite part of this was telling a couple friends, who reacted exactly how I needed them to react in that circumstance (and I knew they would). Robson told me it sucked, but now I could make “I would give my left nut for…” statements with more validity. Vize matter-of-factly asked me if I had heard of the song “Half a Man” by Stephen Lynch. This is precisely the reaction I needed…the last thing I wanted was sympathy or people acting as if I’d been given horrible news. The odds are unbelievably high…do you tell somebody going in to have their appendix removed, “I’m so sorry, you’re going to be OK. You’re in my thoughts and prayers.” It’s a sweet thought, but not entirely appropriate.
Hanging with my wife the evening before surgery is an odd experience. I felt like my left testicle was on death row, but I didn’t know the best way to give it its last meal. We both joked about it (mainly me…this entire process has been hell on her, as it would be for me if she was going through it), had some Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and went to bed. Surprisingly, I slept like a baby that night. I’m unusual.
The next day, more of the same. Same paperwork, same joke about ingesting cats, thrown into a gown and put on an IV. Lauren had the difficult part…she had to actually be conscious through the surgery. I went into huge room with a bunch of people, debating whether or not it would be appropriate to ask if they could put a Junior Mint in my sack to help balance out the weight so I wouldn’t steer right when I walked. I felt the timing was inappropriate, so I put that one away to use later (apparently here).
They put the good stuff in my IV and told me they were starting the knockout stuff. I started to ask them if they wanted me to count to a certain number or if I should just…holy crap, I’m waking up in recovery.
My eyes were heavy and I struggled to regain consciousness. A nurse noticed and asked me how I was doing. I asked for a late checkout and where continental breakfast was…a horribly lame joke that seemed even lamer with how exaggeratedly they laughed at it.
I was given pudding…hardly a consolation to losing a testicle…and two packages of crackers. This seemed like an odd combination, but I was hungry. They didn’t have coffee there, so I settled for a Sprite. I still feel bad for this, but my wife hadn’t eaten all morning and there were no vending machines in the lobby. She ate one of my saltines, to which I jokingly accused her of pilfering my “surgery crackers,” which prompted a nurse to bring my wife a package of them. They sat untouched, my wife embarrassed. I still feel horrible about that…I don’t think she had eaten for 18 hours at that point, and wouldn’t until we got home.
I was disappointed that they didn’t give me my testicle so I could have it stuffed and put on a keychain, but apparently they needed it for a biopsy. My wife drove me home and I slowly worked my way upstairs and into bed. Ice, Playstation, mini corndogs and Percocet got me through the next two days, although the pain wasn’t bad at all. I was off pain killers and drinking wine at my in-law’s house three days later. Four days afterwards, I was at my parent’s house in Omaha hanging out with them for Grandma’s birthday.
Biopsy came back – it was cancer. However, the cancer was contained to the testicle itself – a four-centimeter long growth on my left testicle. People from Canada are gasping right now…for Americans, that’s about 1-1/2 inches long. Oh yeah…my testicle grows cancer better than teenagers grow crops on Farmville.
I went through a CT scan, which was interesting, and waited for the results. Everybody was optimistic. For the first time, I wasn’t, and I don’t know why. I think I was worried that with everyone else assuming it was done, I should be wary. Results of the CT scan came back…once again we went to my urologist who told us that I’d be going through three rounds of chemo. The odds of success with the chemo for the type of cancer I have are good, he said, about 95-98%.
So, that’s where I’m at right now. My wife and family has understandably been freaking out about this, as I believe I would be, too. If Lauren was going through this, even with odds near-perfect, I would freak out. Me, however, I’m not worried.
I’ve never seen the point of worrying about stuff like this. At this point, there’s nothing I can do about this except to move ahead. Worrying isn’t going to do a thing about this other than freak myself out, freak family and friends out and completely ruin what would otherwise be a good day. Besides, looking at this, it’s kind of a funny situation when you want it to be. I’d rather laugh about how bizarre and funny this entire process is than sit there and reflect on the process. Besides…95% odds? Chances are better that I’ll get in a car crash on the way to chemo than for my treatment to not be effective.
I look at chemo the same way I do as watching “The Deadliest Catch.” If offered the chance, would I work on one of those crab boats, without pay? Hell no…but part of me wonders what it would be like and how I would handle it. It’s the exact same way with chemo…it’s not something I would voluntarily sign up for, but I’ve always wondered what it would be like and how I would handle it. It’s completely messed up, but I’m kind of excited to get it started.
So, that’s where we’re at. I have Stage 2 K-Mart Cancer, I’m going through three rounds of chemo (which may leave me bald around Halloween…something that opens up all new worlds of possibilities for costumes) and I find the entire process oddly funny. Sure, it’s somewhat serious…any disease is…but it’s not anything that people haven’t gone through before and with cure rates as high as they are, it’s not anything that I’m going to worry about.
Going from pain in a testicle to removing that testicle within 24 hours, and then learning I’d need chemo two weeks later…that can seem either kind of scary/sad or really pretty funny. It all depends on how you look at it, and I will always look at that type of situation from a humorous viewpoint…it just doesn’t make sense to do it any other way.
So, for family and friends that have read this far, take the fun route…joke about me winning the Tour de France, tease me about being half a man and laugh when I say, “Man, it’s hot in here…I’m sweating my ball off.” This isn’t a scary situation…I don’t think people freak out about doing anything else with a 98% success rate (did you know it’s the same success rate as having Lasik eye surgery?).
Finding humor in situations where others find sadness is going to make your life a whole lot more fun. Believe me. I’m not entirely crazy, I’m only half-nuts.