Stephen G. Tomlinson
Aground
Chapter Eight: Aground
After I had returned from Op Caribbe, I took some leave to spend some time with Steph and the kids. It had been an amazing trip and I felt more pride overall with the course of my career than at any other point I can recall. It was then that all those pieces and many of the things that I had regretted from not experiencing in my early career all came together and I remember a feeling of deep contentment to know that I would now be able to do my tour in Calgary free from the niggling worries that had dogged me before about finishing my first two sea tours without seeing much of the world or earning any bling. Stephanie had been amazing through the whole deployment and the kids were doing well after a seamless reintegration. We enjoyed some festivals in the downtown core and spent a lot of time with our friends Tiffany and Corey and their kids, going to parks, birthday parties and the general hustle bustle of day-to-day life.
My first day back with Calgary we had an Orca trip that had been in the early planning stages when I had left. The idea was to take the BWKs and the combat department for an overnight professional development and teamwork trip. Its nice to get out of the office for small trips like that and even though I had just come back I was expected to go and was thrilled to. It was nice to catch up with my friends in that environment and be able to tell some stories from the deployment and get the lay of the land in terms of things that were needing to be picked back up. It was extra thrilling for me because the other directors were out too, so Sara and I were able to talk about all the things that she had looked after for me with my division and effect the turnover of everything back to me. Truth be told there was no way that I would have even been able to go on the deployment if it weren’t for how quickly and how selflessly she took my whole portfolio as the stand-in ‘Subbie wrangler’ and looked after several pet projects that the Captain had assigned me so that I could drop it all and sail. There was a lot of new projects on the go as well so it was good to split that workload again since I had felt a bit guilty for dropping so much on her and going to chase drug runners.
It was good to catch up with Sean as well who was in the midst of a slew of posting problems associated with his operational status that had cropped up during his return to work from cancer. I still joked with him about it, trying to be sympathetic but really wanting him to know and to understand that I wanted him to feel like nothing between us had changed. No part of him having cancer was funny, it was all the kind of gallows humour that sailors use to pass the time when they are coping with things. I remembered how differently some people spoke to him after they found out and I had never changed pace and he seemed to appreciate it. The way I saw it I wanted him to know how much I cared. He didn’t know it but the way that I had avoided the very surgery he had with a round of antibiotics left me feeling guilty because I knew exactly how he would have felt right up to where they said it was cancer. I couldn’t even imagine having to endure hearing news like that and having all your plans and dreams come into question.
We went to anchor over by Montague Harbour in the Southern Gulf Islands and went ashore in a Zodiac so we could hike to a bar that was on the far side of Galiano Island. It was a long walk, but very beautiful and picturesque. The road wound over a large hill through gorgeous backcountry as we walked along its side. The group went together but I felt exhausted. I was very frustrated because I had been coughing since I had gotten back. The allergies that time of year were unreal, and it was frustrating after losing 30 pounds while I was away to be sweatily huffing and puffing my way through the woods. I was self-conscious about it but still managed ok. It was a legitimately taxing walk so at least in a short time I wasn’t alone in being winded.
I walked with a large group initially, but they were far faster than I was, so I gradually got left behind as they moved on. Thankfully Sara wasn’t interested in rushing her way there, so we were able to talk. It was nice to catch up since her life was very busy with her new boyfriend, discussions of them moving in together and with the troubles she was facing through the mess of her divorce. We talked about the Navy, the problems inherent, and shared some of our favourite stories from when were away. I was incredibly excited to hear some of her stories from when she had deployed with Winnipeg for 10 months on a trip literally around the entire world. Eventually we came upon a picturesque cottage-style pub called The Hummingbird where we grabbed a seat on the patio and ordered several pitchers with the other officers from Calgary.
It was a very nice night. In addition to catching up with some of the people I had missed it was also good to get to know some of the OROs who I hadn’t really been able to find a groove with yet. We laughed and spun our dits and joked about each other, especially with Sean, as they received real-time cancellations on his posting message to Kingston ON that he had just spooled his family up to move to. We were all in awe of how cold the system was and naturally gave him a hard time for it. After a long, moonlit shamble back over the island we all eventually ended up down at the pier and got back to the ship late but feeling like a very cohesive group, which was of course the idea.
The next day we had a fun day at sea doing some training and making preps for the Cowboy Up, an annual party thrown by Calgary, and continuing sorting out the details from the turnovers and resuming my role as the navigator. It was important to me to get the reigns back quickly. I despised more than anything having people be impacted by my problems and had always striven to hold my own with enough reserve to help others as well. To me the idea of being a burden or being viewed as pulling anything less than my own weight had to be the most objectionable and offensive thing I could imagine so being able to squash all those fears and anxieties about people losing respect for me and to have enjoyed a truly awesome overnight trip made that one of my favourite Orca sails.
After that trip and the leave period and some nice settling back in I went back in to work at the Calgary shore office. It was a challenge to jump back into the work there which entailed a substantial amount of administration that had been managed but was still in need of some extensive work. I overhauled my divisional notes for my Sub-Lieutenants, generated training plans and tried my best to manage my people since they were being requested constantly for attach postings. One of my main focuses however was on working through the massive stack of personal administration that we are required to maintain in order to remain deployable called a ‘DAG’. I took some courses online, re-certified my First Aid, got my dental checks done and continued down the list. As I worked through my courses and appointments, I started to find it increasingly annoying that the cough that I had been plagued by still hadn’t gone away. I took some decongestants and allergy pills which helped so I carried on because I was determined to get through the DAG before the summer so I would still be good the next year when there would not be a lot of time to get many of them done. Everywhere I looked people seemed to have the same cough since as I said the allergies were really bad that season and I figured it made sense since I was away and got dropped into the heart of it all. I was very busy, and I did not have time for delays, so I plowed on.
After about a month home I passed my five-year medical with most of my allergies finally starting to subside, but the damn cough was still very present and was starting to concern me. I didn’t know what to make of it and it was a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme with some decongestants and a bit of ibuprofen, so I carried on down my list and completed my flood damage re-certification. I was mainly concerned because I had my PT test coming and with the damn cough wouldn’t go away and I was worried about doing it and failing because of something so silly. It was still not terrible, just persistent and annoying so I thought to myself that once I get through my certifications I would get it checked if it still hadn’t gone away.
On Monday May 26th, 2017 I did my FORCE test, the PT evaluation that replaced the EXPRES test a few years prior. There are timed events with sandbags and running emphasizing common tasks that are faced by anyone who wears the uniform, and which may be needed in an emergency. Thankfully a pass is far more readily attainable for me than had been the case with the EXPRES test, because the volume of running had been reduced and doing sandbag lifts was something that I was good at, but it was the cough that was the x factor for me. I took a substantial amount of pseudo-ephedrine and drank a lot of water, and I was able to manage a decent enough pass. I was jubilant to be through the assessment and the cough, though worsening, seemed suddenly like less of a big deal.
It was around the start of June when I first started to notice that I felt short of breath walking into work. I had always been a big guy, but it should not have felt as hard as it did and it seemed to be getting worse and worse each day. The cough didn’t feel like it was worsening but it was certainly not getting better and by then I was becoming very worried about why it hadn’t gone away. I still had some re-certifications to finish and was too stubborn to slow down because I had a plan and was working through it. It was, of course, at the tail end of allergy season and so I remained convinced, despite it having been 5 weeks, that the cough would eventually go away on its own.
In the meantime, my day-to-day job at the Calgary Shore Office was not very physically taxing so my performance was fine and, outside of annoying the hell out of Sean and Sara, who sat on either side of me, from the constant hacking away, I carried on. I still had to do a certification for my attack team leader qualification which I had vigorously maintained since Protecteur and I wanted to make sure I covered that off now while I had time and I figured I would head to the doctor the next week and get it checked out if things didn’t improve.
Things in general started to feel very off. It’s very difficult to quantify but something felt odd inside me. I felt like a piece of fruit that was just starting to turn. I had come to notice that my appetite was down and that I was nauseated by the thought of eating a portion even half of what was normal for me. I gradually noticed as well that the shortness of breath was so bad that I would sometimes have trouble seeing. I would see a blurry glaring spot on the left side of my vision, like the spots that linger when you are blinded by a bright light. I was really getting worried. I consoled myself with the fact that I had looked it up and figured it could be bronchitis that had been caused by the allergies. The visual distortion was easy enough in my mind to chalk up to not getting enough air, so I was getting lightheaded. Collectively I figured I would get it checked soon enough and just focused on the last steps before the Canada Day long weekend.
At home things at home were just as busy. Stephanie and I were very excited then because we were going to finally take the kids to Disneyland. We had discussed how to spend a large backpay that the government has issued after lifting a pay freeze that we had been under for several years. We had wanted to try to take the kids for years and it was always just too much or just out of reach. We finally had enough to make it doable. So, alongside all the divisional administration and the recertifications at work, at home, Stephanie and I gleefully sent the kids to bed and discussed the details or even shared pictures, and talked about it by text in the living room while they were distracted by their shows on TV.
We hammered together our ideal scenario and made a plan and a timeline; I booked the leave and we went to a travel agent and sorted the entire thing. It was going to be an incredible seven-day trip together and the kids were going to be absolutely beside themselves with happiness. We decided it was best to make it a surprise, so after it was booked, we continued to eagerly discuss it in secret, and we considered all the things we wanted to do to actually spring the surprise on them. As we arranged all the plans for the big reveal, I knew that I needed to get to a doctor soon so I could get my chest all cleared up with antibiotics before we left. I decided that I would finish my last recertification and then go and get the antibiotics. That would still give a few weeks for it to clear it away before we flew to the States. I am not the kind of person who will raise a fuss about small problems like a cough so despite all the warnings I plodded on.
By the time I got to my ATL recertification I felt like complete garbage. The exhaustion was there and the shortness of breath, but the pace of the course makes it very hard to ignore something like that as we are in full fire gear and handling firehoses with air tanks and casualty dummies, the whole shebang. It was nice because I was able to do the certification with Sara since everyone was trying to get through the recerts before the summer leave period. It was nice to have a familiar face around and in some ways, it felt just like being back at basic training. We joked and we chatted as we did most days and I confided in her that I was feeling like trash and that I was pretty sure the bronchitis had given me a lung infection or something. It was so much harder to fight the fires in the simulator and to extract the full body weight dummies in all the gear. I found myself in the trainer gasping so hard that the seal on my mask kept slipping and when I finished my first full run I noticed something very odd. It was the first time I truly quantified exactly how bad my breathing was as I checked my tank and it was at 1800 psi after being loaded to the full 4000. Every other time I had done DC school I was able to use a tank for two runs easily and usually only took about 1000 psi per run. I was using 2200 to 2500 per run and I knew it was accurate because of how desperately I was gasping whenever I was in there.
By the end of the day I was really exhausted. I could see the spots that came when I felt exerted and my lungs were on fire, but I was happy to have finished my long list. I was very worried though. My chest ached and my limbs felt like they were being fed battery acid from my heart which raced far longer than usual. My chest hurt and I felt so terrible and as I walked to the car, I coughed and worried about the stars that I saw and didn’t fully know what to make of. I needed to wait in my car to let it pass so I rolled down the windows and turned on some music. I suddenly had a massive coughing fit and was shocked to see blood on the Kleenex I used. I paused when I saw it. That moment remains etched in my memory as the moment that I knew something was very wrong. Regardless, I clung to my bronchitis thought. “It must be that,” I thought while I tried to settle my breathing and push away the spots that made it impossible to drive. I coughed more and it was getting worse. It was so bright and shocking, but I still didn’t think it was anything more than the amount I had exerted myself in the trainer having cut up my throat and some lingering bronchitis. That said, I knew that I needed to see someone.
I was very concerned and drove home for the Canada Day long weekend thinking to myself that maybe I should go to a walk-in clinic. I ended up going home where I sat in the living room while Stephanie spoke to me about the day-to-day and it was almost hard to hear her, like she was far away. I read my phone and searched for the things that could cause someone to cough blood. The word CANCER seemed almost written in larger letters or in darker lettering. It wasn’t, obviously, but the power of that word in a list of any possible causes was staggering. Seeing it there made my heart drop, but thankfully I was able to cling to the hope that it would be fine, just like last time I went in afraid of cancer. Deep down I thought for sure that antibiotics would save the day, so I didn’t feel like I needed to worry, untreated bronchitis was there on the list as well and it even listed the most common reason being from coughing too much and tearing up the back of the throat. I knew I had been coughing a lot at the school, so I consoled myself and we tried to enjoy the weekend.
Throughout the weekend I coughed up more blood. It was getting worse and was progressing consistently from streaks to full on bright red froth and mucus. It was disgusting and very scary, but somehow I managed to still convince myself that it was fine because I would be going to a doctor soon. I was lying to myself. This was not the first time that I had worried about cancer after all and I could not bear the thought of having to tangle with that and all it would entail. I would just take some cough suppressants and manage because it was just bronchitis and I was fine. The night of the 1st of July as I watched the fireworks burst over the beautiful cityscape of Victoria with Stephanie, the kids, our friends Tiffany and Corey, and their boys, I worried deeply. I watched the excited stares on their faces and tried to enjoy the moment, but I was tortured by the idea that it was something more than bronchitis. At that point I just so desperately wanted to get it taken care of that I should have gone to a walk-in, but it was the Canada Day long weekend and I was focused on trying to enjoy that time and not be a bother to anyone. It was easy to distract myself anyway with the amazing summer that we had in front of us.
The next day I should have gone to the base hospital, but we had ceremonial divisions, so I needed to be dressed all up in my DEUs and reporting to one of the jetties since all member of the ship’s company were required and Command was very clear that there were no excuses. Being a dutiful guy, I knew that meant I had to go. My misery aside, orders were orders, and I felt that I needed to just deal with it. Of course, I know now that if I had said I needed to go to the base hospital because I was coughing up blood they would have asked me why the hell I wasn’t there already. In retrospect I can’t believe it made sense to keep delaying but at the time I know that it made perfect sense to me.
I pressed up my uniform and walked in to work with Dave whom I gave a ride in. We talked, it was good to catch up since he had been away on course and helping with a court martial for a long time and our schedules had rarely seen us able to connect much. I was hacking away the whole way in and feeling very gassed. I remember telling him that I was worried and that something was very wrong inside me. I felt like total trash and could hardly breathe. I was sweating really badly and felt super uncomfortable, but I put on my face, and carried a paper towel in my pocket to dry my forehead and sucked it up. It wasn’t all bad after all. I was super proud to see some friends finally get their medals for deploying on an earlier Op Caribbe, to see one of my favourite officers, my XO, Mike, finally get promoted to Commander, and to see one of my Sub Lieutenants get a certificate from the Captain that I had recommended him for after a very busy duty where he had helped one of our other ships in an emergency.
When it was done, I headed back into the shore office and changed into my NCDs and headed over to Venture. I was expected there so I needed to go even though I debated heading to the base hospital first. I got there and did some of the training scenarios with the fleet BWKs in the simulators but by noon there was far more support than was needed for the relatively small group. I was supposed to head back to the shore office but wasn’t really needed for anything so I told my guys I would see them tomorrow and asked them to remind the OROs that I was going to the Doctor first thing the next morning. That night I didn’t fret too much because I still clung to the ludicrous hope that I just needed some antibiotics to clear up my chest and I would be right as rain. Deep down though I felt very sick. I had fears ever since I had seen ‘the C-word’ on the list that I had checked a few days before. My sleep that night was restless and was broken repeatedly by the wheezing cough that scared me more and more with each hack.
On the morning of Wednesday July 5th, 2017, I got dressed for work and stopped at Tim Hortons on my way in. I grabbed a large coffee and a bagel breakfast sandwich like I did most mornings and I went to the base hospital. I listened to Ronnie James Dio in the car as I drove. I felt the warmth of the sun and headed in early to avoid the traffic. I thought about Disneyland and about the Metallica concert that I had lined up in August. I just needed to get some antibiotics and then I would have such a wonderful summer, the summer of Steve. These details likely sound mundane and for all the other days of my life I could guess at what I had for breakfast, what the weather was like, what I was wearing or what I listened to in the car on my way to work. For me though July 5th will remain forever etched in my heart as the day that everything changed. The day that I changed. In its own way it was the last day of my life because by noon of that day I would never be the same person again.
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I waited in the room patiently. I had filled out the standard sick parade question form and waited to be called. I planned out my day and was pretty sure that I would request a day of sick leave just to let the antibiotics work and barring that I was considering just calling my supervisor and requesting to leave early so I could have the afternoon to recover and let the antibiotics start to work. When I was called I went into the exam room with a pleasant enough Sergeant who was there for the summer doing training as a Physician’s Assistant (PA). Personnel in training positions like that frequently do the first checks and can handle most issues seen on sick parade so I was unphased by not being seen right away by a doctor. I told him why I was there and was clear that I was not going to accept being told to go home and wait and come back if it gets worse. I told him “please don’t give me Cepocol and some platitudes, I need antibiotics and to be taken seriously. Something is very wrong.” He smiled at the reference to Cepocol (a staple prescription in the military) and listened to my chest. I couldn’t even breathe deeply without coughing. It was nice to know that it was being looked at. He surprised me when he said that I needed to go for some bloodwork and an x-ray and to come right back and wait. Maybe surprised isn’t the best word since I had been x-rayed as a kid when I got pneumonia, so I figured that maybe he thought I had it again. “That does make sense; pneumonia would definitely feel shitty like this and it was on that list too I guess,” I thought to myself, while I worked my way from the blood clinic to the imaging department. I was just afraid that it would overlap with the trip and tried to picture myself walking all over Disney with pneumonia.
As I got back to the waiting area at the clinic I grabbed a seat in the waiting room next to my direct supervisor, Jay, who was by to see someone. He and I got along fairly well so we chatted about work, some of the outstanding odds and ends and he told me that we should arrange to do sports days or something for the section, so we could get out of the shore office once in a while. I agreed and had been wanting to get something like that going, but I so rarely had much of a section because of the taskings they were always sent away on. I told him I was planning to probably take the rest of the day off but said that I would call him once I got out to confirm and he was fine with it. I got called by the PA after about 15 minutes of waiting and excused myself. As it turned out Jay was the last person I would speak to casually about anything before cancer would grab hold of me.
It’s a funny thing kind of to look back on the moment when I was told. Obviously not ‘haha funny’ as they say on The Simpsons. It’s a moment that everyone who has had to endure the fight against cancer has experienced. It is a moment I had seen portrayed in movies and TV shows. It’s the sort of thing I myself had thought of in total seriousness in my life. “What is that like? What do you say? How would I take the news of being told I had cancer?” I had processed a lot of the emotion leading up to this point in my earlier scare. In this case I had seen it on the list but was completely in denial so as I stood and made my way down that hall I was taking the long walk and had no clue whatsoever. When I remember that moment I feel like I am remembering a movie or a dream because it was one of the most chimeric and extraordinary experiences of my life. It’s difficult even now, after going through everything, to even believe that it really happened.
I walked the short distance down the hall with the Sergeant who moved to the corner of the room behind the doctor. The doctor was a petite middle-aged woman who looked to be in her fifties. She sat in the room in front of her computer and asked for me to take a seat, “Mr. Tomlinson, My name is Jane, how are you feeling?” she asked with a certain formality in her tone. I remember starting to feel anxious. “Why is the Sergeant still here?” I thought to myself as the door was closed behind me. Him being in there with the doctor in and of itself was weird. I looked at her and passed some platitudes about hoping to get this fixed so I can carry on. I wasn’t really thinking about my answer because I was watching the doctor. There was something wrong. Her tone, her demeanor, her body language, everything, were all very guarded and practiced. It almost felt like I had walked into a pre-rehearsed scene and was looking for the camera.
The Sergeant had a sombre look on his face and didn’t really look at me much. In that moment I felt my defenses going up in my head. It was a primal feeling of cold dread and fear that let me know deep down, instinctively, to brace for shock. That preparation unfortunately means that the next words that Dr. Jane spoke remain so vividly etched into my memory that I still hear them from time to time in my head. The scene replayed in my dreams for over a week afterward and only really stopped because the circumstances escalated so drastically that within a short time this was not even going to feel like that big of a deal. “Mr. Tomlinson,” she began, hesitantly. “I see that you came in for bronchitis following a persistent cough lasting approximately two months which has recently started to cause you to cough up blood.” I agreed, sheepishly, very aware that she was not done. “We sent you down for some x-rays and I am afraid that they have shown something far more serious. We found lesions throughout both of your lungs as well as dozens, if not hundreds, of nodule growths that I am sorry to say are indicative of Metastatic Cancer.”
Time for me stopped in that moment. The C-word. “Cancer. She said the word Cancer. She said Mr. Tomlinson and then she said Cancer.” I thought that I had prepared to hear those words before; nothing can prepare someone for that moment, for what that word means. I was immediately in shock. It was like being punched in the stomach. As she continued, I could almost feel her voice pull away, like the volume was turning down. I could hear the rasp in my breathing, felt the sting of the pain in my lungs from the lesions and for the first time I took a breath with Cancer. “You see approximately one year ago you came in for Epididymitis for which you were given antibiotics and had some imaging done. You were supposed to have been sent for a follow up scan but for whatever reason that never occurred. I am not positive, but I think that it is possible that this was either a very early warning sign or the beginnings of testicular cancer. Regardless of what that was caused by though I am afraid that it appears that at some point in the interim you developed testicular cancer, it has metastasized and has spread to your lungs.” She stopped, clearly aware that I was in need of a moment to process what she was saying. She gestured toward me with a box of Kleenex and said, “I am sure at this point you can barely hear what I am saying.”
In my own head I watched all my plans for the summer blowing up at me; my career plans, family, everything fired through my head so quickly it was almost dizzying. I was in shock and was totally speechless. I looked at the Sergeant and the doctor and I realized it was my turn to say something. Part of me wanted to just absolutely lose it but the shock helped me to not break down. I realized that this was that very moment, the one that is in the shows and movies, I decided that I wanted the story of my life to include that I remained composed because I honestly had no idea what else to do and my training told me that I should stay calm and handle what was said. Nothing would be gained by me freaking out. In many ways it was like when I went from the bridge of Protecteur to the dispersal area. Maybe if I faked it I could convince them that I was tough because I took the news in stride and with dignity. I would vent later when I got to a safe spot. “Um. What does that mean? Can it be treated?” I asked. “Am I going to die?” I thought beneath it all.
Dr. Jane continued to talk about the diagnosis and encouraged me to not feel totally crushed by it. “Listen I know this is very scary but trust me of the cancers you could have this is a good one.” She said before moving on to her other points. She told me that I would be referred to a urologist who would look over everything and verify her suspicions. I would also need to go to have an ultrasound done on my right testicle and based on those findings I would need to have my right testicle removed. She tried to keep reassuring me saying over and over that it was not ideal, but it was a good cancer because it is treatable even when it is moving through the body. To be honest as much as the word Cancer had scared the hell out of me it was the other word: Metastatic that truly set my teeth on edge. I knew nothing about cancer, but I knew enough to know that when it metastasises it meant very bad things.
The good news continued: “because of the extent of the spread you will likely need chemotherapy and maybe radiation depending on what they think over at the Cancer Centre. In the end you will be off and doing treatment for about 6 months and then hopefully you can carry on living a long and full life.” I listened to what she said, “chemo” I thought to myself, “holy shit.” I thought about the six months and overlaid my plans for work that had been the primary driver of my plans in life. By some cursory math I realized that I wouldn’t miss the big deployment and consoled myself with that thought and clung to the ludicrous and misguided hope that I could still go and see the world and that I didn’t need to worry about it. In that moment of denial and confusion as my whole world came apart around me I was willing to cling to any false hope, no matter how far-fetched because my scope of reality was in such tumult.
Dr. Jane assigned me a temporary medical category (TCAT) to relieve me of my duties and I was given the first in a long series of chits for sick leave. She had a long list of homework for me to do. I needed to get more blood tests and needed to see the urologist in a few days. I would need to actually go and have the testicle scanned again and of course I would need an examination right then and there. I was so stunned that I just agreed and took the papers that she handed me, wiping the newly forming tears that crept into the edges of my eyes. I was still so numb it would be a long time before the pain would actually surface in any real way.
We all moved to another exam room with a full table and she asked me to take a seat. She conducted a full testicular exam, really focusing on the right side. She said that there was a very slight soft patch but that it was incredibly subtle, and she understood that there was no way it could have been detected by me. She asked if it hurt and was surprised to hear it didn’t. When she was done she asked if maybe the Sergeant could feel so he can gain the experience of how it could feel if he encounters it in the future. I agreed and sort of laughed to myself that my passion for professional development had kind of blown up in my face. I remember hearing him take a breath just before he started saying “I’m sorry, thank you.” He listened to Dr. Jane’s points and did the same exam. I remember seeing the focus on his face. It was clear that this moment was being etched into his being as well. Looking back I sympathize with the day he walked into that morning. I am nonetheless glad that at least one PA got the experience of a real example of a cancerous testicle so maybe he can stop it one day in the future in someone else.
I walked out of the exam room after sliding my pants back on and grabbing my stacks of forms for the front desk and for my own records. I moved slowly, and felt a deep numbness pulsing in me that made my exit look very orderly from the outside. I looked down at the chairs where Jay and I had spoken just 20 minutes before. As I stepped outside I remained jaded and in a state of such deep shock that I barely remember anything between the examination and the first call that I made.
I walked out of the clinic, which was in a portable off the main building, and walked up the ramp. There was an alcove there, where another portable and the overhang from the main building formed a corner. As I reached that area and felt the cool of the shade I stopped. I looked around at the sunlit bushes, the parking lot, saw two people passing a salute, and a bird flying by chirping. It was like everything was in slow motion and staged. “Cancer,” I thought to myself as the calm began to break. My breathing became heavy and hard to control. “Cancer, I have Cancer,” I thought in rapid fire as I began to hyperventilate. Dr. Jane’s words reverberated “Mr. Tomlinson…I’m afraid you have Metastatic Cancer” over and over through me. “Metastatic Cancer, Metastatic…” I began to shake and could feel a crushing wave of emotion erupting from deep inside me. I started cry and struggled to maintain my breathing, but it was too much and I blurted out “oh God, oh no!” as I clasped my hand over my mouth and moved over to lean out of view against a pillar. I felt the sharp bursts of tears shoot out of me with each surge as Dr. Jane’s words continued to ring on in my mind like a gong. I calmed slightly as I realized that I needed to tell someone at work that I wasn’t coming in so I could go home so I figured I would have to start there. “I told Jay I would give him a ring, I need to call and let him know,” I thought, starting to scan through my phone for the shore office number and dialed it.
When he answered, I had to choke out a hello. I was petrified and didn’t know where to start. Not knowing what else to say I started to tell the story of what happened since I last saw him. My voice cracked. “Jay, um, I spoke to the doctor and she said that it is pretty serious. I won’t be in for a while,” I said cryptically. I was unable to say the actual words out loud. He was obviously concerned immediately, and I could sense the shift in his tone and the physical movement of a man giving his undivided attention. “Whoa, Tommy man, what’s up buddy, are you ok?” he said with genuine concern in his voice. I knew it was time. I had to say it. I tried thinking of some way to say it besides just dropping it on him but for the first time I said out loud: “I have Cancer, Jay, they said that it is Metastatic Cancer,” I said, starting to cry as the profundity of the moment hit me so hard I had to brace myself to stop from losing the strength in my legs. The line was quiet for a second. Jay responded: “holy fuck Tommy, are you ok?” I knew that he meant ‘because of the news’ so I told him that I was OK, I just didn’t know what to say. I was so confused and overwhelmed and so I just parroted off what the doctor had said and told him that I would keep them in the loop but that I would be off indefinitely. He told me not to worry about anything to do with work and just focus on doing what I needed to do. He passed on his empathy and gave me his best and I hung up.
For a few minutes I stood in the alcove and cried. I moved away to an isolated area and coughed out tears through the worries that were hammering on my mind and crushing me under their weight. “how long would I have to deal with this? CHEMO! Holy fucking shit. SURGERY! I have to lose my ball?” Then I thought of my family and was saddened as I thought “I have to be the one who has to tell Stephanie? She is going to be so upset, and the kids too and what about Disney? Could we still go? What did I do? How will people react? Don’t worry about work, but what about my tour? Cancer. CANCER?!” It was a dizzying barrage of thoughts and feelings that beat me and surged through me with such force that I needed to stay braced and felt like my knees were going to give out. I kept breathing through the fear and the worry and let some of the tears fall to release the pressure. I knew I needed to collect myself, I needed to go have some blood tests, so I would just do that. I stopped for a minute and thought, “just go do the blood tests and let the rest happen later.” I wiped off my face, took a deep breath and coughed, and headed into the clinic.
After the blood tests I walked out of the building feeling numb. I sat back in my car and it felt almost unfamiliar, like I had driven it there days before. I had come for sick parade and had my entire life changed. I sat in the quiet of the car and tried to imagine how I was supposed to tell Stephanie. I was totally lost so I figured I would decide on the way but knew that no matter what I needed to start driving. As I drove I said the words out loud to myself and tried to think of how to bring it up and where to do it. I was emotionally broken. I was so deeply fearful of what I had to do, but I felt removed. Like everything around me was just scenery and I was in a play or something. I cried more. “How was I supposed to do this?” I imagined Stephanie sitting at home and totally unaware. I knew she would be worried because I messaged her before I left and told her to contact Tiffany and have Seth and Sophia go to their house. I knew that I had the imaging appointment, but I didn’t say why she needed to sort out the kids, just that I was on my way home. As I drove up to the house my anxiety was overwhelming. I was upset and could not hold it in. I knew I had to tell her because we had the appointment to get to, but I hesitated for a second before I grabbed my papers and grimly walked to my front door.
As I walked in the house it was impossible to hide the fact that I had been crying. The kids were still there and started asking me questions immediately, but I couldn’t handle the sound because I was barely holding myself together. Stephanie was worried instantly and I knew then for sure that I had to do it now, there was no way out of it. I needed to get in from the front door, and I didn’t want the kids to be privy to the conversation, so I asked her to come upstairs with me and asked the kids to stay downstairs. Steph was asking me questions the whole way up seemingly oblivious to the fact that I was clearly trying to remove the kids from the news for now. We walked up into our bedroom and I turned, and she hugged me and said “Stephen, oh my God, what’s wrong? Talk to me please.” I hugged her and I couldn’t bear to even start any of the speech I had haphazardly considered on my way home in the car. I didn’t know how else to say it, so I just mustered myself enough to stammer the only three words I needed to say and the three words that were the hardest things I have ever had to say to her. “I…uhhhh…I have Cancer.”
Stephanie was immediately upset and pulled away. Her eyes were wide, and she sounded she had the wind knocked out of her. She became hysterical immediately saying “WHAT?! WHAT?! WHAT?!” over and over. I calmed myself enough to look her in the eyes as she calmed just enough to listen to what I was going to say. In a sick way it was just like our engagement but the exact opposite on the spectrum. “I have Cancer, Stephanie,” I said with an odd feeling of calm that saw me sit down on the edge of the bed and start to cry while Stephanie started to hyperventilate. I could see in her eyes and it was clear from her reaction that she was totally coming apart, so I mustered what I had to blurt out “its treatable! They think that we can beat it.” She started to calm slightly and hugged me as we wept together. I told her about the appointment and the cough, the metastasis and the follow up appointment that I was never told of. I brought her up to date on what little information I could remember from Dr. Jane.
At this point the kids were in the room asking why we were upset and we didn’t want to tell them right away. I told them that I had gotten bad news that day and that Mommy was just upset by it too. Steph was a wreck. She was obviously totally overwhelmed and pushed her way through the kids and ran downstairs gasping. She couldn’t catch her breath and ended up outside. I slowly made my way downstairs and followed her out and tried to give her a hug but she told me to back away while she gasped and stumbled trying to support herself with the cars and pulling at her hair while she wailed into the quiet of the street trying to calm herself. Not knowing what else to do I went back inside and sat down.
She called her parents and I was supposed to call Mom. I had no idea how to even say it so I considered it while I stared into oblivion and listened to Steph gasping and crying while repeating most of what I had said upstairs to her father. Tiffany arrived and brought the kids away to her house, offering her best but seeing that we obviously were not able to talk about it. I tried to think of what I was supposed to say as Vicky, one of our friends from down the street came over. Stephanie had clearly been loud enough that the whole neighborhood was watching, Vicky lived about four houses down heard her and came immediately, without even putting shoes on, to see what was wrong. I could hear Stephanie tell her “Stephen went in for sick parade with a cough that wouldn’t go away and found out that he has Cancer.” Stephanie fell apart at the sound of ‘the C-Word.’ Starting to deeply cry and vent while Vicky gave her a hug and held her up. I could hear Vicky, a tough little woman and a fellow Navy Wife whose husband was with me on Protecteur, bring Stephanie back to reality. I could see them outside through the blinds, Vicky held Steph but moved back so she could look at her and said “Stephanie I know that you are upset right now and that you need to vent but there is a man in there having the worst day of his life, you need to go be with him. He needs you.” I could hear Stephanie agree and slowly calm herself. Vicky told her to call if we need anything, and she headed home as Stephanie came inside.
I was still sitting in our living room chair and staring into nothingness with my phone in my hand trying to find the words and reflecting on how touching it was that Vicky had actually come over and on the words that she had said. Steph was loud enough that I was sure people watched from their homes and could even see the drapes pulled back on a home across the street. Vicky actually came over. Tiffany knew that we needed the kids away and supported us by quickly moving them without asking questions. It was nice to see the power of that kind of friendship in our time of need. Stephanie came over and hugged me, asking if I was OK. She asked again what the next step was since she was clearly so overwhelmed that she needed to reset. I understood given that I had been there only an hour before at the base hospital. I told her about the ultrasound I had to go to in a few hours and we cried and hugged again for about 5 more minutes.
I knew that before we did anything I was going to have to call Mom. It was not the kind of experience I ever wanted but I also knew that she needed to know as soon as possible and also that she would take care of most of the secondary notifications so at least the one call would get me a break. She answered with great fervor since a call in the middle of the day is a rare treat, but she switched her tone the moment that she heard my voice. “Mom you should probably sit down because I got some bad news today and I need to talk to you about it,” I stammered out, finding the support of having Stephanie there with me filling me with more strength than I felt earlier. She told me she was sitting so I told her about the cough and the appointment and finished with the words themselves that there was just no cushion for. She was as calm as one can expect but it was clear that I had just destroyed her entire world. As a father myself I knew how hard it must have been for her to hear something like that from her little boy. As much as it bugged me when she acted that way I knew that Seth and Sophia would never not be that way for me so I empathized with her. It was not a nice call, but we got through it. After some time, Stephanie and I slipped into an eerie calm and piled into our car while I looked up the address for the imaging office. This was the first time that she would drive me to a cancer appointment.
We arrived at our destination and headed up to the office. We waited in the waiting room and I remembered being there the last time. This was a very different feeling and I was still reeling from the news and felt cold so being there was far less comfortable than it ought to have been. I soon found myself laying on a table in a room next to a computer with my pants down to my knees and a towel covering my privates. The technician came in, pleasant and clearly experienced with what could have been a very awkward way to meet. She went over the gist of the procedure and showed me the tools of the trade. I was already very aware though as I had had one done almost a year prior to the day. She made small talk while she prodded and pressed on my testicles with the imaging wand. It was warm and messy from the conductive jelly that they used and very uncomfortable because of the pressure she used. She asked about how my day was going and we pretended that we were not sitting in a room examining my balls while I told her about the shit day that I had had thus far. She did the one side and then the other and had a sort of sombre look on her face as we wrapped up. She extended her sympathies for the journey I was going to endure, and I headed back out to Stephanie.
We left and ended up at Tiffany and Corey’s house to pick up the kids. I was still in shock and we talked very directly about things without getting too upset. It was then that I messaged Sean. I knew he would understand and I was initially almost embarrassed and in disbelief that both of us were hit with it. I didn’t know what to say. All the jokes I had made to try to keep things light between us had blown up in my face. I didn’t even know what I wanted him to say. I knew we still shared that very dark and inappropriate sense of humour and I knew that I was dreading being spoken to softly by the friends I would see and wanted to maintain the dynamic I had with him so I typed out an apology to him for raining on his cancer parade but declared that I was unfortunately joining his club. He did not respond. He called me right away. I told him about the diagnosis and what they had said I had to look forward to as I started to break down. I wanted to hold it together but at that point I figured that he and I were bonded on a whole different level, so I let myself go while he reassured me. He told me through my broken sobs about his experience and offered his support and thoughts. He told me that I could message him at any time because he at least knows about the sleepless nights and the worry and so did his wife, amazingly also named Tiffany. He told me about how hard it was to tell his daughter the news and how she was very affected by the experience as he was still very much in the monitoring phase of things.
We wrapped up and I told him I would call him later when I had an update. He said that he would brief command on the circumstances since he had a great deal of familiarity with the terminology and the steps, so he quickly became my point of contact linking me back to the Navy in general and Calgary in particular. I settled down and took a moment to review a bit of the information he sent. He finished by cautioning about the benefits of research and requested that I avoid general internet searches for now. I heeded his advice. After we talked, I went back to the family and desperately tried not to think of the Cancer. Corey and I went out for wings and a beer to try to take my mind off it all which was good for a bit but as we wrapped up and came to the end of the day Steph and I settled in for one of the worst nights of my life.
I laid in bed still so stunned and scared and deeply fearful of the immediate future and envisioning the process for the next several months that I felt surges of panicked tears and desperation fill me. I imagined myself a bald puking burden to the family, disrupting their lives and lurching around as an object of pity and the mere image in my mind was more than enough to break my heart. This had always been my biggest fear, becoming a burden. It was the single thing that was most objectionable to me. To be entirely dependent on my family, friends or the Navy was reprehensible and ate at me as I sadly imagined losing the respect of those closest to me.
Words like ‘cancer’ and ‘chemotherapy’ are terrifying and deeply affect you on the cellular level. They come with all the negativity and images that a person sees in their life associated with it all. I felt so violated. I looked down at my chest and envisioned the tumours and the lesions that were slowly drowning me in my own blood as I hacked away, feeling the coppery taste of the expelled blood fill my sinuses and mouth. Each cough was a reminder that I was sick, and it started to occur to me that my natural life was ending. This was a jarring realization especially as the test results started to come back and I realized that I was mere weeks from death when they found my Cancer. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was in for a massive journey. It is for the best that I was so ignorant because things were so much worse than I could have ever possibly imagined. Everything was a jumble and I remember reaching down and feeling at the soft patch Dr. Jane had found and felt the tears running hot down my cheeks as I realized it was one of the last nights I would have two balls. What sleep I had was cloaked in worry and stress and I quietly asked God for help to give me strength to fight back enough to save my life.