Chapter Nineteen: RPLND

I was still very nervous as we got our stuff packed to go over to Vancouver for the big surgery but I took some comfort in the fact that Sean and Jeannine were coming over as well to assist Stephanie with anything that she needed while I was there. It gave me tremendous peace of mind to be able to know that whatever happened she wouldn’t have to be alone to deal with it over there, especially if it was what I feared most. This procedure was far more intensive than anything I had previously experienced. It would be the longest I had been out for anything (possibly for the rest of my life) and would require a significant recovery to resume normal life functionality. I didn’t care about any of that though, all I wanted was to wake up again afterward. The Anesthesiologist I had met with helped to allay my fears to an extent but there were still the inherent risks associated with being knocked out totally for 8 to 10 hours with unpredictable brain tumours in the mix. He assured me there was a lot of back up steps just in case and that I would be in good hands but there is only so much quiet that that assurances like that could bring to someone and I was still very nervous about everything but feeling more and more ready to take the leap as the date to go over to Vancouver drew closer and closer.

Before the trip itself we tried to do some family activity just around the house since we were terrified of aggravating another seizure. There was very little chance of that though based on the MRI I received after radiation that showed the near complete destruction of the tumours that they were concerned about. By then they had been reduced to tiny Calcium deposits from the several centimeters they had measured just before treatment. I played some video games with Seth and even taught him one of my own games on PS4 because I liked when he felt like he was big enough. Later, I sat and tried to watch a movie with Sophia, which was eventful because she liked to play with her toys as she watched stuff so I did what I could to do both with her to help build memories with her Daddy in case this turned for the worst-case scenario. I didn’t want one of their last memories of me to be me telling them “no” when they just wanted some Daddy time doing some of their favourite things with me. Playing with them as the days clicked closer and closer to my surgery day was almost painful to experience because it was easy for me to imagine them thinking back to that time as a tearful memory of their Daddy before he died trying to root the Cancer out from his guts.

Eventually it was time to head over. I was glad that Sandy had stayed out so she could watch the kids. We had really good friends who had offered to step in and take them for us, but we had a commitment not use friends for anything more than a few days because the kids would miss their house. To us it wasn’t about how we felt about the people offering or anything like that, but for our kids it was a family role to watch them for several days because they needed that kind of semi-authority. It was a grandparent week.

We told Sandy about the rules and hung schedules for the kids drop off times along with their Health Cards just in case something serious came up. She knew the day-to-day pretty well by then from being around for five weeks, so we were unconcerned about her getting that done but we wanted her to have all the numbers and instructions for everything we could think of just in case. We were clear that we didn’t want her to feel like she needed to parent them. We wanted the kids to be able to enjoy the experience of having Nana run things, so we greatly relaxed the rules so she could be the fun parent that grandparents ought to be and told her just to do her best and to try and enjoy the week there.

Stephanie and I got out to the car, loaded our baggage in and gave hugs to the kids and to Sandy to wish them all well and headed out to the ferry dock. I tried not to cry until we actually left because I didn’t want to load extra worry on the kids, but once we were at the end of the street Stephanie held my hand tightly, knowing exactly why I was upset and said “that is not goodbye, ok?” in a very calming tone. I agreed but the fact that I was dancing with that chance still left me feeling hollowed out inside as we made our way up to the BC Ferry terminal. The ferry ride itself was generally uneventful but was still emotional for me because of all the sailing I had done in that area from a basic trainee, to sailing there in Calgary as a watchkeeper, on FNO as an advanced trainee and as an instructor on the Orcas. Just watching the traffic pass us and the familiar land was special to me and I remember being moved almost to tears as the sight of the Northern portion of Active Pass opening, because that was the last big event on the sail before we crossed the Strait of Georgia and berthed in Tsawwassen.

We arrived in Vancouver proper at around 2 in the afternoon on April 22nd. We had travelled separately from Sean and Jeannine and got ourselves arranged in the hotel next to the hospital once we had arrived. The hotel itself was nice but nothing majorly special, besides having a balcony. Stephanie and I were totally exhausted and wanted to spend some time alone together for her birthday rather than doing a larger group meeting like we had planned. I messaged them and said we were staying in because of the exhaustion and because we were instructed to report to admissions for 0545 the next day and we didn’t want to be out late. They understood completely. We agreed on a meeting time down in the lobby of the hotel and Stephanie and I went out onto the balcony and had a pair of joints to help ourselves relax a bit. The view of the city that the balcony offered was meagre, but it was nice to have somewhere to go to enjoy them together. After we had made our way back inside we were very relaxed, ordered up some room service, and watched some movies to try to avoid thinking too much about what to expect the next day.

We arrived at the main building for Vancouver General Hospital at 0545 and worked our way through the lower floor of the Jim Pattison pavilion to the admissions desk. It was nice to see Sean and Jeannine there as Stephanie and I quickly filled out the papers that were needed and waited for the call to come to send us to the surgical area. I spoke with Sean as we leaned over a railing overlooking the lower floor and looked out over the vast area of the main lobby. He asked how I was feeling but it was decidedly nervous and not in the mood to go into details but then he already knew most of that so there was very little to say besides small talk and general discussion of the hotel and what we had been up to the night before. In short order, however, I was called over to surgical daycare and we stood by their waiting area to be given instructions on where to go next. I felt as ready as I was going to but was still very nervous to be under the knife being disemboweled for 8 hours, as one might expect, so I was pretty far from OK but was I managing well enough all things considered.

Eventually the OR nurse came out and called me in to get prepped and dressed for surgery. That morning I had done the standard pre-surgical scrub down with the fancy sponges that I had been provided, so physically I felt ready enough, but I needed to centre myself on the fact that the much-anticipated day was here and it was time to head in and face the demon I feared. I gave Sean a hug and left him outside with Jeannine so I could go in and get changed and sit with Stephanie for just a short time longer. I soon found myself totally stripped in perioperative care and wearing an unusual violet/ lavender gown that had openings and layering unlike any other gown I had worn in a hospital.

Together Stephanie and I answered all the nurse’s questions about the preps and my own personal readiness to go in before we had Jeannine come in to speak with us. She was a great comfort to us both and it helped me to know that she would be there with Stephanie in the event that something turned the wrong way or in case there was a delay or sudden change. We all said a prayer for my safety and recovery and Jeannine kissed my forehead before she made her way out. Stephanie gave me a big hug and we kissed. I looked up at her with tears in my eyes but with remarkable assuredness that things would be ok and that I might be able to give her a Cancer-free prognosis for her birthday. It would be far better than the art supplies that I had bought for her before we had left. It was time though, I told her I would see her in a few hours, she smiled through a few restrained tears and waved to me and blew a kiss as I was wheeled away to the Operating Room.

I spoke very briefly with the porter who quickly moved me to the room where it would all go down. When we got there I was initially unsure if this was the actual surgical OR simply because it seemed smaller than the usual operating theatres that I had experienced thus far in my treatments, but the large circular lights and the large number of people in the room quickly convinced me that this was where it was going to go down. I was transferred over to the main surgical bed and was prepped by the anesthesiologist for my epidural to numb my core but maintain the functionality of my legs. It was incredible what they could do really. I was eased into a seated position on the edge of the bed and the nurses went about introducing themselves while I was leaned forward into a support and hunched over to allow the best possible angle for inserting the needles into my spine. I was surprised in general by the sheer number of people in the room since nearly every position had someone understudying because it was not a terribly common procedure. “I suppose that they pack them in to build the wealth of experience,” I thought to myself, as I winced through the insertion of the needle. That style of on the job training was so much like how we would do things in the Navy it helped to ease my mind to a small degree.

They spoke to me candidly and eventually the resident doctor who would perform the procedure under the careful tutelage of Dr. Black came in to speak with me and introduce himself. He was not a standard resident doctor, he was clearly seasoned and specializing further into his field. I was encouraged by his attitude and comforted by the assuredness of everyone in the room. There was far less in the way of casual conversation compared with the Orchidectomy or my lung surgery and a lot more involving the proper set-up of the room. The resident made an announcement to the group that he was in charge of the procedure under Dr. Black and he started to go over his list of requirements as the team continued to ready themselves.

After just a short while it was time to knock me out, so they helped ease me to a laying position while he spoke in the background and I felt the mask get slid on to my face. In the quickness of the moment it was not lost on me that this was the moment that I had worried about, reeled over, and cried a great deal over. It was time. The anesthesiologist held the mask and counted for my breathing. I thought of Seth and Sophia on the beach at the lagoon; I thought of Stephanie out in the waiting area. “I will be back soon,” I thought to myself, as the sounds became more distant and the world fell away into darkness.

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My next memory was of myself, very groggy and absolutely exhausted, waking up in the post-operative care area. It was a large room of beds circled around a central desk where the nurses worked. I could barely move but I managed to pull back the gown I had been placed in to see what looked like a zipper of staples that ran up the whole length of my stomach. I had fully expected to see it but was still shocking just to process the fact that the procedure was over, and I had woken up. I was excited for that, but the reality of my situation was pretty rough. I had a catheter in, leg cuffs wrapped from my knees to my ankles on both legs, 2 IVs in each arm and an air tube in my nose helping me to breathe. I could barely move at all and felt so thirsty but could only have some rationed ice chips to keep my guts stable while the rest of my systems began to re-normalize themselves after the trauma of the surgery itself. The nurses were nice and helped a fair amount with my awakening, by passing me some pills and checking on me.

I was there for several hours but was eventually visited by the resident who had performed the procedure and who met me with a grin on his face. “Mr. Tomlinson the procedure was successful, we were able to get out all of your retroperitoneal lymph nodes and they have been sent away for testing. I have to say you really made our day earlier, do you remember?” he asked with an air of eagerness. I didn’t know what he meant. “I thought that might be the case. So, you woke up after surgery and started asking us for ‘the jar’ with your lymph nodes in it. It had already been sent away for testing, but when we told you that your response was that you were disappointed because you wanted to see the Cancer and tell it to ‘go fuck itself.’ You absolutely made the day of everyone in that room. I just wanted to make sure you were ok and to pass that on because usually there are no memories so close to surgery and I wanted you to know about it.” I smiled. I had joked that I wanted to do something like that but never imagined that I had burrowed it so deeply into my unconscious that it would literally be the first thing I said when I woke up. I weakly laughed a bit and simply said “what can I say, I hate Cancer.” He smiled. “Keep fighting man, you have the heart to win so never give up, ok?” I agreed, and the doctor wished me well and headed out. I waited for my release from the post-surgical recovery area as I smiled to myself for actually trying to tell some Cancer where to go. It was a very proud moment for me.

Eventually I had recovered enough from the anesthesia to be moved up to the recovery floor where I would start my rebound from the surgery for a week. I had a personal commitment to walking as quickly as I could to get things in my bowels moving as quickly as possible and to get myself off the dietary restrictions I was under as well as to prove to everyone my resolve to beat the Cancer simply by not allowing it to keep me down. As I got up to the floor, I saw Stephanie, Jeannine, and Sean who followed me up there to see me arrive finally. It was nearly 6 pm, the surgery itself had been more than 7 and a half hours long with a few hours in the recovery room and I was excited to see them all but mostly I just wanted to hug Stephanie so she could feel me there and know that I was OK, even if I was a bit worse for wear.

My room was a semi-private so I had to share, which was not ideal but I wasn’t entitled to a private so it was the best I could hope for with my medical plan. The room offered a meagre view of the city of Vancouver and was cut down the centre by curtains which separated me from my roommate, who was facing me. There were the usual trappings of the room including a TV, clock, night stand and the usual trappings of the wall behind the bed for the routine operation of patient health and monitoring. It was a pretty drab area to look at but at that moment none of that mattered to me because I was there with my wife on the other side of a surgery that had given us both a great deal of anxiety for months. It had first been discussed in November so it sat over us for 5 months of maybe, maybe not but at least now we knew that there was hope to beat the Cancer because one of its main hiding places had been rooted out and I had to wait to hear back on my counts but for all I knew this would be it and I could finally go back to my normal life again.

Jeannine left a short time after and headed back to the hotel. She had a plan to leave the next day but wanted to give us some time together. I was very grateful to her for staying there with Stephanie, especially in light of the delays and such that had arisen and that would have brought a great deal of worry and anxiety for her. She gave us all hugs and headed out. Sean planned to stay the whole week, which made me happy because I didn’t like the idea of Stephanie walking around downtown Vancouver at night at the end of seeing me. So, with Jeannine gone I told the nurse I was ready to walk for the first time to get things moving. I couldn’t get off the regulated ice chips without passing gas, so I was desperate for something to move because I was very hungry. Stephanie helped me with my leg cuffs and moved my catheter box over to my IV stand and the two of them helped me to move to the edge of the bed. The floors were cool under my feet and Stephanie put some thick hospital socks on me and prepped my crocs to be slid on as I stood. They were both ready to help me if I fell but I knew I was going to own it and I stood up slowly and held my IV tree for stability. With a lurching shot of rage-fueled intensity I managed to slowly walk out of the room.

It hurt so much to stand. My core was totally obliterated from the surgery so despite the epidural I was still in pain but I wanted the Cancer to know that I was stronger than its attempts to break me and it was that spitefulness more than any other single factor that I most remember. I moved very slowly. My gate was only a few inches per step, and it took a lot of focus for me to maintain my drive, but I felt very stable all things considered. My eyes watered a bit as I moved because each step was uncomfortable but eventually I was able to clear the hallway and work my way to the garden vista walking area that they maintained for people to be able to have somewhere to get outside. I walked through there with a bit of help to get my IV stand up the ramp they had and took a seat on a bench out there very briefly. Stephanie was unsurprised by my determination, but this was the first time Sean had really seen just how deeply I hated the Cancer inside me. He simply said over and over that I was killing it and that he was absolutely amazed that I was walking only hours out of surgery. After just a few minutes I resolved to stand again and start working my way back to the room which was a bit easier but still took me aback from how difficult it was to move without really having any core support.

We were soon back in my room and I got myself established in the bed and since I had gone walking I was able to lose the leg bands. That made me very happy because it was the first of the extra equipment covering me to be removed. I couldn’t wait to lose the catheter since it was very uncomfortable to have in and embarrassing to have my pee on display, but for right then it was very necessary because I needed more time on my feet to convince the nurses that I would be fine without it. After about an hour Stephanie and Sean headed out to get some food and return to the hotel. Stephanie and I shared a very caring and wonderful hug to finish our time together there that day because it had been a lot for us both, but I knew how upsetting waiting for me to finish in the OR would have been, especially since one of the families they waited with was given bad news while I was in there so Steph was understandably incredibly on edge that whole time. “You did a wonderful job honey,” she said. “I am so proud of you.” I thanked her for saying that but really, we were both so relieved to be on the other side of it all that that was what mattered the most. I hugged Sean too and thanked him for coming so Steph wouldn’t be alone. He said it was no problem and he told me how inspired he was by my resilience. I thanked him back and wished them well as they headed out and I found myself alone in the room with my roommate who had been napping most of the time I was there before.

I napped a bit and tried to find a way to lay that was comfortable, but comfort was impossible for me because of how much I was starving and getting nothing more than a small cup of ice chips to satisfy me was not doing it. The air tube was very annoying and dried my throat out terribly, so I gradually pulled that away to not have the constant flow into my sinuses. I was able to use pillows to build a wall on one side of me to lay on to change from the standard seated lay of the hospital bed. It helped because I could shift my weight off my butt and over to my one hip and side. That helped a bit, so I tried to sleep, but unfortunately my roommate was now awake, and he was very loud and distracting. He was an older gentleman with a thick German accent whom the nurses called Mr. Heinz. It was clear from how loudly they had to enunciate for him and the amount of times he responded with “what?!” or more often “huh?!” to them when they were relaying information that he was nearly deaf. His mind was in rough shape too because he wasn’t grasping it at all. He kept forgetting where he was and wasn’t sure why he was in so much pain. I knew then that it was going to be a problem as we moved into the night.

The first part of the night was quiet enough save for the fact that our machines kept going off at opposite times and Mr. Heinz didn’t know to hit his button to call the nurses desk, so I would have to hit mine and direct them over. He was always confused by them when they arrived but came around and realized where he was relatively quickly. I felt bad for him and I felt bad for being so irritated by his loudness and general rudeness with the nurses who were just trying to help him out because, just like with the shades when I had done chemo, I also knew that he was probably someone’s grandpa and I tried to keep that in mind and focused instead on dealing with myself. Later in the night he ended up with hiccups that he cursed at in German and continued to keep me awake until he eventually vomited, and the nurses had to help clean him up.

He seemed convinced throughout that they were there to harm him, so it was very frustrating to be kept awake in such a strange and isolating place. I didn’t even know who the voice actually belonged to because of the fabric curtain that was extended down the centre of the room between us. In many ways it reminded me of previous roommate and floormate experiences from my first rounds of chemo and was a natural hazard of having a condition that mostly affects people later in life. Over the rest of the night I did my best, but my anxiety was high from all the commotion and the grating nature of his loud voice so by the time the sun came up I was totally exhausted and feeling very rattled.

I was happy to see familiar faces though when Sean and Jeannine came by to visit a bit in the morning before Jeannine was going to be brought back to the Ferry to head back to Victoria. Throughout the visit Mr. Heinz kept us entertained because of his conversations with himself with people he saw in his room that weren’t there. It was less conversation and more just single phrases or even quietly chuckling to himself that pierced our own conversations. He was also still unaware of how to use his call button and resorted to shouting “Nurse!” into the hallway through our door until I would hit my own button just to not hear him anymore.

I explained to them how the night had gone as we took a quick digestive walk that resulted in my passing enough gas to be moved up to clear fluids so I promptly got a cup of ice water and slurped down what I could stomach and the cooling for my throat felt amazing after the night of rationed ice chips. The best I could do then was slurp a small amount of melted ice from the bottom of the cup which felt cold but lacked the quantity I wanted. I hydrated and wished Jeannine well as she prepared to head out. Jeannine gave a comforting hug and kissed my forehead, saying “bless you Stephen,” in the calmest and most sincere way. It made me feel good and I thanked her as they headed out together. Sean left as well because he was giving Jeannine a lift to the terminal, but he said he would be back later in the evening.

I napped for about an hour and woke up to Stephanie sitting next to me. I called her over and we hugged. I was so glad to see her. She asked about how the day had gone so far. She was very aware of how the night before had gone because we had spoken via text so there wasn’t much to say beyond what I had written there. “It was nice, Jeannine and Sean just left so I decided to try to nap for a bit since it was finally quiet,” I said. “I also got onto full clear fluids, so I can have pulp-free juice and water again.” Stephanie liked that because she knew how rough the night had been for me and she went down to the cafeteria to get me a bottle of blue Gatorade. It was the thing I was most craving and eagerly drank down what I could before we decided to go for another short walk around the floor.

I was faster that second day because the swelling has come down a fair bit, but I was still struggling a lot just to move at a snail’s pace through the halls and the outer courtyard. It was my second walk for the day, the first was with a physio nurse who was very impressed with my ability and determination to move. What I didn’t tell her but what I was clear about with the rest of my guests was that it wasn’t hope driving me, it was malice. I saw each step as me refusing to yield to the Cancer because the way I saw it the disease could kill me, but I would not let it beat me. As Stephanie and I finished the second walk of the day we sat in the room and passed the day with lots of visits from the nurses and from my cousin Sharon, who was herself a chemo nurse at the hospital and whom I had mentioned before. It was good to see her because I had thought of her so often during my treatments and that extended family connection was still very deep even if she was not my biological cousin. She brought Steph some pasta from one of her favourite places which was nice because Steph was relegated to a café with limited options and loved pasta, so it was really the perfect gift for her to bring even if I only had some Gatorade to satisfy my thirst.

I did, however, manage to have two of my four IVs removed since they were superfluous and just left over from my surgery. I still had one in each arm but was feeling less constrained in my movement and more comfortable (though still a long way from real comfort) when I was laying and trying to relax. Eventually Sean came back from dropping off Jeannine and he and Steph went out for supper as I tried to settle in for the night and get more sleep than the night before. Based on how hyped up Mr. Heinz had been through the day my hopes were not very favourable.

I soon learned why I had been denied free fluids because I was so bloated and not able to pass anything. The pain mounted through the night and added to the complications of having a roommate with hallucinations moaning across from me. I just wanted him to be quiet and stop interrupting my rest, what little I could have, but it was incessant. By 2am I felt sickness build and I knew that I would need to puke so I collected my IV and got my catheter unit attached and moved to the washroom.

The pain from the convulsions in my gut were probably the single most pain I ever experienced as I vomited out what small fluid I had drank and dry heaved for about 5 mins. The pressure release was nice, but I was still bloated and had no control of the intensity of the contractions which felt like they were going to break me in half. Eventually everything settled, and I was able to get out of the bathroom. Apparently, Mr. Heinz had an accident in his sleep and he yelled at me for being in the bathroom because he thought that I was a nurse. He was either unaware of the fact that he had his own wash place on his side of the room or was reacting to the sounds of me. This was when we had our first interaction “I’m not a nurse, Sir, I am the other patient,” I said as directly as I could. He was confused and simply said “what?!” loudly while I hit my call button so the nurses could come and help.

It did nothing for the rest of the night that saw me waking every 10 to 15 minutes from him calling out or his machine’s noises, or my own machine. The lack of sleep, the stress, and the pain, all of it made me so anxious that I quietly wept in my bed and begged for it all to stop. It wasn’t fair to deal with him as well as my own stuff so the next morning I spoke with my nurses about it, but it was clear that after that night they had a plan already in place.

That morning I messaged Steph and told her that I needed her because my anxiety was high, and I wanted to have her there with me. She came and helped me out of bed, and we walked around the floor slowly just to give me a break from hearing from the man we had nicknamed ‘Mr. Ketchup.’ She could see how stressed out I was and how beaten I was from the starvation, recovery and, most of all, the lack of sleep; they were all affecting me a great deal. As Steph and Sean sat and chatted with me for the day they got a real appreciation for the kind of night I’d had because Mr. Heinz was still arguing with the staff and was clueless as to where he was; he would only click in briefly after talking with them and then going right back to arguing with phantoms. After a second and third walk around the floor I could see that he had been moved out of the room to a private space where they could monitor him more closely and where he wouldn’t keep other people awake all night. I was grateful to them for giving me a break and I napped in the afternoon while I got a new roommate.

The new guy was roughly my age and was recovering from a serious motorcycle accident that had required skin grafts and no shortage of surgery to correct. Save for his leg, which was grotesque, he was a far better roommate who I conversed with briefly after Steph and Sean headed out for the day about the guy that he had replaced. We laughed a bit at the absurdity of it all. He was very excited because he was due to be released the next day after 2 months in hospital. I couldn’t imagine doing 2 full months in hospital, that felt right away like a sentence. I empathized with him for having to endure that because I knew that it would have been overwhelming. The more I thought about the more anxious I felt, so I tried to avoid thinking too much on it since it was not in the cards for me at that point. He and I agreed that that night we would sleep, and he promised me that he wouldn’t argue with any ghosts which made me laugh for the first time since I’d heard that I had asked for the jar after surgery. As we settled in to sleep, I felt myself relax enough that real sleep finally came and I passed out surrounded by pillows that helped me to relieve the strain on my core.

At 2235 that night alarms sounded throughout the floor with the standardized announcement of a “Code Red” went out. I wouldn’t have concerned myself with it except that our room stank like smoke and it was clear from the floor staffs’ reactions that this was more than a false pull station activation. We could hear sirens all over and I wondered if we were going to be evacuated. I couldn’t believe the luck that when I had a chance to sleep that this was going on too. I felt anxious about that prospect as I messaged Stephanie and Sean to let them know that I was confident that some part of the hospital was on fire. Stephanie ran to her balcony and was hit by the stench of acrid smoke as she saw down billowing through the street dark black smoke. She and Sean went down to the ground to investigate but we learned after about an hour that it wasn’t the hospital, it was a large fire at a printshop nearby that had a lot of chemicals that made the smoke very similar to the smoke I remembered breathing when I was on Protecteur. Were it a different time in my life I may have been triggered by it but thanks to my work with Curtis, and my writing I was much more comfortable with it.

I texted a bit more with Steph while she and Sean moved back up to their floor but after hearing that the building was not on fire, I relaxed a lot and the new guy, and I slept. That night went well…save for me accidently kicking my catheter box off the end of the bed. As it turned out the cord was just a few inches shorter than the distance to the floor giving me one of the most painful awakenings of my life. I sat up from the shock of it, and I got up to put the box back, but I resolved then to get it taken out because I was ready to just get up and go to the bathroom like a normal human being again. I got back to sleep and remained there until about 0630 the next day and felt significantly better from the rest.

Sean was first to arrive. I told Steph to sleep in a bit because she was so exhausted after worrying about me and because it was hard for her to sleep in the hotel alone at night knowing that I was in the hospital. It was easier for her to rest in the light of the morning, so she agreed to stay resting and let Sean do some of the accompaniment. He and I chatted about lots of stuff to pass the time and went for a walk around the floor that saw me finally able to burp again and to toot a bit more which greatly relieved me of some of the pressure build-up that was causing me so much pain. Sean commented on how much easier I was moving around and how impressed he was at my determination to get on with it all. I thanked him and felt encouraged by the progress that the daily walks revealed to me so I asked the nurse when he came into my room for the catheter to be removed so I wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore and thankfully I got approval from the doctors. That came out that afternoon and it made a world of difference for my comfort. It also started the process of weening me off my epidural that would occur over several days so that was a good sign for me as well. I was upgraded to full foods with the understanding that I needed to take it easy on my gut while I was recovering. Since I had no interest in vomiting again after it all I agreed, and I enjoyed a yogurt to finally put something in my stomach.

Later my new roommate left and was replaced by a new older man named Tom who had come from northern BC and had gotten the same procedure as me but with the added removal of his prostate since that was the root of the cancer for him. We didn’t speak much since he was newly cut and healing. He had lots of old man issues as well and the first night that he was in the room we hadn’t spoken so it was just a barrage of old man noises coming from the other side of the curtain that divided the room.

The weening off the IV was harder than I thought it would be and came with a great deal of extra pain in my abdomen as I tried my best just to keep my bowels progressing with the ultimate goal being simply to have a meaningful enough bowel movement to advance my way out of the hospital. I was incredibly anxious. The uncertainty of when I could leave coupled with the reality of how much my body had been through was sinking in and when coupled with the fears I had about all the rest of it and the eagerness of knowing whether the treatment had worked or not had all taken their toll and I didn’t know how much more I could take.

The next morning I spoke briefly with my roommate to introduce myself. He was having trouble with the TV and couldn’t arrange the billing for it. I had no idea how to fix that, so we sat in similar stances of impatience across from one another in near silence waiting for our respective guests to arrive. I napped for a bit and was happy to see Stephanie when I woke because I needed a hug. As she got herself all set-up in the room I could hear an older woman’s voice on the other side of the curtain talking quietly to Tom. His nurse came in while Stephanie and I sat on my side trying to give some space but also trying to determine what Tom had had done and this was where I realized he had the same procedure as me and I felt a tremendous surge of sympathy for him to have to endure this same recovery at his age.

The nurse continued with standard vitals and asked several questions about the nature of his medications and habits at home which his wife generally answered for him. I smiled at Stephanie because it was similar to the dynamic that we had when dealing with nurses and doctors throughout my own fight. The nurse continued to examine him and wanted to give a check on the status of his catheter which he protested with some mumbles and grunts which is when we laughed at his wife’s casual declaration of “oh Tom, she isn’t going to be impressed with anything so just let her do her job.” Stephanie and I both smiled at that comment and knew that we needed to interact with this couple more because they were hilarious.

As the nurses left Stephanie offered to help them set-up their TV and she did so on her phone where the subscriptions were offered. We just put it on our card because it was easier than explaining the procedure to Tom’s wife and trying to get her information set-up. It helped too because I had a lot of guilt for some of the thoughts I had when his grunts and coughing fits woke me up through the night the day before when he was a nice old man, just a bit confused and beaten from the surgery and I felt bad for feeling resentful for having him in the room. As it turned out the TV was all he needed so he could watch baseball and he was quiet and happy for the rest of the time that he was there. They couldn’t believe that we would just pay for it and not expect anything back. To us though it wasn’t very expensive, but it was very special to them. They couldn’t understand why we would do something like that for someone we just met but we saw it as just being kind to someone in need; whatever else the Cancer would do it could not stamp that out of us.

Tom and I passed a few days like that in the room. My stay had been extended by one night and the news of that had nearly broken me, but Stephanie was a tremendous support to me. I felt bad because the stress of everything had made me snippy with her and it wasn’t fair to her, but she knew that it wasn’t because of her after the changes that we experienced in our relationship after the growth that we’d had following my seizure the month before. Sean was still coming too and on the final morning, after a week in hospital we met with my doctor to get the details on what they wanted from me during recovery and to get a rundown on the medications I would get, tips for care, and instructions for the removal of staples and the eventual return to a state of normal. The full recovery was over 6 months, which was daunting, and I was warned about nausea and about straining myself with too much activity. The tone from the doctor made it very clear to me that I had to be very cautious for the next while.

As they removed the final IV and I was cleared to go I sprang from the bed and started to go crazy. I wanted to leave so badly. I felt bad for being rude to Steph and Sean who were working fast to get me out, but I was marking time in anticipation and on the verge of tears just desperately wanting to leave. Soon Sean arrived with a wheelchair and I was brought out. I was in a lot of pain physically and emotionally, starved and bloated, exhausted and almost disoriented as we left. I couldn’t fathom being on the other side of it all. I cried a bit as I waited outside with Steph and Sean got the car to take us to the hotel.

As we drove, I was still in disbelief and felt some of the trauma leave in some surges of deep waves and a few tears.

When we got to the room, I struggled to find a place to get comfortable. I had some vape and tried my best to ease the pains that shot through my core that were exacerbated by my bloating as I did the best I could. Sean offered to take my prescriptions in and he made a run for a few odds and ends that we had requested leaving Stephanie and I alone in the hotel. I tried my best to lay but wasn’t able to find a way to do so without the pains from my gut and in my frustration and out of a need to get the emotional pain out I started to weep deeply and called out in pain as the trauma of the hospital worked its way out of me. It reminded me of the stress and the catharsis I would experience in the car after some treatments. I was good at compartmentalizing my struggles into the fighting mode and the grieving mode and I was truly in agony and felt it all come out like an exorcism. I couldn’t control it. It was one of the deepest venting cries of my whole life.

Eventually I was able to vape enough that I could feel the relaxation wash over me and I was able to fall asleep having determined that building what was essentially a hot dog bun of pillows around me was good for supporting my weight and immobilizing me. It was the most comfort I could get as I rested for a few hours. After I woke up we discussed food and I walked around the room trying to encourage the bloating to break down and trying desperately to deal with my constipation. I carried deep fear of being taken back to the hospital and preferred to essentially “labour” through the night (I even used poses that the Lamaze instructor had given us when we did classes before Seth was born) to get things moving but it was a slow and desperately painful process that eventually, around 5 am, yielded results that made me feel less desperate and less in pain.

I was so exhausted that I just wanted to sleep but it was hard with so much happening in my gut. When I laid back in bed after clearing out some of the blockages I relaxed a bit and vaped some more while I watched Stephanie sleep very deeply. As I said she couldn’t sleep properly in the hotel alone and was finally relaxing more because I was there. I remember looking at the new tattoo on her arm and looking at her and feeling deeply grateful for the love and support that she had shown me through the whole week.

The next day we got our stuff together and checked out of the hotel. I was in no condition to do much of anything. Walking hurt and the experience on the whole had taken its toll on me, so I found a comfortable position in the car and stayed there until we were across the Strait again and back home. The kids were very cautious around me and I tried my best to seem normal for them but in the end, there was no way around the fact that I was in a lot of pain and that my movements needed to be slow and deliberate. Walking up my stairs proved harder than I had imagined but once I was up there and comfortably wedged

into bed I fell asleep until the next day, with the occasional trip to the washroom to continue to keep things moving.

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As the days progressed I tried my best to find a balance of foods that I could and could not eat, which meant that I threw up a great deal, especially in the morning, because only certain things felt good going down. The staples ached and the recovery was much harder than I thought it would be. I could have some cereal in the morning but really through that period what I wanted was lemonade. Something about it allowed me to drink it down and have it stay down. Hot dogs were another staple that seemed to sit pretty well if they were topped properly. So many other staples of my life seemed entirely revolting to me though, I couldn’t stomach the foods I wanted but I kept trying them to get my body back into the swing of things, but it was slow going.

By then we were into May and getting ready for Sophia’s birthday while I continued to make my rounds of bloodwork, and appointments through the week to update me on the status of my fight. There was never a moment to pause and just have a break, ever, for me throughout the fight and every time that I thought I might get one it was snatched away by a new development, so I just tried my best to stay positive while I also tried to keep moving and to try new foods. My guts were so uneasy though that it made everything far more difficult than it had to be and I had several months of recovery still to go just from that while they made preparations for me to go back under the knife for another lung surgery in just a few weeks. In the meantime, I focused on Sophia’s birthday because that was the next big thing in our lives.

When the big day arrived I was about a week out of hospital and woke up to the hustle bustle of Sophia running around the house to let us all know that she was 5, as though we had forgotten, and Stephanie and I both shook our heads and wondered where another year had gone. I was exhausted and sore. It had been a decent enough night but only being able to sleep in three positions meant that I was very sore all over. We got up so we could go downstairs and watch Sophia open her gifts. Stephanie had spent a great deal of effort getting them all laid out on the couch and Seth had been a big help getting then wrapped the night before. I wanted to help but was so depleted, miserable and sore that I didn’t have any drive to do anything. Breathing took effort, and the staples ached no matter what position I sat in.

She whipped through them in a fury. It was amazing to see how much she had grown when it felt like yesterday that I had cut her cord in the Operating Room 5 years before. She eagerly looked them over and I tried to stay upbeat. Deep down I watched her opening them and asked over and over through my subconscious “how many more of these are you going to get to see? Is this the last one?” I didn’t like that kind of pessimism, but I was gradually losing hope as the days ticked by because the futility of the fight was overwhelming at that point after vomiting twice the day before and being plagued by an aching stomach and a sore core. It was a beautiful day, but I felt cold and just wanted to go back to bed. My fight was mostly extinguished because it was becoming harder and harder for me to hold out hope that things would ever improve for us. I knew intelligently that I needed to be patient but at that point what was logical or made sense was clouded by the overwhelming gut punch that I had endured and was still reeling from.

She wrapped up and I headed upstairs and continued in my funk. I wanted so much to put on a big smile, but it was hard enough staying upbeat for the kids I didn’t have anything left for myself after just a few minutes of forced positivity. As it got close to 10 I decided I needed to make some effort to get out of bed but it was very hard given that Stephanie had joined me and we both lay like a yin yang of anxiety and tried to help each other from slipping even farther into the pit of depression we were both circling. My phone rang, a private number. I normally didn’t answer those calls but considering how many people were involved in my treatments I knew that it was very likely related in some way to my fight and I needed to answer. I answered with a sigh and was delighted to hear that it was Dr. Black calling to follow up.

We chatted briefly about the recovery and how I was feeling. He reiterated that the nausea is normal and to just do my best to stay active but not strain. I was convinced that was it, but he followed it up with news that I struggled to process. “We have the results of your pathology back and I have news that would normally be bad but in your case I think that it is good news and I wanted to go over it with you,” he said in a very calm and professional tone. My chest tightened. “What the hell does that mean?” I thought to myself and I prepared mentally to take another hit. “We had expected to find Teratoma, a relatively benign form of cancer that is common to see in the lymph nodes. What we found was viable Corio Carcinoma which accounts for the elevated HCG levels that we have been seeing in you.” I could feel my heart beat faster. “Living cancer, living cancer was removed. That means you could be clear,” I thought, as I tried to temper my expectation. The moment felt fake, like a living dream as the next words came over the line. “So, looking back at a blood test that you did on the first of May your HCG levels had dropped to 15 from 760, just prior to surgery. With what we know of the half-life, if you will, for HCG hormones this is exactly where we expected to see your counts if there was no other cancer to affect it. We still need some more tests obviously, but I feel we have gotten it.”

I could hear Stephanie start to cry because she could tell from my responses and from what little she could glean over the speaker that this was a good call. I thanked him, and he wished me the best for a speedy recovery and I hung up. Steph had rolled over and I hugged her and parroted back what he had said as she broke down in my arms. I could feel the stress fall out of her as she cried out with joy. I expected to be far more jubilant but a part of me was still expecting for the other shoe to fall. I figured by then that that kind of reaction would be considered typical, considering the run of bad news we found ourselves in. We lay and cried together as the realization of what he said filled me up. I could feel a weight lift off of me and I stayed laying while Stephanie rushed downstairs to tell Sandy and the kids. I could hear the ugly cries coming from the living room and tried to process the ramifications of what Dr. Black had said. I decided that I should call Mom and remembered back 10 months before when Stephanie was outside crying with Vicky while I called Mom then to tell her that I had Cancer.

As she picked up the phone, we exchanged pleasantries and I told her that I had gotten the call and heard the familiar sound of her grabbing the paper and pen that she kept handy to write the appointments and glum news that I usually had. I told her about the call and what Dr. Black had said and she almost collapsed on the other end and I could hear the very same cathartic purge of emotion that I could hear emanating from downstairs. She was elated and I cried again because the magnitude of the news was starting to sink in as Stephanie walked back into the room. I gave her the phone and the two of them ugly cried together. Mom was barely intelligible apparently, I suppose that is to be expected when you find out that your child could finally be done his fight with Cancer.

I wasn’t. They had jumped the gun on the call pretty heavily and the next blood test started to show the markers back on the rise again. It hollowed me out to have been given just one day of hope and then have it snatched away so savagely by something as simple as an increase in my HCG levels. It was hard to do anything. I wanted nothing more than to simply stay in bed and forget about the pressure and the pains and the nausea and the upcoming procedures. The only upside to how things progressed was that the nausea that was kicking my ass caused me to lose most of the weight that I had gained from the steroids they had me on to do radiation because I couldn’t reliably keep anything down without carefully selecting the food and timing my meals correctly. It was very frustrating though when I would eat something that sat well one day and that I was totally reviled by later. That lack of consistency was the worst.

My depression mounted again after Sophia’s birthday. I wanted the staples out but had to keep waiting for the two-week mark after arriving home and I had no idea how long it would be before I would feel like a normal person again. I was still very bloated and uncomfortable and slow and knowing that I had more surgery in the pipe and that the journey was not over was very hard to take. I kept meeting with Curtis to try to talk through my issues but there was only so much that he could do besides reminding me of how far I had come and how he was glad to know that I was still fighting my way through what I could. For the most part though I stayed in bed most of the time. I couldn’t bear to be out and around the house, I would come down to put on a persona for the kids to see that Daddy was still there and still hopeful but the reality was that I had pretty well lost hope of ever recovering from Cancer when I learned that my counts were rebounding after the big surgery that I had hoped, likely more than I should have, would have knocked the Cancer out cold.

I continued in that funk until I was basically forced out of the house to have a lunch meet up with Chris, my XO from HMCS Saskatoon, after he had been messaging me and trying to get me out for a coffee. I found myself unable to avoid an outing when he expressed a great deal of desire to see me and was more than happy to modify the plans to lemonades and hot dogs if it meant getting me out of the house. I was at the end of excuses and I didn’t want to be rude, so we set up the plan and he picked me up at my house and we ended up heading downtown for a bit. We talked a lot in the car on the way down and I came to realize how much I just truly missed my career and my shipmates and that bond that we forge through our service on the Sea. Chris was a great guy and just the sort of sarcastic and funny man that I wanted to talk to because he could handle the heavy talk well and with a calm and cool temperament but still managing to keep things light-hearted.

We ended up right down at Victoria’s inner harbour and making our way around the various shops that line it for tourists. We grabbed some hot dogs from Nathan’s and walked and ate as we made our way over to the other side where there was a lemonade cart. I really enjoyed our chat and the casual nature of it helped me to unguard some of the feelings that had been eating at me for weeks after being disemboweled. Over the course of our two hours or so together Chris was likely unaware of the impact of the visit but I began to ease up tremendously and things felt so much less severe, despite the fact that I was still very much dealing with Cancer and there would be no break for me as I continued to fight my way through to the end. The comradery of it all helped me a great deal and the experience of getting out of the house helped me to start to make my way back to myself after he dropped me off.

After that meeting therapy became far easier and I began to actually process the reality that I may fight to the death but that I needed to keep fighting if I wanted to preserve and maintain what was most important to me: being a husband and a father. Nothing else mattered to me in the grand scheme, the Navy, my friends, none of it mattered enough to shake me from the reality that what mattered most were those first two Pillars of my life: my wife and children and no matter what I wanted to be there for them for as long as could, in any state that I could and that realization drove me to shake off the occasional bout of nausea or depression and do things with them. I knew that I needed to use the time I had to be a husband and to be Daddy to Seth and Sophia and whatever the next chapter would be, that was what was most important.

Next Chapter: Young Love