A CANCER DIAGNOSIS DURING MEDICAL SCHOOL: CHAPTER 3

Meeting Dr. M was like meeting a younger, thinner, more energetic (if that is possible), old St. Nick. He can light up the room with the energy equivalent to a small town going to the state championship game for the first time, ever. I guess you need that kind of enthusiasm to conquer the day when you deal with cancer like melanoma on a daily basis.

For chapter one, read: A CANCER DIAGNOSIS DURING MEDICAL SCHOOL: BECOMING THE PATIENT

For chapter two, read: A CANCER DIAGNOSIS DURING MEDICAL SCHOOL: CHAPTER 2

THE ONCOLOGIST

I was sitting there with my wife when he came barging through the door. “HELLO THERE, Mr. Hargiss! Why is a young guy like you coming to see an old guy like me? I don’t deal with young people that often.” Of course he knew exactly why I was there, but I played along.

“Well, it seems I have a melanoma” was all I could get out.

“It appears that way, doesn’t it? Well, let me tell you, we are gonna take care of it now, aren’t we? I hear you are in medical school. Fun times! What is it that you want to do?”

“I am thinking orthopedics, pediatrics if I chose today.”

“Good good. WE NEED THOSE! With a name like Blade, you have to be a surgeon. You are going to do great things.”

I couldn’t tell if this was a cancer workup or a therapy session. I could give but short responses before Dr. M would fill the room with ever evolving conversation. Throughout this first meeting, instead of asking me my symptoms or how things were going, he was asking all sorts of questions about my future, my goals, dreams, etc. He had a knack for keeping my mind elsewhere, all the while checking my lymph nodes for abnormal swelling or doing a quick over looking at my other moles. Finally, we got down to business.

INTO THE FRAY

“So, you have a melanoma. I want to be clear… at this point in time it is a T3b tumor. This is not the STAGE of the melanoma or cancer, just the tumor itself. We need to do more groundwork to figure out how much this pest has gone off its rocker. Staging will take some time. I want you to let me worry about the staging, therapy, and follow up. That’s my job. Your job, my friend, is to focus on your studies, your family, and becoming the best pediatric orthopedic surgeon there is!”

“But how bad is it? Should I continue school?”

With a resounding ABSOLUETLY, he put that question six feet under. He went on to say that melanoma 10 years ago was much more difficult to treat than it is today. It is still dangerous if taken lightly, but there were options upon options for me. Therapies beyond chemo and radiation. Therapies that would use my immune system to clean up the cancer.

Now, I have a love-hate relationship with my immune system. It is a little stupid. It is the reason I am a Type 1 diabetic and the reason I have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. My immune system never recognized the initial cancer. It just hasn’t done its job! But, it may also be the reason I would be cancer free down the line. What a dilemma. Can’t hate the thing that may save you even after years of abuse and mistreatment…

Now the line that has seen me through so much these past few months. Dr. M looked at me and in his whitty and fun personality he said, “Blade, I’ll cut you a deal. You pay for my kids college and I’ll make sure you see your kids go to college.” Now, I understand this might rub some wrong, but it didn’t me. It had enough sarcasm and hope woven in with my goals in life to resound with me. OF COURSE he would treat me even if I didn’t pay for his kids college. There was no quid pro quo in the least. He was going to take great care of me. But this made sense to me. To be quite honest, his kids might be out of college already.

We walked out of the Gonda Building with a medical oncology folder, information on melanomas, and more follow up appointments.

NEXT STEPS

So, the next steps…

Meet with the surgical oncologist the next day to set up a wide local excision and sentinel lymph node biopsy, just to see how far this melanoma had gotten. Then, set up a time for a PET scan. If the lymph nodes came back clean, then no need for PET scan. If they didn’t, then off I would go. After all the real staging was done, then treatment would begin. Simple enough.

Now, to be quite honest, I wanted this cut out ASAP. After the initial shave biopsy, dermatopathology took a month to determine it was melanoma. Much longer than the initial five days they said. So, for well over a month at this point, what was thought to be nothing more than a benign skin lesions was a killer in the weeds. If the shave had left anything behind of the primary melanoma tumor, it had a month to sit there, growing and destroying. Time was against us, or so it felt that way.

So the answer…

Get a burger. When Kristi and I left Dr. M’s, we stopped at a local burger shop and got a burger. Weird thing to do… It was like we were celebrating a cancer diagnosis. There was no beating around the bush. I HAD CANCER. We had no idea how bad it was, but it wasn’t a great diagnosis any way you looked at it.

So, controlling what I could, I decided a good burger was a way to celebrate the hope Dr. M had given us. It was black and white compared to the initial diagnostic call. I couldn’t tell if he was over enthusiastic, but I didn’t care. I needed someone to give me something positive. He did just that. So, a bacon ranch cheese burger was more than appropriate. I also got a root beer. Take that diabetes.

A WORD TO OUR SUPPORT SYSTEM

It would be an absolute atrocity if I didn’t take the time to recognize good friends at this point in the story.

Although this was early in the journey, one of our good friends had dropped everything to come watch the kiddos so Kristi could come with me to Dr. M’s. It was short notice AND in the middle of nap time for her own kids, yet, she came. Many more times during the course of our journey, friends and family alike would come out of the woodworks without care of compensation or recognition to support and uplift us.

In a state so far way from where we both grew up, Kristi and I would come to know ever so surely that we had found home. Home full of love, support, and friends beyond compare. Home where prayers would be had, blessings would be given, meals would be shared, laughter would be heard, and memories would be made, with individuals we didn’t know four years ago. Rochester would become my home of healing and hope, but it already was a home of family and love.

To each of those friends, I say thank you. God bless you. You deserve the very best life has to offer because each of you are the very best. I couldn’t feel more safe and supported.

This also doesn’t take away from friends and family from a distance that have come in droves with love and support, but more on that later.

THE SURGICAL ONCOLOGSIT

Meeting with Dr. H, my surgical oncologist, was somewhat of a different endeavor. She was tenacious. Sassy. Confident. At one point she said something to the effect of… “I trained as a female surgeon in the 80s when women were thought to be useless in the OR and I survived. We aren’t gonna let this cancer kill you. I’ll cut until there isn’t much left if I have to…”.

I don’t know if this was supposed to be comforting or intimidating. If I was riding into the fray against a formidable enemy, I would definitely want Dr. H at the helm. So, in many regards, I guess she is just who I needed. She made a slot in her schedule for me. In 10 days time, I’d have surgery.

I was facing a foe so many have faced before me have, yet, every time is unique and different. Cancer is too umbrella of a term.

The future for cancer may really boil down to individualistic medicine. In fact, it must. Chemo kills everything it touches. The reason it works with cancer is the faster the cells divide and the more resources they need, the more the chemo kills. Hence why so many on chemo have upset stomachs for example. Cells that line the intestine and gut are constantly turning over and regenerating. You get chemo, those cells get hit hard along with the cancer, supposedly. When your gut gets assaulted, nausea ensues.

But cancer is more than rapidly dividing cells. It is a genetic malfunction that leads to uncontrolled growth. If scientists can tailor therapy to the exact genetic change that the cancer has, guess what is going to die. Not the patient, but the cancer. As it stands now though, chemo kinda kills both. The hope is that the cancer dies quicker than the patient does and that the chemo eventually not be needed.

PREPPED FOR A FIGHT

My cancer, even though many have had melanoma, was unique to me. My genetic code had gotten muffed up enough to cause uncontrolled growth and possible migration. Now it was a race to figure out how long this melanoma had gone undetected. I was prepped for a fight.

Dr. M was managing the medical side of things. Dr. H was managing the surgical side. Both were determined, as was I, to nip this in the bud. May 4^th was the day I would go under the knife. That was the most important day, as it was the day we would find more answers and set our trajectory for months, or possibly years, to come.

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Connect with me on Instagram or Facebook for the daily fun (and grind) between posts. To connect with Blade check out his Instagram – @dr.bladeinprogress

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