Thursday, September 14, 2017

Since late April

Here is the Complete and Total Loser's health tally from April 24 to September 14 of this year, 2017:
  • Knee replacement surgery that found his childhood bone sarcoma had returned, making the replacement surgery impossible. The surgeon took out the knee, put in a concrete spacer, stitched the Loser up, and told him he'd try again in a month or so. Meanwhile: crutches.
  • Being told by this same surgeon that he needed a cat scan of his lungs after being injected with a dye for contrast because the bone sarcoma "liked to migrate" to lungs and that there was a one-in-three chance of that happening which, if it does, will kill the Loser within a year. He's to have this test every three months for the first year, less often after that.
  • Finding, from the blood test that determined the Loser could tolerate the dye, that his PSA level had shot up, and then having a prostate biopsy that found the Loser's prostate to be cancerous enough to require it's removal at some point in the near future.
  • Knee replacement surgery, successful this time, but not with the kind of artificial knee most would get but a hinge and two titanium rods hammered into what's left of his bones. The replacement weighs five pounds, which doesn't sound heavy and isn't until it's inside you like that.
  • Learning today, after his second lung cat scan, that although his lungs are fine he has an aortic aneurysm of about four centimeters and must go on high blood pressure medication soon. Usually, aortic aneurysms develop slowly and don't burst right away (which always kills you) and don't require surgery, but the fact that the Loser's has appeared so quickly—no one said anything when the first scan was done—has him wondering if he's not an exception to this. He'll find out more from his general physician tomorrow.
The Loser is 59. He never thought he'd make it to his fifties and he knows he won't live to be seventy, but now he's starting to wonder if he'll live to be sixty.

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