Saturday, 13 September, 1997 02:11
I might as well admit it: I'm worried. No, scratch that, I'm scared... in a kind of a weird way.
I went to bed at 20:00 last night, but I was awakened by a thunder blast that shook the water bed. At midnight. So I've been surfing and trying to get my email (which I still can't do) and thinking.
One of my worst fears has been dying of bladder cancer. Not so much the dying, but the living without a bladder. And other things, such as loss of sexual function. And pain.
However, the smart money would be something (cancer, of course: what else is there?) in my prostate, since the urologist felt a "firmness" there. This is something that is survivable; that's the only good thing about it.
Other possibilities:
A testicular cancer has been pretty well eliminated by the physical examination.
So:
I'll just worry about it until my IVP on Monday. I didn't explain what an IVP is yesterday, so I'll do that now.
An IVP is an inrtavenous Pyelogram. It is a way of imaging the kidneys, ureters and bladder. Iodinated contrast material is injected into a vein, and it circulated through the bloodstream and the kidneys filter it out. The contrast material has a relatively high atomic weight, so it shows up on xrays. The first films show it concentrating in the kidneys, and subsequent films show it traveling down the ureters and into the bladder. Films are taken from different directions, so that the structures can be visualized three-dimensionally.
Some people have trouble with the contrast material, such as being allergic to iodine. There is another type of contrast material, non-ionic, which is much easier on the system in selected people for various reasons, such as allergies, previous reactions, heart conditions (that's me) and other conditions. The procedure usually takes 15-20 minutes and it's painless if you don't count the IV stick (Which I don't, but it is a major terror for some folks...) The non-ionic material has a major drawback, though: it costs about three times what the other stuff does.
Anyway, that's enough for now, I'm going to try to get some more sleep, I guess. More later...
I feel so much better now... I can get mail. I called CJNetworks, who bought out KSPress. They had been fiddling around, and switched the mail server over using a different DNS. Then they switched it back for about an hour, just to confuse me, I think. So I got about ten pieces of mail, then nothing again. Because they switched it back again, and this time they left it that way. But did they tell anyone? Yeah, I got a message from them. They sent the message after they made the switch! So they not only confused me, they convinced me that they are stupid.
I went back to bed after the earlier entry and slept on and off until 10:30, when I decided to give up on it. I have been draggin' all day, and my mood isn't the best, either. Kim and the grandkids came over and we all went out to Taco Villa to eat lunch. As usual, I was disappointed, as I am with most mexican fast food that isn't Taco Tico. After that, we went to the grand opening of PetSmart. Bad move, I should've come home instead. The place was packed, and Kim wanted to get some fish for her acquarium. Her fish were found dead on the floor this morning, so she needed immediate replacements for them...
When we came home, I got on the line and got my mail problem solved, and then spent some time sifting through it... 256 messages, mostly from mail-lists. More time reading current journal entries. And now, I'm going to read some more, then I'm going to bed. I feel that I can get a good night's sleep tonight, anyway.
More tomorrow..
Given my history as a smoker and coffee-drinker, the bladder cancer seems to be high on the list. Just being a 51-year-old male puts the prostate cancer high on the list, too. Not having a previous history of kidney stones puts that pretty low probability-wise.