Preparing for Treatment
8/13/23: Port healing nicely. Most importantly, smiling and laughing with my little man.
Here’s a quick recap from my last post, The Diagnosis. After multiple appointments, lab tests, and scans, I was officially diagnosed with cancer. With a tentative chemotherapy plan in place, I'm now just one week away from starting treatment.
As the countdown to chemotherapy began, I had one final hurdle to clear.
The week before my treatment started, I had a liver biopsy to confirm the exact type of cancer and determine its stage. Since chemotherapy was already a certainty, they also planned to insert my port during the same procedure. For those unfamiliar, a port is a small, implanted device that allows for blood draws and treatments under the skin—a more comfortable and efficient alternative to an IV.
I received several instructions to prepare for the procedure, but only one stood out as truly important: "No blood thinners on the day of treatment." This would be the first morning in as long as I could remember that I didn’t start the day with two or three Advil. Though Advil isn't typically addictive, for all intents and purposes, I was addicted. It had become a critical part of my daily routine, providing much needed relief for my back and hip pain. I took four, six, sometimes even eight a day. Without it, I couldn't function. I think that qualifies as an addiction.
Since only one guest was allowed, my dad accompanied me to the procedure. He had flown in from San Francisco so we decided that he would drive me to the appointment and hang with me before my procedure, and my wife would be at the hospital with me afterwards, until I was cleared to go home. It was the first appointment she didn’t attend. I wished she was there. I felt embarrassed to appear so weak in front of anyone but her. And I missed having her by my side. She did send me the best video of her and Ollie while I was there, though. They wished me luck, and told me they loved me. Watching it was the probably the most emotional I had ever gotten.
As I waited in the hospital bed for my procedure to begin, I was in considerable discomfort. I stretched, twisted, and turned, doing everything possible to alleviate the tightness in my back and hips. After about an hour of suffering, I was finally taken to the operating room. The wait would have been longer if my doctor’s NP, now my NP, the same one who had comforted me at my initial appointment the week before, hadn't stepped in and pushed the doctors to start immediately. My guardian angel.
Once in the operating room, the doctor explained that I would receive two drugs: a local anesthesia to ensure I felt no pain, and a sedative or anti-anxiety drug to make me not remember the procedure. They wouldn’t "put me to sleep" like with general anesthesia, which was somewhat disappointing. However, I quickly fell asleep anyways. Or simply didn’t know that I was awake.
When I woke up, my back and hips didn’t hurt so much. Unfortunately, the pain was just overshadowed by the stiffness in my neck from where the port was inserted and the soreness in my abdomen from the seventeen tissue samples taken from my liver. Doctors from various hospitals wanted to test these samples, and I was willing to let them research and experiment with different therapies on the tissue rather than on me directly.
I went home, popped some Advil, and slept. Waking up with more stiffness and soreness than I had after the procedure.
Throughout my entire journey, this was undoubtedly one of the hardest days for me. From the moment I woke up, it felt like I was in some kind of hell. Later, my wife shared that this day was equally difficult for her. For the first time, she felt completely helpless—unable to focus on scheduling the next appointment or researching different treatments or therapies. She was just another visitor in a hospital waiting room.
When she came to pick me up, the nurses told her that no visitors were allowed in the recovery area and that she would have to wait until I was discharged to see me. She didn’t accept that. She relentlessly pleaded with the nursing staff to let her be by my side when I woke up. Her dad and I always joke that she’s a ballbuster, and she is—in the best way possible. And per usual, she eventually got her way.
The nurse walked Emma back to my recovery room, and apologized that we were going through this. She got Emma a chair, closed the curtain, and said, “I will keep you guys in my prayers.” As Emma sat next to me, waiting for me to wake up, she said it was the first time she feared she might actually lose me.
Before starting treatment, there was one last thing to address. My NP advised that if we wanted to have another child in the future, it likely wouldn’t happen naturally, so I needed to bank some sperm. The toxicity from the chemotherapy drugs and the maintenance therapy pill I would take afterward would be too high for a natural pregnancy, posing a significant risk of miscarriage or birth defects.
Thank God she considered this for my wife and me, as it's often overlooked in pancreatic cancer patients who are usually well beyond the age of considering more children. She really was our guardian angel. Emma and I hoped for at least one more child, if not two or three. We loved being parents. Emma is the best mom. Although I felt I missed a lot of Oliver’s first year while battling cancer and starting treatment, I loved being a dad.
Chemotherapy was scheduled for Thursday, so on Tuesday, I needed to “gather a sample” and drop it off at the fertility center. I felt awful, with no energy and thoughts only about starting chemo that week. It had been a while since my wife and I had done anything sexual. It took me a while to get in enough of a mood. When I finished, it looked like nothing had even come out. My body was so weak I couldn’t get out more than a tiny drop of sperm. We drove to the fertility center, where they would test and freeze the sample. I thought there was no way it was enough. We’d only be having the one, perfect, child.
I received a voicemail a few hours later: they had collected around three million sperm. More than enough for what we would need.
It was game time. Treatment was two days away, and everyone—whether they were cancer survivors or knew someone who went through chemotherapy—told me the same thing, stay positive. So, despite everything, I was ready to face chemo with optimism.
To be continued…
Part Three: My First Treatment coming soon…
