Steve Parton - Cancer Trip: Curing Cancer with Humour. And Pot. And Chemo

CANCER TRIP

CURING CANCER WITH HUMOUR.

AND POT. AND CHEMO.

By Steve Parton

2017 Steve Parton, Strange Land Books

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission by the author.

Permission has been given by all the friends and professionals named in this book. All names are real, with the occasional acceptation, when someone was particularly stupid or crazy.

Cover photo by Andie Parton

Cover artwork by Jordyn Campbell

Edited by Andie Parton

Beta readers: Helen Bartley, Rob Bell, Greg Stoddart

Please visit:

www.partonbooks.com

www.strangelandbooks.com

~ for Isabel ~

November 1, 2016

I dont enjoy reading about peoples experiences in hospitals; I dont like talking about their medical stories. Even when prompted, I have been reluctant to talk about my own medical adventures for fear of the listener replying with, Thats nothinglet me tell you about my inflamed anus/armpit fungus/squished testicle

What follows is an account of my adventures with cancer. It started out as a journal I had kept for myself and for my kids and family to read. After 40,000 words and a revision to protect the identity of the occasional twit who crossed my path, Im sending this book out in the hopes that someone with cancer may get a bit of a chuckle out of it, or another reason to be brave.

October 18, 2013

I live in Dundas, Ontario, Canada with my common-law wife Isabel and my two kids, Blake and Meghan. I own a music school here in town, I play guitar in a rock band and I make short films. I live a full and rewarding life. A few days ago, I was told that I may die in a week. I was told the day and the time of my potential death: Friday, 8 AM .

Lets go back a couple of weeks.

September 30

It was Monday morning, and I drove the kids to school. All was good. As I pulled back into my driveway, I felt a strange pain and stiffness in my leg . I came inside and mentioned to Isabel that my leg felt funny. I undid my pants, and let them drop to my ankles. The leg was purple. Not like Barney the Dinosaur purple, but pretty close. And it was swollen. Isabel said she should take me to emergency, but who the heck wants to go there? Nevertheless, she went upstairs to get her things. In the meantime my leg throbbed, the room started to spin, and I felt nauseous. Isabel helped me to her car, and we drove to St. Josephs Hospital. On route, we discussed the best path to the entrance to Emergency, and realized there was no room for cars to drop people off. I told her I was feeling better, and that I could walk myself in if she could just let me off at the corner. She was reluctant to do so, but it did not look like we had much choice. Outside the hospital, we hit a red light, and I stepped out while Isabel went to park the car. Shes a nurse here at St. Joes, so she has a parking pass. It was to be our first of many little victories among all the bad news to come.

I crossed the street and arrived in front of the emergency department where I was greeted by three off-duty medical staff smoking cigarettes (directly under the No-Smoking sign). I trudged through the smoke and into the ER. Once inside, a large sign told me to take a number. I was number 79. Inside the packed waiting room, I looked up to see that they were now serving number 61. There was only one seat without a person, and it was occupied by a bag owned by the person sitting next to it. At this point, the room started to spin; I felt nauseous again and I was having trouble breathing. I trudged towards the seat with the bag on it and started to sit down. The man shouted at me Hold on! I did not have the energy to hold on and he pulled his bag out of the way just as I sat down.

The room was filled with people whom I did not want to have around me right then. It was very loud. There were three occupied triage stations, and stretchers everywhere. The girl behind me was talking on her cell phone so loudly that I wanted to grab the device and throw it across the room. But I felt too sick to even turn around and glare at her. At that point, I really felt myself slipping away. I said aloud, to no one, Well, goodbye now.

Isabel rushed in at that moment. She saw me, and apparently I looked like hell. She tried to find a triage nurse, but everybody was busy. Another nurse who was writing up a document looked over at me and my state. She said aloud, Is that guy alright? Isabel yelled back, No hes not!

I heard somebody yell, Get him in here, now!

Isabel flashed my healthcare card at them. Sweat was dripping profusely off my forehead. They took my temperature and my blood pressure, and I was instantly admitted. They rushed me into an anteroom where I was told to sit and wait. My wait was about 10 seconds. Somebody else came rushing in and I was put on a stretcher. They laid me flat, and waited. After a few seconds, blood started to flow through my body, and I started to feel a little better. Within a minute, I actually felt quite good.

Presently, my clothes were removed and I was put into a fancy hospital gown. A parade of doctors and nurses came by to look at my leg. It was no longer swollen and purple, but they already had an idea about what was happening. I was told that I would be sent down for an ultrasound.

Down in the imaging lab I met Janet, the ultrasound technologist . She ran the machine all over my leg, then she did my entire torso, my belly, my sides. I asked her why she was doing this, given that the problem was in my leg. Doctors orders. If she noticed anything scary in the results, she hid it from me successfully. I did not see anything on her face that could reveal what she saw. Before long, I was back upstairs and in my nice cozy room in the Emergency Department.

Eventually, the ER doctor came to see me. He had studied the ultrasound, and he had news for me. The pain in my left leg was caused by a blood clot. The clot started in my abdomen and ran down through my leg, almost to my ankle. This then begged the question, What caused the blood clot? The doctor had his suspicions and had ordered the extensive ultrasound to look at what was going on inside my belly. What they found there was a very large black mass attached to my right kidney. With the ultrasound, they could not say for sure that the mass was a cancerous tumour, but everybody knew what it was. The doctor told this to me, explaining that the tumour is likely what caused the blood clot.

To confirm this, I was sent down to get a CAT scan. This was fascinating. There was an enormous upright metal donut, 8 feet high, into the centre of which I was inserted on a stretcher.

Throughout the day, I was visited by a hematologist whose concern was the blood clot. Then I met the urologist, and his interest was the tumour on my kidney. In the coming days, I was to learn that these two St. Josephs doctors, and their respective teams, had opposing interests for my body, whereby they had to consult constantly with each other to make sure that what one was doing would not conflict with the others work.

I was given a blood thinner for the clot in my leg. It was in the form of a needle, something I would need every day for a long time, and something I would need to learn to give myself. My leg would remain swollen and purple for several weeks.

At 6 PM, I was told I could leave ER and go home. On the way home, I called my family to let them know what happened. First thing the next morning, I received a phone call from the urologists office, booking an appointment for me in two days.

October 3

Isabel and I were ushered in almost right away. There, we met with Dr. Matsumoto. He showed me my CAT scan on his computer. He gave me the mouse, and let me click around. The 3-D imaging was fascinating. The scan had taken a whole series of x-ray pictures starting just below the surface of my skin, and going all the way through to my back. Using the scroll wheel on the mouse, I was able to zoom in and out through my body. And there I could see, right before my eyes, my two kidneys. The one on the camera right was shaped like a perfect kidney bean. The one on the left was covered by a great big ugly black mass. This was the tumour, about the size of a grapefruit. It pressed against my liver and my spine.