RBR: State of the Union

I finally feel like writing an update. This blog has helped me get some of the sad, angry, frustrated, and often silly, shit out of my head and since I seem to have a plethora of that these days I thought what the hell...

So here it goes, as usual too long, but that is apparently my style of writing. Verbose and histrionic.

Before Christmas my husband was tortured by a endodontist that did not realize that when your patient hits the fucking ceiling that might be an indication that the nerve was not numb and maybe you need to listen to him and give him more Novocaine. After the sixth time that he drilled the live nerve, and of the dentist telling him that he had "plenty of anesthetic" and he "needed to relax", he called it quits and left the office.

Now my husband is a big dude. A big, somewhat intimidating, dude. The endodontist is 3 feet tall and weighs approximately 17 pounds. What the hell? A big dude is in my office, tells me I am hurting him, and I am the dentist? I would get a fucking elephant tranquilizer and knock his ass out. But that is just me, I guess.

Hubby in Hawaii a few years ago. He is not trying to look tough, he is waiting for food. Yeah, I try to not let him get too hungry. It is ok, you can think he is hot. I do. *smug grin*

Amazingly, he left without having plastered the offending dentist to the wall. He is WAY better at handling anger than little ol' me.

Obviously he was a little apprehensive about having the tooth worked on after that. Our family dentist recommended conscious sedation (and a new endodontist, obviously) for the next time (There is a point to all of this. I swear. Verbose and histrionic, remember?) to try to make this already long story a little shorter, the new endodontist discovered my husband had mildly high blood pressure and wanted him to be cleared by the doctor before he sedated him.

Now SOMEONE (that someone pictured below)

Nerdiest picture of me ever taken. Believe me, there was stiff competition for this title, but here it is.

has been nagging, said big dude to go to the doctor FOR YEARS. Literally, YEARS! Like 19. So I was super happy that he finally had to go. After the exam, in his routine bloodwork we found that he had a moderately high PSA of 6.8 (prostate specific antigen if you are a man over 40 or love a man over 40 please check out the link. I did not know much about it before all of this)

In short, an increasing or high PSA level is used as an indicator for prostate cancer. I want to stress that he had NO symptoms, no illness whatsoever, and a completely normal DRE (I am certain that he would LOVE that I am discussing this particular test, but he does not read the ol' bloggy so my call. )

Since it was the holidays we had to wait about a month for next step which was ultrasound and biopsy. By then we had convinced ourselves that he could not possibly have cancer. He had no abnormalities at all and felt great. After the biopsy the doctor said the ultrasound images of the prostate were completely normal which was not a guarantee that there was no cancer, but was certainly a good sign. Plus, the 12 samples he took all appeared grossly normal. I left feeling confident that the high PSA was a fluke and related to his bicycle riding. He could not possibly have cancer.

A week later we got the news, aggressive prostate cancer (grade 3 and 4, Gleason score of 7 for those of you that know that stuff) found in all 12 biopsy samples. He needed to have a bone scan and CT scan to look for metastasis and access treatment options. Those tests were scheduled and done in the next 2 days.

I cannot even express the feelings that go through you when you hear news like that.

I have loved this man since I was 21 years old. I have lived with him longer than I lived with my parents.

Truly, indescribable.

Today we are going to get the results of all those tests and discuss treatment options.

The point of all this was to say if that asshole dentist had not tortured my husband we would not have known until he had problems and the cancer would have most assuredly spread.

Maybe I should send him a muffin basket or something. What gift is appropriate to say "Boy, I am sure glad you fucked up! You may have saved my husband's life"?

We are a team and like the last 19 years, we will get through this together.