Handbill Handout

Well now I've gone and done it.  I started to tell a story before I knew all the stories have been told .  He's not wrong, I wonder where the arc of the one I'm telling will wind up. 

If you happen to be young and male and heterosexually inclined and someone proposed the following scenario you might automatically assume it was a prelude to a fun time.  Scenario:  You arrive at a place of commerce with the foreknowledge that just about the entire cost of your activities there will be paid for by someone else.  At said place you are brought to a changing room and given the following instructions:  "Take off all clothing below the waste, put on this robe and go through that door which leads to another room".  Sound fun? It ain't necessarily so.  Because for the next 30 minutes or so what you'll be doing is laying on a hard table until your shoulders shake and your back spasms while being run back and forth through a cat scan machine and simultaneously a mold is being made of your lower body via the use of some kind of squishy material inside of what looked suspiciously like a plastic bag used for leaf and lawn clipping disposal....

I nearly batted a thousand, but no. The numbers:  13 out of 14 samples were not cancer.  1 was. The number on the cancer are 7 on the Gleason Scale off a 4+3 which means it needs to be addressed but is, in the opinion of the three doctors I've heard from so far is "very treatable". I am told I can shop around for treatment.  "Definitely not an emergency" they say.  "Treating because of your age, you're relatively young".  It's good that people are now finally adding the "relatively".  I've been ready for the "what's going to kill you first ?" calculations for a while too. It's also nice to have an excuse to give even fewer fucks than ever. So I talked to a few doctors and decided to go with a somewhat inconveniently located place instead of a familiar but even less conveniently located place because the doctors said I had the same chance of cure either way.  Still mystified as to why I have to travel to...

I was supposed to get the results ten days after the test. The doctor went on vacation so it was another seven days.  The time passed as it inevitably does. I did some stuff while the time past.  Worked, ate, drank, slept, stuff everyone does.  Not really worth documenting. The appointment day came and I waited at home and I waited in the waiting room and I waited in the exam room.

Do a search on "trans-rectal prostate biopsy".  Or better yet, don't.  It's not something worth investigating if you don't have to have one. To prepare for one of these one must get an enema.  Self-administered if possible unless not possible or unless that kind of , what do they call it, "play" is your thing.  It is definitely not my thing. However my significant other was kind enough to pick up the equipment for me.  Super-kind in that she bought me the "extra" size, as in "extra volume", i.e. more salt water to shoot up your ass.  I had that one coming for years, I suppose. I successfully executed that step while home alone.  Turns out it is surprisingly refreshing, so much so that a brief run through an internet chat board concerning proper execution included threads cautioning folks to not do it more than once a week and not to drink the stuff.   It wasn't that good for me, folks. The procedure itself is fairly undign...

4.2 It's probably nothing but at your age you should check it out. It's a crappy test. 4.3 but we don't take your insurance.  We can cram the tests in before the end of the year. We can't do the test because your insurance won't cover another one this soon.  We can do this other more invasive test. So we did.

Better than the one I put where people could see it which is exactly the reason to put it here.