Survivor Spotlight: Nate Goodman
Cancer The Second Time Sucks More
Finding out you have cancer once, sucks. Finding out it decided to come back, well, that sucks even more.
My first go at this went like many others. I had a lumpy testicle. You can deny, for as long as I did, that you have testicular cancer but ultimately, lumpy testicle=cancer. For two years I was in denial. Didn’t do a damn thing about it. All you ever heard was Lance Armstrong’s situation and mine was NOTHING like that. Had it grown to the size of a grape fruit, I’d like to think I would have gone to the doctor. But no, mine never increased in size. Just a lumpy shape shifting testicle.
I ended up getting that taken care of, AKA, I have one less testicle. I didn’t have good insurance at the time and that is where this story really begins and if you think you might have an issue or just went through all this without insurance, like I did, this is when you need to pay attention.
24 years old, with less then impressive insurance and just had my testicle removed. Needless to say, it cost me a few bucks. As I am typing this, it reminds me to write the check for a CT scan that happen 6 years ago.
I went into debt because of cancer, like many do. I’m a big fan of Dave Ramsey. Not only for his knowledge of personal finance but for his faith he isn’t afraid to share. If you have ever listen to him, “debt is dumb and cash is king”, is a saying you have heard a time or two. This first battle with cancer only put me in debt around $20,000. This is a minimal sum of money for this disease, I know, but for a 24 year old, it is the majority of your annual income. I was lucky enough to have my Urologist be a family friend and everything he did was for free. Surgery included. After surgery, I had one CT scan a week later and everything came back fine.
One year later and now having awesome insurance, I had a follow up CT scan, due to pressure from my then girlfriend, now wife, to check things out. I did it and it came back all clear. My thought process, I had a lumpy ball for two years, nothing happened, I checked it a year later after surgery, I’m good forever. That’s where follow ups stopped.
Boy I was wrong.
February 13, 2015
It is absolutely amazing how things can change over night. One of my best friends, a guy I’ve known for 20+ years was in town and hung out the night before and I felt fine. Friday morning, I woke up pretty early with some dull back pain but thought nothing of it. The morning progressed and the pain kept getting worse and worse. The back pain reminded me of the back pain I had due to the cancer the first time. The pain kept getting worse and worse, all the way to the point that I had to call my wife and tell her to come pick me up and take me to the hospital.
Now let me take a break and give my wife the credit she deserves. My wife, when she was just the girlfriend, was only 21 years old and a junior in college when I first had to go through this. If you are battling this and you have a wife, girlfriend, partner, whatever, holding your hand through this, you are a lucky man. This is equally difficult, if not more, on them.
Back to the story
My wife swoops me up but before she got there, I took the time to WebMD myself and I figured I had a kidney stone. Obviously, the Internet told me so. That kidney stone hurt like hell and caused me to hunch over in the car the entire ride to the hospital. Luckily, my wife works for a hospital and made some calls on the way there and I was able to go in the back door and not have to wait in the ER line. At this point, I was in the most pain I had ever been in, in my entire life. Apparently lying down on the cold hospital floor is frowned upon and gross, I didn’t care, I went full fetal position.
They get me in an ER room and then they drugged me. That was great. What wasn’t great is the fact that they thought it was a kidney stone too and I didn’t need to pee. One test for kidney stones is checking for blood in your pee. Well, if you don’t have to pee, then they have to got get it, via catheter. WOW, that is not enjoyable, especially when they don’t find blood in your pee. CT scan time.
Post CT scan
Hanging out in the room, somewhat drugged up, with the wife and in walks the ER doc. She walked in, closed the door and instantly you can tell she is not looking forward to the news she has to share with us. “There is a sizable mass in your abdomen, pressing on your kidney. Presumably, cancerous.”
Without hesitation, I grabbed my wife, Sara’s, hand.
Sara instantly jumps into “for better or for worse, in sickness and in health” mode and asks, “What do we need to do next?” Clearly upset but being the tough as nails woman she is, she powered though it. I’m just sitting there thinking, well, this is going to be expensive. That sizeable mass was the size of a football. How a football grows inside me without me knowing, I have no idea, but there it was. Pressing on a kidney and making it bleed. AWESOME.
This is why I wanted you to pay attention, if you weren’t before, and you think you might be in my situation. I was ignorant enough to think that after a year, I was scott free, and didn’t have to worry about cancer anymore. Had I continued my check ups like I was suppose to, this would have been caught well before it got the size it did.
The first battle with cancer, no chemo was involved. Just the snip snip.
The second battle I spend 11 days in the hospital and received the first round of chemo there too.
CHEMO ……. SUCKS
If you thought chemo might not be that bad, you are in for a rude awakening. Testicular cancer is super treatable by chemo. But, in order to do so, they literally kick your ass with it.
Wanna feel like you are having the life sucked out of you? Get hooked up to chemo for 5 days in a row. Two bags of chemo, two bags of hydration, 4-5 hours total and a tube hanging out of your chest for those five days too. I forgot to mention, you get a port in your chest. It makes it easier for them to “plug you into chemo” as it’s just under the skin on your chest. Yes, you can tell its there but you get used to it.
I had friend ask me, “ Is chemo like being really hung-over?” No. If you have to experience chemo, it will be like nothing you have ever felt before and not in a good way. I have never experienced anything like it. The actual infusions aren’t that bad. Sure you can taste it in your mouth and you get kind of sleepy, but the five days aren’t the worst part. It’s the days after chemo that tend to be less fun. It’s progressive too. You feel shitty after the first round but you bounce back in two days. The next round, it takes maybe 3 or 4 days to recoup. The following round it takes, 5 to 6 days. My last week was the worst. I went into the hospital weighing 190 pounds the biggest I had ever been in my life. As my brother in law would say, “I was swoll!” Thank God I had that weight to loose. I had always been right around 150-160 pounds post college. Coming to Texas, I put on some weight but mainly muscle, a lot of muscle. I did not weight myself that last recovery week of chemo, that was the last thing on my mind, but I guarantee, I was in that 150-155 ballpark, if not less. I threw up for a week straight and ate nothing for 5 days. Popsicles. Saved my life. You can keep those down. Remember that.
Your hair falls out too.
I loved my hair. I had great hair. I cared for it. I styled it daily.
It’s a sad day when you notice it coming out in the shower. It comes to the point that it’s annoying to have any hair left because everything you rest your head on, tugs at the hair and ultimately pulls it out. Pillows, hats, blankets, and don’t you dare run your fingers through your hair. Just shave it off. It eventually falls out everywhere. And by everywhere, I mean everywhere. Your face is going to swell up too so be ready for being hairless and fat faced.
The worst part of chemo… My vote goes to the sweating
Chemo is essentially a poison. The tumor doesn’t like it but neither does the rest of your body. If you think about it, God went all out when he made the human body. It’s nuts. Your body is going to do its damnedest to push that poison every chance it gets. It is going to come out in your urine and it is going to come out of your pores. Both of which smell horrible but for some reason, my wife couldn’t smell it. The sweats were sooo bad that my nurse in the hospital had to change my sheets nightly because they were soaked from it. Even when I was home, for the five days of chemo, all out patient, I slept on the living room floor so we didn’t have to change the sheets every night. Do you like long showers? I hope you do, they are one of the few things that are actually relaxing. Lay down in the bathtub and let the water just wash over you and the piece of plastic covering the tube in your chest. It makes you feel better. Kinda normal.
The last week of April, I had my last infusion. Thank God that was over and I started to lead a normal life again. We use to live in Indianapolis, for about 4 years. When I went into the hospital and told everyone where we were from they kept asking, did you get treated at IU health, in Indy, the first time. I did not and I am not joking, every doctor asked that. Doctor Lawrence Einhorn, works for IU Health, treated Lance Armstrong, and truly wrote the book on how to treat testicular cancer. Sara use to work for IU before we moved to Texas. Sara, being the amazing wife she is, made an appointment with him, to get a second opinion. Again, you are going to get mad at whoever is lucky enough to take care of you through this, there is no question about it, it will happen. But in the end, you realize that they only want the absolute best for you and they want to do everything in their power, to keep you around. And that’s what Sara did. She made the appointment, booked the flight, rented the car and told me we were going to Indy whether I wanted to or not. She loves me and wanted me to see the best.
Dr. Einhorn was great. My Doc here is great too but his specialty isn’t testicular cancer. There are about 8000 case of testicular cancer in the U.S. every year. There are equally the same number of Urologists in the U.S. This means, each doctor sees about one testicular cancer patient a year. When you toss in it reoccurring, like mine did and the size of the tumor, even less have dealt with it. Lets face it, testicular cancer is a cancer that doesn’t get talked about. It doesn’t take that many lives and it’s really treatable out of all the cancers. But is it still CANCER! We went to Einhorn and he basically told us we were on the right track. He went into more detail with my doctor in Texas and was able to explain things to but both Sara and myself at ease.
The tumor is no longer the size of a football but more like a baseball. It is continuing to shrink and as long as that happens, I won’t need any other treatment. If it does start to grow, I will start chemo again.
I apologize if I scare anyone with the whole chemo talk. It does suck a lot but it does work. You’ll be ok.
If you take anything from this, do your follow ups. No matter what the cost is. This could have been caught a long time ago had I been doing my follow up.
Lastly, I just had my 3-year wedding anniversary with my wife Sara. She has now had to deal with me and cancer twice and she is only 27. I cannot stress how important, loving, strong, caring and helpful she was throughout all of this. She sat there for every minute of every infusion I had. She stayed all 11 nights with me in the hospital. She drove me to every doctor’s appointment. She changed the sheets in the middle of the night after I cover them in sweat. She stayed with me as I was throwing up everything in my stomach. She took care of our home, did all the laundry, all while putting in 50 hours of work a week. I can’t ask for a better wife. I love you Sara and I thank God you are in my life every day.
To those of you battling this, God bless and remember to always smile and laugh, you only have one ball now.
