suspicious lump

At the end of a long and good and slightly crappy weekend — good because I visited dear friends and played a great gig, crappy because of the hours of driving on little sleep and the expensive car breakdown that made the gig redundant — I felt myself up in the shower, as I often do. Promise me that you do too.

Sure enough. I found a pea-sized hard lump in my remaining testicle. So, I had to go to the oncologist today.

Catherine woke up sick, and hasn't stopped throwing up all day. My guess is that for once the phrase "worried sick" actually meant just that. She insisted, though, on going with me to the cancer center, where she wept and heaved and threw up into garbage sacks and styrofoam coffee cups until a gentle nurse came along and laid her hand on Catherine's shoulder and asked who her doctor was and maybe we could expedite things. I laughed and said that Catherine wasn't the patient, but expediting things for me would have the same effect of alleviating pain. The nurse was wonderful: I got right in, gave some blood for testing, and saw a doctor. After a thorough groping, he said he was confident there was no tumor. The texture I'd noticed was too much on the surface and the wrong size and shape. It's probably a cyst of some kind.

Of course, the blood test results should really clear it up — and I still have a scheduled appointment for next month, with a scan — but for now the official word is, "whew."

Thanks for your concern and prayers. Off to the sperm bank!