Handle Me with Care by Rolfe Helen J

Author:Rolfe, Helen J [Rolfe, Helen J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fabrian Books
Published: 2015-06-29T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Five days after the operation, when the results were in on the Monday morning, Ben took Evan to see the specialist.

‘I’ll take it from here. I shouldn’t be long.’ Evan didn’t want anyone else witnessing the news, good or bad. He wanted to hear it himself, take it in, process what was happening.

He didn’t have to wait too long to be seen by the specialist, who shook his hand and led him to a room at the end of a long corridor.

Evan tried to read the man’s expression, but he had his poker face on for sure.

‘I’ll get straight to the point,’ he said once Evan had carefully lowered himself into a chair beside the desk. ‘The operation went well, as you know, and now that we have the pathology results back, we know that your lump was cancer.’

It was as though a gong had been struck at deafening volume and was still reverberating next to his ear.

The specialist’s voice pushed on through. ‘The good news is that it’s stage one seminoma.’

‘That’s the good news?’

‘I know it doesn’t seem that way when I use the word cancer, but stage one means that it hasn’t spread.’

Evan tried to get his head around the complex explanation of what a seminoma was, but he couldn’t process it. He felt as though the specialist was speaking a foreign language. He’d been told all this before, he’d read about it time and time again, but with all the medical jargon it was easy to be confused.

‘You’ll need a round of chemotherapy in four to six weeks, and from past experience that’s usually enough to eradicate any cancer cells,’ the specialist continued.

‘Isn’t that too long to wait? Shouldn’t we get going with the chemo straight away?’

The specialist seemed to sense the panic in Evan’s voice. ‘We need the body to recover from the operation first, and with this type of cancer, it’s fine to wait that short time. And, Evan, please remember the chances of making a full recovery without the recurrence of cancer are extremely high.’

‘How high?’

‘The single dose of chemotherapy that will be administered for you is associated with a cure rate of about ninety-seven to ninety-eight percent.’

‘And what are my chances of getting the cancer in my other testicle now that I’ve had it in one?’ Please God, don’t let him lose any more of his manhood.

The specialist took a deep breath. ‘There is a very small increased risk of patients with testicular cancer getting it in the other testicle. But,’ he said before Evan lost the plot completely, ‘it’s a small risk of about two percent.’

They ran through other details – the expected timing of the chemotherapy; the annual CT scans he would need; the checks with the specialist every few months. The specialist checked the incision and declared that it was ‘healing nicely’.

Evan walked out to the car park to meet Ben and climbed gingerly into the passenger seat. He knew he should be grateful that the prognosis was good, that compared to some people he was getting off lightly.

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