The Trials and Tribulations of the not-so-New Bear Icon

My father went in for prostate cancer surgery this past week. his surgery was delayed a couple of times and actually landed on Halloween - a pretty strange day for surgery in my book. How do you tell who's the surgeon?

My sister called first, wondering if I heard any updates from mom. I had called my dad on Monday and he seemed ready for the whole thing, but nothing at the time since. My mother did call on Thursday giving me some details saying my dad was feeling pretty weak and would probably be staying at the hospital for observation.

This is certainly a better situation than when Dad was on chemotherapy and became really weak and had to spend a few days in the hospital. We Laura and I didn't hear about that until we saw them in Baltimore earlier this year.

It's interesting that my Dad's hair was just growing back from the chemo back in May, and it was totally white. When he and mom came up to Dallas in September, his hear was mostly dark again. I think I'm going to like having those genes.

The surgery is the last of the procedures, hopefully dad will need to go through. It's been two years from the diagnosis, and he had to go through several bouts of chemo before they would do the surgery. It probably would have been much, much easier if he had actually gotten checked out a few years earlier. He had been having enlarged prostate problems for some time before that.

So here I am at 40, and I have to get checked out for prostate problems, and now there's a family history of it, so I'll have to be vigilant. Ahh, fickle finger of fate. Still, as a gay man, prostate exams aren't quite the embarrassment than they are for straights, I guess.

So there you go, another lesson from my father, get checked and get checked early enough when taking care of cancer is easy, and you don't have to go through all of the crap - and the catheters. I really don't want to hear my mother talking about the catheter cleaning class she went to. Eww.