When Cancer Calls an Audible

On seeing the opposing team’s defense lineup, much like a football quarterback calls an audible for a new play different from the one called in the huddle, pancreatic cancer called an audible on me, upending my life and shredding my play.

It was an early spring day a dozen years ago. Under brilliant blue skies and warm sunshine, glistening puddles of water formed around remnant piles of snow. A Friday, a workmate and I ran out for some piping hot Mexican food. We both had the special: Chicken enchiladas in red sauce with rice and beans. It was delicious.

Over the weekend, I felt off. Not sick, just off. Come Monday, I asked my workmate, “Hey, did you feel off after having the special?” He shot back, “No. Best Mexican food ever!”

Being a guy who got my annual physical done once every five years or so, it wasn’t in my nature to run to see my doctor. But something felt different about this.

On seeing my doctor, he told me he would run some, as he called them, “routine tests.” (I think doctors use words like “routine” so they don’t spook us.)

Over the next weekend, I felt awful or worse than awful; lukewarm death comes to mind. So much so that I called my doctor on a Sunday and asked what I should do. He said, “Either go into the ER or come in and see me first thing on Monday morning.”

After Googling reasons to go to the ER and not seeing “feeling awful” as a reason, I dragged myself in to see him on Monday morning.

On arriving at his office, I found it packed with people who had the foresight to make an appointment.

I told his receptionist, “I spoke to the doctor yesterday, and he told me to come in and see him first thing this morning.”

Rolling her eyes, she said, “We’ll have to work you in. Take a seat over there.”

Sitting with my back up against the wall, I closed my eyes, hoping not to lose it as I fought off waves of stomach upset.

Thankfully, I soon heard, “Bill?”

A nurse took me back to an exam room where my wait continued.

Hearing a light tap on the door, I perked up and mustered a plastic smile as I asked, “Have you seen my test results yet?”

My doctor replied, “Dude, you have other problems. You are yellow!”

Not sitting down, he said, “I’m ordering an emergency CT scan. My nurse will call you with a time.”

A couple hours later, splayed out on the CT scanner’s table, much like being sacrificed to some ancient god, I was fed into its gaping mouth.

A later phone call told me, “You have a blocked bile duct.”

No one seemed to know quite what I should do. Feeling wrecked, I decided to go to the ER. After a nine-hour wait, I was admitted.

Early the next morning, my bile duct was stented to open it up. No one said a word about cancer.

Three days later, the gastroenterologist who stented my bile duct ducked into my hospital room. Much like a mechanic telling a customer that they need a new transmission, he leaned over the rail of my bed and said, “I’m sorry you have a malignancy.” Before I could muster a single question, he spun around and darted out the door.

I divined “malignancy” meant “cancer,” but I found it chilling that not even a doctor used the C-word.

Finding the Tumor and Facing Treatment

Over the next two weeks, after multiple scans, the doctors at the hospital were baffled as to where my cancer lay. Only after another doctor used a special ultrasound probe was a one-inch tumor, sucked up next to my bile duct, found.

Within a month, I had a Whipple Procedure to remove my tumor along with the top third of my pancreas and gall bladder. Later I found out only one in five people can have this intricate procedure. Not to be graphic, it is much like gutting a fish. And without this procedure, death follows all too soon.

Months of radiation and chemo followed.

As only five out of a hundred people see five years, I didn’t expect to be here a dozen years later.

Looking back, I hadn’t realized that a “routine” test was Mile Marker 1 on my cancer journey.

A New Game Plan

Needless to say, getting told “I’m sorry you have cancer” was not in my game plan. Mid-career, things had been going like a dream for me. I had just finished a several million-dollar project and was in line for even bigger projects. That is, until pancreatic cancer called an audible.

Hard-headed, if you will, I tried to continue to work. Unable to handle sixty-hour weeks any longer, I was forced to bench myself.

Unwilling to give up, I transitioned to being an adjunct professor at a local university. Bringing that to a close, I am looking for what’s next. Did I say I am hardheaded?

For all of us, there is always hope. Hold on to that!

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