Not Right Now by Dr. Juan Harrison
Not Right Now
On a recent visit to my oncologist as I was lying in that old tube getting a PET scan to see how far my prostate cancer had advanced, I debated whether to do my usual counting to a hundred and back to zero again, or just pray. I finally went back to counting, ending us at a 1000 as the ding ding signaled that the prisoner was about to be released. Wish I hadn’t let them pin my arms at my side; momentarily I could relate to smaller women being restrained by bad guys and it wasn’t any fun . I finally settled down and almost took a nap.
As of this writing I met with my oncologist again this week and got the good news/bad news. The cancer hadn’t entered my lymph nodes. Bad news was the place on the liver and the place on the thyroid. Had thyroid surgery 20 years ago with good results. Had hepatitis 50 years ago in the military and spent a month in the Air Force hospital in Germany. The Old Man Kept tugging on me, but Toby I wouldn’t let him in even as I stared him in the face a time or two then. I reached that point like a number of you had when you almost threw in the towel. I didn’t have as much to live for back then as I do now with an awesome immediate family to motivate me to keep a plugging. In a couple of weeks, I’ll get to see if those are old issues in my body or if it’s another journey I may be facing, depending on the results of an MRI on the liver and a scan of my thyroid later the same day.
As a lot of guys have found, you don’t really have a lot of choices in these matters. I’m old and have had a great life. There’re some trends out there that may indicate that they’d like to spend a little less on us old guys at the end and save it for the younger guys. I get it, but I hope they don’t use me for a guinea pig. Selfishly I wanna hang around a little while longer to hug on those grandkids. But, I may not get a vote.
My wife says I’ve been amazingly at peace with the prospect of radiation, hormone injections for a couple of years, and old chemo if necessary. My old friend and former pastor, Bro. Ken Rhoades fought his pancreatic cancer for a year and died this week after marrying off a granddaughter in his living room a few days earlier. What a will he had to survive.
I am not as concerned about the physical journey I’m facing as I am the challenges I’ll face with physical weakness as I try to keep up any active role as Papaw and keep my lawn and landscaping business running and keeping the yard looking clean. Add to that my role of custodian and chef at Mamaw’s Preschool as I help her with any backpack packing up or chicken nuggets warming up or setting up the table for the kiddos for lunch outside on a sunny day on our driveway/basketball court. Throw in a Sunday school class of us old guys that gather each Sunday morning to encourage each other and share our latest grandbaby news and medical updates, and I’ve got a lot of loose ends that are going to be hard to tie up. Time waits for no man.
I’m ready spiritually, but I’m greedy. I wake up now every morning with even greater appreciation and anticipation to see what the day will bring. God has blessed me so much. As Kenny C. sang, “We all wanna go to Heaven; we just don’t wanna go right now.”
By Dr. Juan Harrison
