"Rate Your Pain"

Steve’s prostate biopsy on May 7 showed that he has cancer.*

We have met with the doctor to review options; this cancer is thankfully highly treatable. Surgery appears to be the best option and would happen in about 3 weeks, depending on surgeon’s schedule.

This is yet another chapter in our story of living in a broken world. We know God can be trusted. We know trust and terror coexist.  We appreciate your prayers.

Thankfully, there is the relief of humor, as we have seen.

Steve is recovering from a nasty biopsy-related infection which found us in the ER Tuesday night, due to an elevated temp. Another symptom was extreme muscle stiffness so he could barely walk. So imagine the two of us making our entrance, me with a PD limp and Steve shuffling like Tim Conway’s The Old Man. I’m not sure if the guy with the wheel chair at the door knew who the patient was.

Our first ER experience (which was very good, by the way) reminded me of the comedy routine below by Brian Regan on the subjects of valet parking, moaning from the mystery patient in the next room (ours was a guy with three gunshot wounds, apparently none of which penetrated his lungs!), and “rating your pain”.

Steve rated his pain at 7 that night in the ER.  Emotional pain?  He says '5'.


*His Gleason score is 7, which is within the mid-range (4-7) when most prostate cancers are detectable.