Defective

I have gone back and forth a lot on posting this. I am a very private person and most of the time I would much rather keep my thoughts and things like this to myself, but blogging is all about expressing yourself. So I’m hoping by writing this I can get these thoughts out of my head and maybe come to terms with it. I’m hoping that maybe I’ll find some peace by getting it off my chest. Maybe, I’ll find someone else who has gone through this and can offer some insight, or maybe, just maybe by me posting this I can help someone else feel like they are not alone if they are going through a similar thing. All, I know is, right or wrong, this is what I am feeling right now.

WARNING: Pity Party Ahead!! Although I am throwing myself a big pity party, I don’t want to sound whiny. I know that there are so many things that are much worse and I will be fine in the end. I am grateful for all that I have, my family most of all, but I feel entitled to my anger. So take this for what it’s worth, it’s just me venting.

I feel defective. Lately it seems like I just keep getting dealt a bad hand. Maybe it’s the fact that I was born on Friday the 13^th, I really just don’t know. I was born with Hemophilia and a mild case of cerebral palsy. I couldn’t breathe on my own for awhile after I was born, so they bagged me to help me breathe and called me a miracle baby because I shouldn’t be here. It was like the world was already trying to kick me out and send me back. Those things have caused me a lot of hassle and trouble over the years. I got picked on constantly and the hemophilia ruled me out of a lot of sports, so any chances I had to increase my “fitting in” were ruled out as well. Fine, whatever! I can deal with that. Those experiences made me stronger, meaner, tougher and better able to cope with the world that was presented to me.

Fast forward to when a few years ago, L Bird and I are trying to have a baby. Our diagnosis is infertility, ok fine how can we treat it? We both go and get checked out and of course, it’s me. It’s my fault that we can’t get pregnant. I just feel like I can’t catch a break sometimes. I get diagnosed with a large varicocele. So I have the surgery and go through all of the fertility treatments with L Bird and we still get nothing. Finally, our luck changes and we get blessed with A Bird, who is the best daughter a father could ask for. So my life isn’t bad, we did get a beautiful child, but it’s the point that because of me we had to work so much harder at it and go through so much more to get what is so easy to other people. Again, I want to state I don’t have it bad, I do have a daughter that I am eternally grateful for.

Fast forward to last week. So last week, I found a lump on my left testicle. It really freaked me out, so I made L Bird double check and sure enough she felt it too. I made an appointment with my doctor, and it was a couple of days before I could get in to see him. That was the longest two days of my life, the not knowing if I have testicular cancer was driving me crazy. I just kept seeing me having it and having my life cut short, it made me a wreck with worry. I was worried I wouldn’t see A Bird go to prom, graduate, walk down the aisle, and have kids of her own. It was eating me up inside then finally, the day of the Dr.’s appointment came and I went to see what my fate was. He had me drop my pants and he did his inspection under the hood so to speak and he said he felt the lump and some swelling. He told me he would set me up with an ultrasound but not to worry. He said lumps in the testicles is not that uncommon and it could be a number of other harmless things.

OK, that helped. I could handle something other than cancer. Just don’t let it be cancer. I convinced myself that it was jut something harmless and waited another two days for the ultrasound. Then comes yesterday, the day of the ultrasound which was its own debacle. It is the exact same procedure that pregnant women have to determine how the baby is doing. So without going into the details, there I was laying on a bed with a gel coated wand wandering its way over my two bits by an older woman ultrasound tech. Yeah, it was real pleasant! She pointed out a medium lump on the screen and said that she would “take measurements” and point that out in the report. She finished up and sent me on my way and told me I should hear from the doctor with my results next week.

Great, I just have to sweat through the weekend and then I’ll get my results. I go home and I’m fixing dinner for A Bird when the phone rings. It’s the doctor’s office on the caller id, I completely panicked. If they were calling that soon, then it must be cancer and they want to get me right in for treatment. I answered the phone but I could hardly speak. Then I heard the doctor say “your results came back and it doesn’t look like cancer.” WHEW! I started breathing again and listening to him again and then I heard him say “but,…..”. Ok I thought it’s not cancer, its probably just another varicocele. I can deal with that. Then he proceeded to tell me that I had a varicocele on the right side, a hydrocele on both sides and then numerous cysts on each.

C’MON man! Seriously?? OK, I’m ecstatic that I don’t have cancer, but of course I have to have a ton of other things wrong. I’m seriously defective. Nature has a way weeding out defective, damaged creatures. When I was a kid we had a dog that had a litter of puppies, one of the puppies wasn’t quite right, and that dog would pick that pup up and put it outside the dog house. I would put it back in and she would just push it out. She eventually kept it in with her and she nursed it, but that pup was never right and died within a couple of weeks. That dog knew that the pup wouldn’t make it, even when I couldn’t accept it. I feel like that pup. Nature has deemed me to be defective and is slowly trying to get rid of me. At least that’s how I feel right about now. Nature couldn’t finish the job when I was born, so now it’s taking advantage in the only way it knows how by damaging my ability to reproduce and keep my genes in the pool. What can I do?

But anyway, so now I have to have an appointment with a urologist to see how bad everything is. With my luck, I’m preparing for the worst. I guess we’ll see…