Meet Buster: My Big, Fat Tumor

I am Morgan’s tumor. The big one. He calls me Buster.

I’d been laying low for a while. Under the radar, so to speak; hiding out in the pelvic cavity. It was getting to be pretty cramped down here over this last year and, as I continued to grow, I started pushing back. Prostate, bladder, colon– out of my way!

It was easy for Morgan to pass me off as “low back pain” for the first few years. He sits in front of the computer way too much as it is, and when the pain got especially bad the old “pinched nerve” explanation comes in handy. Everyone knows someone with a problem like that after all, right?

Soon enough, the extra pressure was creating a new set of problems. “Man troubles,” I guess you could call ‘em. Soreness, numbness, swelling– with everything from difficulty urinating to constipation to an occasional failure to ‘get it up’ and ‘keep it up.’

Ah, silent humiliation has got to be a tumor’s best friend. Well, that and a lack of medical insurance.

It was a CAT Scan that finally made my presence known. Up to that point, X-rays and urinalysis didn’t show squat. Thursday, June 4, 2009. Morgan goes under the scanner, gets some dye shot into his vein, and – Voila! There I am, laying like a brick down near the base of the spine.

I am indeed the big one:
7.3 inches long
5.4 inches wide
5.3 inches tall

Imagine that. I am larger than Morgan’s brain (although I’ve got a bit more give).  Maybe that explains how I outsmarted him for so long.

Now that he knows, things are beginning to move fast. On Monday, June 8, a doctor stuck a needle into me to see what I was made of. A biopsy, they called it.

Thursday, June 11, 2009. Word is in:

I am cancerous.