My Balls Are Killing Me

Words Chris Robinson,
Pictures Andreas Hykade

 Each issue of Galaxy Brain Magazine will contain an instalment of Chris Robinson’s book, “My Balls Are Killing Me.”

You can read the first instalment HERE  

The second HERE 

The third HERE 

The fourth HERE.

The fifth HERE.

10 –A Change Comin’ On

Clea and Mr. Pimp sit in the car. She drives fast. It’s Spring. There are potholes all over the roads Each bump brings him pain and nausea. “Is she doing this intentionally?”

Mr. Pimp feels unsettled. The air is different. They arrive at the house. He walks in, a stranger. The boys are not there to greet him. They are too busy playing video games upstairs at their Grandma’s apartment. The house doesn’t look the same. He struggles to his lazy boy chair. Standing brings pain and light-headedness. He occasionally gasps for air. The boys eventually come down, reluctantly, to say hello and offer half-hearted hugs, before returning upstairs. 

He felt so much better in the hospital. Is it the change of air?

For the first few nights, Mr. Pimp tries to sleep in bed with Clea, but he struggles to sleep and has night sweats. One night he is startled awake by the sound of lightning. He looks around and sees nothing but water and darkness. His clothes and pillow are soaking wet. He sits up on the bed as it shakes roughly on the sea. After drifting through a storm, the bed finds land. He gets up from the bed and walks to his chair. He sits in it and closes his eyes. 

The following day brings persistent vomiting. Nothing he eats or drinks will stay down.

There is pain getting up.

There is pain from coughing, laughing, burping, breathing.

Mr. Pimp is getting angry about cancer, angry about feeling trapped. He wants to tear his life apart and start again. Parents dying, Friends dying. A loveless marriage. Disengaged parenting. 

He feels he is swimming in a litany of gooey ambivalent shit. 

He loses 11 pounds in five days. Clea drives him to the hospital emergency. The nurse says he looks pale and is green like the Hulk. She hooks him with his old friend, the IV bag. “Hey, how you been… actually you don’t look so good,” says the IV bag.

“You are stronger than you give yourself credit for,” interrupts Athena. “You have endured a lot and you’re dealing with it pretty well.”

“I don’t care what you say,” he replies. “What the fuck do you know? You’re just some idiot voice inside of me, nothing more.”

Then he vomits again. 

After many hours at emergency, they give him a sip of water, some anti-nausea medication and send him home.

Sitting in the lazy boy chair, Mr. Pimp has a familiar thought. “I wonder if I can ejaculate.”  He puts on his lab coat, and starts his right handed workout. It takes longer than usual and a few times he has to pause to find more oxygen. “Maybe I can help” says a voice. Mr. Pimp opens his eyes to see Calypso. Her hand takes over from his. She kisses his mouth and ears and whispers, “my love, my man” until his whole body spasms. He opens his eyes to the dark room. The pug sits nearby briefly staring at him in silent judgement before licking himself and returning to his doggy dreams. There is no sperm. The well is dry. “Maybe it will take some time,” he figures before falling asleep.

A ringing wakes Mr. Pimp up from his chair. Clea walks in with the portable phone. “It’s the hospital,” she says as she hands him the phone. 

“Hello.”

“Hi,” it’s Doctor Bob. “I need you get to emergency as soon as you can. We think you might have a blood clot. Just tell them to have the urology resident paged. You won’t have to wait.”

Mr. Pimp hangs up, rushes to get dressed and into the car. He drives himself.  As he starts up the car, a weary broken voice sings, “People are crazy and things are strange.” He shuts off the radio and drives.

He arrives at emergency, shaking. He cannot stop shaking. He imagines himself blowing up. Clots can be deadly. 

After he relays Doctor Wizard Bob’s instructions, he’s asked to sit and wait.

He waits.

A very tall and odd looking man approaches. He has wavy, unkempt hair. He’s in his late 30s maybe, but it is hard to say. He’s dressed in a long grey buttoned overcoat. He introduces himself: “I’m Soarin Churchyard”.  

Churchyard takes a seat in the hard plastic chair next to him. As they mindlessly watch the emergency room TV, Churchyard speaks: “You know, there’s only regret. If you leave her, you’ll regret it. If you stay with her, you’ll regret it. Every decision will cause regret. So, in the end, there can be no regret. What matters ultimately is that YOU make the choice. If you let others choose for you, you have lost yourself.” 

He waits.

Someone finally comes after about 30 minutes to take him to a room. 

He waits.

Calypso appears. “I can no longer wait. Meet me this weekend. I want you in my arms. I want you inside me. I want our life together to begin.”

Clot doctor briefly interrupts… but his beeper goes off and he leaves. “Back in 15 minutes”

“Ok” Mr. Pimp says to the Clot doctor.

“Ok” Mr. Pimp says to Calypso.

He waits.

“We think there is a blood clot in your right pelvis area. The Thrombosis people will see you tomorrow. Meantime, we’ll give you some blood thinners and send you home. 

At home, Mr. Pimp tells Clea that he will leave town for the weekend. He needs to get away. 

She is not happy with this decision. What about her? What about the boys? What about his family? They need him too. But, she says nothing.

A ringing  wakes Mr. Pimp from the lazy boy slumber. Clea walks in with the portable phone. “It’s the hospital,” she hands him the phone. 

“Hello.” 

“Hi,” It’s Doctor Clot. “Please come in as soon as you can.”

Mr. Pimp hangs up, rushes to get dressed and into the car. He drives himself.  As he starts up the car, a weary broken voice sings, “A worried man with a worried mind.” He shuts off the radio and drives.

At the clot clinic, Dr Not-Anne Hathaway greets him. She talks a lot. Something about blood thinners. Having to prick himself for six months. Maybe they’ll have to re-admit him to the hospital.

“No no no!” he begs. “I have travel plans this weekend. I have to get out of this place. Just admit me when I get back if you need to.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what,” says not Anne Hathaway. “Let’s do an ultrasound first to double check.”

The ultrasound. The technician sorta looks like an old Bob Dylan. He has thin, short, pencil thin moustache, shaggy greying hair, hooked nose. As Dylan scans the pelvis area, he speaks: “If you’re in the wrong town, it’s best to leave it. Things change and behind every beautiful thing is some pain. Don’t be afraid of the pain if it leads you to the beauty.”

Back in Not-Anne Hathaway’s office, she announces: “There’s no sign of a clot.”

“What!?”  says Mr. Pimp, relieved, annoyed and confused. “But, for two days I’ve been ordered to get to emergency as fast as I can. How can it go from that to no clot?

“It happens,” says Not-Anne Hathaway. “Sometimes the technicians misinterpret something they see on the scan. But, anyway, come back in a week just so we can be certain there’s nothing.”

Mr. Pimp exits the hospital building. He looks both ways, then turns right and starts walking down the sidewalk towards the parking lot. Suddenly, he bursts into a joyful skip and jump.

“Calypso, at last”.

An island. A cloudless day. The waves tickle the warm sand. Mr. Pimp and Calypso are embracing each other. There is drinking, kissing, groaning, caressing, intercourse, then sleep.

Mr. Pimp wakes up to the sound of thunder. Rain is pounding against the windows. He gets up and goes to the window. He sees heavy rains, blowing trees, rivers of water on the streets. Traffic lights swinging as the cars slug tentatively, wipers racing back and forth. “This is not what I want,” he tells Athena. 

He turns back to see Calypso lying in the bed. “This is not what I want,” he thinks as he quietly dresses himself, puts his hat on and leaves the room.

Mr. Pimp sits in the familiar waiting room of Doctor Wizard Bob. His hat again rests on his lap. The same testicle illustration sits on the wall just behind his head.

Another man enters the room. He looks strangely familiar. He has a porkpie hat, goatee and dark glasses.  “Sometimes I feel like I never actually make my own choice,” the man tells Mr. Pimp. “My entire life it feels like I never really had a say about anything. Now, there’s cancer. My only choice is how I approach it.”

“Please come in,” says a voice.

He gets up and crosses the empty waiting room towards Doctor Wizard Bob’s office.

He sits behind his desk in his blue scrubs. The wizard hat and robe are on a hanger to the right of the desk by the office window.  “Have a seat,” he says. “So, three of the forty-eight nodes had small traces of cancer. They came from two directions – which is not that common.”

“Nothing has been common so far”, Mr. Pimp replies. 

“So much for 90% odds I was clean” he thinks to himself.

“We have two options,” Doctor Wizard Bob continues. “surveillance or chemotherapy.” If we do surveillance there’s a 20-30% chance that cancer might return. If it does, then we will do three cycles – or 9 weeks – of chemo.

“Why can’t they just say there’s a 70-80% chance that the cancer won’t come back.” He asks Athena.

“If we do chemo now,” continues Doctor Wizard Bob, “It would be two cycles and it lowers the chance of a relapse to 1%.”

Mr. Pimp is leaning towards chemo. He’s avoided it once and it didn’t work. Doctor Wizard Bob is leaning towards surveillance though he is concerned about those two nodes coming from different paths. He says he will talk with Doctor Wizard Tobin and do a bit more research before a final decision is reached.

Meanwhile, Doctor Wizard Bob gets up. He walks towards the coat hanger. He takes the wizard robe and hat and puts them on. Then, he grabs his wand and waves it. We’re in another examination room. Mr. Pimp is on the examination table. Doctor Wizard Bob, in full wizard gear, checks the incision. “Oh, that looks good. Looks really good.” Then he feels his stomach. It’s tender. Might be a collection of fluid. Might need to be drained. 

“Hey, so what about my sperm?” Mr. Pimp asks suddenly. “It’s been over a month now and I’m a dry as a desert.”

“It’s a bit strange but sometimes it just takes a while. Just be patient. It’s not like you’re heading off to any sex islands, right?”

“Right,” says Mr. Pimp.  “Not anymore.”

Then Doctor Wizard Bob waves his wand again and Mr. Pimp is back in another CT scan room….and then back in his recliner chair.

Later in the day, the phone rings. Mr. Pimp answers. Doctor Wizard Bob jumps out of the phone and sits on the red sofa next to his chair. “The CT scan was clear. I think that surveillance is the way to go. We’ll do bimonthly blood tests and x-rays, and CT scans every four months or so.” 

“So, I’m not going to die from this, right?” 

“Die? Are you kidding. Of course not. Just make damn sure you do those regular surveillance check-ups.”

Doctor Wizard Bob vanishes.

Mr. Pimp sits in the lazy boy and looks out the window. A cardinal lands on the window sill and winks at him before flying off. All the rage and stress vanish. He feels good, as good as he felt in months.

Just then Clea enters. She shows him a photo. It’s of Calypso and Mr. Pimp embracing.

“It’s over you prick.”

¹ Kierkegaard Either/Or

² Things Have Changed, Bob Dylan