Kaselehlia ifagalz valued followers and Ran Annim pwipwis and friends. Mogethin fellow Yapese and Lotu Wo, Lwen Wo, Ekwe Wo, or Fong Wo to our Kosrean friends and fams. Alii and Ak Mesisiich. E kau a ua ngarang, Palauan fams and friends? Hafa Adai and Aloha to everyone on Guam and Hawaii. And last but not the least, hello to all in the Americas.
Before telling you my story, I need to show you what the experts say cancer is. This is what my doctor said, “Cancer is a group of diseases that develop when cells in a part of the body begin to grow and spread out of control.” I think it’s also important to know the difference between tumor and cancer. And I found the answer on webmd.com. Here’s what they say, “A tumor is an abnormal growth of cells that serves no purpose. A benign tumor is not a malignant tumor, which is cancer. It does not invade nearby tissue or spread to other parts of the body the way cancer can.”
It was about 4 years ago when I noticed a lump on the outer left of my thigh. I didn’t care much about it, but it was there. No pain or anything. It just showed up and stayed there. It’s annoying for sure but nothing much more to it.
Maybe not many of you know, but I am a Uber driver. I spent up to 12 hours sitting in a 2016 Maroon Fully Loaded 2XLTZ Impala, literally moving Americans, one person at a time. To this date, I have been in this business for about 4 years.
The reason I brought up my driving for Uber is because when I found this lump on my thigh, I thought it was from aggravating it with the side of the seat I was sitting on. The rubbing against the left section of the seat, the part shown in the white circles in the picture,may play the aggravation part. It maybe. Who knows.
But one thing clear to me, was it started from the outside of my left thigh where it rested against the side of the seat.
I came up with a different idea and put a cushion on the seat to lift me up so my thigh can rest on top and not against the seat.
I guess a heavy man, with 257 lbs of beer belly and lots of tuna meat and sea salt can sink into the seat just like that. Hahahaha.
But this was and is still my suspicion of how all this mess started. It wasn’t until I started driving and sat in the car for a very long time that the lump showed up and it began on the outside of my left thigh.
Sometimes it felt numb and at times felt itchy, I guess from it growing inside the skin of my thigh, just under the fatty tissues. I thought it could just go away so I left it there and never bothered with it.
This is the best part of this terrible story of mine. I got to laugh so hard, it felt great. At that moment, in that very space, I was laughing out loud at what I was seeing without even a second to think of what was yet to come. It was just a very funny scene.
It was early in the morning, getting ready again for another day of Ubering. Got out of the shower and as I was drying myself I saw that the lump had moved from the side to the top of my left thigh and the look of it was just like I was looking at a chicken
leg. It was so funny that I had to run out of the bathroom and wake up my Yobo to show her what an amazing look it was. Hehehe.
I went downstairs and into the kitchen to show it to my girls. I was like, this thing literally moved from the left side of my thigh and moved over the top. I guess it has no room to grow out on the side. lol
I saw the concerned look my girls had but to me it was just a funny thing happening to me. I really didn’t think much of anything.
Well, I guess because it was painless! There’s really no pain whatsoever associated with this now humongous lump on my thigh. It’s just the itchiness which makes sense because the skin is stretching to accommodate the massive whatever growing under it.
My grandson thought it was a football hidden under the skin. I still don’t know what to think of it. It’s been growing for about 4 years now. 4 years according to the specialist is too short of a time and was concerning.
Yobo and them kids bugged me to a point of giving in that I found myself sitting and waiting in the family doctor’s office a couple miles from home. When they finally called me in to see the doctor, he told me it’s sarcoma. What the hell is sarcoma? This is what I found on webmd.com, “A sarcoma is a rare kind of cancer that grows in connective tissue — cells that connect or support other kinds of tissue in your body.”
My family doctor told me it’s a tumor, most likely a benign tumor that can stay with me for the rest of my life. He told me to monitor it very closely and if I noticed it’s growing rapidly then I need to check back with him. In the meantime, he’s going to refer me to the general surgery department so they can take a look at it.
Went in and they ordered MRI of my thigh. The Radiology department stuck me into this scary looking, outer space craft thing that magnetically takes photos of tissues inside my thigh. It was a weird 30 or so minutes of just lying there listening to country music and hearing this pop pop pop gruhhhhh gruhhh thing going on and wondering if I am flying between pluto and mars or venus and mercury. Or they’re trying to see if one of those planets magically disappeared into my thigh and just hid there under my skin. lol
A week later, this popped up into my chart, “Impression: Large intermuscular mass anterolaterally in the left thigh with fatty components and more solid components with irregular enhancement. The pattern suggest liposarcoma.” The surgeon called me a day later and told me he’s referring me to the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance to see a specialist. This is when my worry started to creep in.
If it’s up to me, I would not have put CANCER in the name of that facility. It scared the crap out of me knowing cancer sucks. It kills a lot of people.
Oregon and Washington have their specific programs to help COFA migrants. If you are in Oregon, please CLICK HERE to go to the COFA PREMIUM ASSISTANCE PROGRAM. If you are in Washington State, please CLICK HERE to go to Washington Health Plan Finder.
You know, sitting here drinking and tapping and dreaming, I couldn’t be more happier to see how far our FSM people have come. I know. I know. There’s still a lot of challenges and many mountains and hills to climb, but we must acknowledge that we’ve made pretty good progress. I can now point and say a few names of my role models and my list have exponentially grown over the last several years. And it’s so humbling and a good feel to know that our people have made some headways here on the mainland and elsewhere.
Let me say this, many thank yous to the awesome Pacific Islander Community Association of Washington (PICAWA), specifically brother Joseph Seia for what he did and does for our community. Beautiful humans of PASIFIKA are, at least in the state of Washington, taken care of in the so many little ways PICAWA is pushing through, whether it be food drives, gift cards, housing assistance, covid tests, or vaccinations. PICAWA is at the forefront of keeping all of us a little safer. And I might add, get a little recognition from the other humans. Hehehe. Way to go PICAWA! Brothers Joseph and Toka can keep on bugging me.
It’s in no small parts with PICAWA that we got the chance to get vaccinated a little earlier and I am here to tell you it’s ok to get yours too when your turn comes up. My wife, our youngest son and myself got the PFIZER vaccine and the only complaint I had was soreness at the spot. It was more hurtful than any other vaccines I had taken. Otherwise, nothing more beyond that.
Now my wife is having a second thought about selling our house. She started yesterday upon finding out that I am spending almost $10K on these units alone. She was not having a good day yesterday. Complaining all day why I had to get a new ac when it’s not required and stuff.
In order for me to go fishing, I gotta finish what needs to be done first. And that’s why I am busy every day now remodeling all the rooms in my house.
“You know Cal, the smiles I see when I delivered food to our Kosraeans made me so happy. Thank you and PICAWA for doing this for our Pasifika communities.” Deacon Driskell of Kosrae.