I handed the sheet of paper to my wife. It was filled with words, necessary and important words.

I couldn’t see them, though.

“Brief Summary of Options for Treating Prostate Cancer,” it read across the top.

Options.

I tried. I scanned the page. Until it was clear I wasn’t seeing anything. Not a single word.

Anyone who’s heard the “C-word” and their name in the same sentence will confirm this: You go deaf. You hear the next few words, but you don’t hear them. Because cancer reverberates in your brain like a gong until, well, it fades. However long that takes.

It took weeks after hearing in early July that cancer was discovered in my prostate for me to begin fully hearing again, to begin thinking again without my brain interrupting: “You have cancer.”

It blinds you, too. I learned tha

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