My friend Juan got a phone call that would change everything, and when he hung up, he had to prepare to fight for his life.
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Original Story: Juan Caminero
Story Direction: Aaron Calafato
Senior Audio Engineer: Ken Wendt
Additional vocals: Cori Birce
Art: Pete Whitehead
Original Music: thomas j. duke
S3 Episode 19: The Diagnosis - powered by Happy Scribe
It's December of 2021 and Juan Caminero, who's in his twenties, is recovering from COVID in the hospital. As he's recovering, he starts feeling pain in his back while he's still at the hospital. But days pass and he's released. The good news is that Juan is COVID-free, but the bad news is that back pain is getting worse.
The pain gets so bad that he can barely walk. So he goes back to the ER at a later date. It's slammed, it takes some hours to be seen. When they do see him, they tell him it's kidney stones. They prescribe something for the pain, and then they set up an appointment with a urologist at a later date.
Juan has to endure more pain while he waits for the urologist. But then things start to change. He meets the urologist. Urologist says, "It's not kidney stones. It's just back pain." No answers. Juan leaves and eventually meets a specialist for his back, and he starts physical therapy. It helps a little bit, but he's still in bad shape.
Finally, they suggest doing an MRI. At this point, Juan will do anything. He does the test and he waits a couple of days for the results. Then on a Sunday afternoon, Juan gets a phone call that will change his life.
What did they say to you when you picked up that phone?
My doctor, who is a spine specialist, suggested that I sit down and mentioned that the results from my MRI had come back. This was an MRI that I kind of got on a whim. In her opinion, I could get it or I could decide not to, and it should be fine if I just continue physical therapy.
But sure enough, on that Sunday, she called me and she just let me know that they had discovered there was a mass inside my spine. She said that it could be benign, but either way they would need to perform a surgery, and then I'd need to meet with the neurosurgeon and talk about next steps.
I can't imagine what Juan was feeling. You go from possible kidney stones to back pain. Next thing you know, you're getting a call telling you they found tumors in your spine. I asked him what it felt like the moment he hung up the phone.
I leaned against the kitchen counter, and I remember I could kind of hear the silence in the next room as my girlfriend was listening to the conversation. I had a brief moment of shock, and I was just kind of pretty calm about it. That's how I was throughout a lot of this experience.
I just tried to to process what this might mean, trying to be optimistic. But in the back of my head, I knew there was kind of a potential danger looming that needed to be dealt with.
So more waiting for Juan. You all know what that's like, right? Being in purgatory while you're waiting for some kind of answer. It was excruciating. He finally met with the neurosurgeon for a pre-op. And the news? Well, more bad news.
So I meet with the neurosurgeon and he tells me what the surgery is going to entail and how to prepare for it. As he's telling me this, he's letting me know that there's a very strong likelihood, based on the scans, that this tumor is cancerous.
He's saying that I may need to do radiation therapy after surgery. It really came as a shock. I kind of, again, addressed it in a really calm way. I just kind of was looking at him and it almost felt like a movie, like an out-of-body experience.
I remember leaving that appointment. I had gotten a ride there and I didn't call for the... Let them know that the appointment was done right away. I kind of walked out to the lobby of the hospital and just kind of sat there for a while, processing what that meant. It's safe to say that I was just in a really kind of another state of shock and thinking like, "Okay, what do I need to do next?"
What can you do next? The only thing really to do is prepare.
Leading up to the surgery, I talked to a lot of people in my life about the news and what was going on, but I really felt like I needed to get things in order.
I expected that I'd wake up from the surgery but I didn't know for sure. I don't know. It's a pretty serious surgery. I felt like I had to prepare. Even the hospital suggested getting together a will. Plus, I knew that the radiation was looming. So I put together a will, had it my childhood best friend. His parents were the witnesses for the will.
A really strange experience doing that in my twenties. Then I kind of compiled all these writings about my life. I just started writing my thoughts on everything for my daughter. She was only two at the time. I collected a bunch of pictures, my friends and loved ones, and just tried to put my life on a flash drive, essentially, before the surgery.
I learned that you can't do that. I couldn't write enough. There wasn't enough that I could say before going into surgery that made me feel like, "Yeah, I said everything that I needed to say." But it at least helped me kind of cope in the lead up to surgery.
The day of the surgery comes and Juan's family is there. He asked the neurosurgeon one more time if this is as bad as he says. The neurosurgeon basically says, "Yeah, it most likely is." Juan eventually drifts off into sleep. Then, when the operation is over, he opens his eyes but to something he didn't expect.
So I wake up from the surgery and I see my family smiling and celebrating. They say they have good news. The tumors are likely benign. When the doctor was taking them out, he could tell by looking at them that they were benign.
I still had a hard time accepting that as reality because naturally, he was the the same doctor who had told me that this would likely be cancer twice. I had to kind of wait till I heard from him. Until I would feel that this is... I can I can rest now. I can relax.
When one first told me the story, I expected him to be yelling and screaming for joy when he got the news. But the more I thought about it, I totally understood what he meant when he said he had a hard time accepting this. Think about what he's been through—the misdiagnosis, the ambiguity.
He was essentially preparing to fight for his life when he woke up. But the doctor called and confirmed the tumors were benign. Even though there would be a long and painful recovery in the hospital following the surgery and more testing to follow that, Juan had a new lease on life. I asked him if there was a moment, even a small one, where he allowed himself to feel some relief.
I don't think I felt relaxed and started to feel like I was going to be okay, and I may live a healthy, fine life until that moment where I was finally out of the hospital and got in the car.
My family is all there. We're driving back home and I just kind of sighed. No one was in the back seat with me. I remember I kind of like silently cried honestly. Just a tear coming down my face because it's just like...
I'm at least out of the hospital. I don't know what the biopsy is going to say. I don't know what is next, but I know that I got through that. I think that is the moment where it's like, "Okay, we're through at least a part of this." So no matter what comes next, I hit a point where I'm at peace for the moment.
Juan's at peace. But considering what he's been through, he can't help but see the world a little bit differently. We recorded this episode in November of 2022, just about a year after this whole thing started. Juan spends time with his family, his loved ones, especially his daughter. Right before we talked, he told me he just competed in a jiu-jitsu tournament. What a badass.
Peace is a good word, but when I think about Juan's story, one word comes to mind for me. That's grace.
7 Minute Stories is created and performed by Aaron Calafato. Our Senior Audio Engineer is Ken Wendt. Our Resident Artist is Pete Whitehead. Original Music by TJ Duke. If you or your company needs help starting a podcast, Aaron and Ken's company, Valley View, does just that. Reach out to them at valleyview.fm. Special thanks to our partners at Evergreen Podcasts, and I'm Corey Birce. Make sure to tune in next week for another story.
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