How your PCa is viewed from your wife/dog/cat/goldfish perspective

1. A Wife’s Perspective
Subtitled: “He Was Grumpy Before the Hormones, Let’s Be Honest.”

When people ask how my husband’s handling prostate cancer, I give the diplomatic smile of a woman who knows that honesty would result in concerned looks or emergency cocktails. “He’s adjusting,” I say. Translation: he’s a hormonal landmine in Crocs.

We were already at the phase of marriage where intimacy meant shared blood pressure cuffs and competitive snoring. Then came the PSA — a four-letter acronym that kicked off a 12-month interpretive performance of Medical Kafka: The Castration Monologues.

He’s always been emotionally constipated. Now? Think Oscar the Grouch meets Greek tragedy: sweaty, irritable, weeping over thermostat settings and gripping his Gleason score like it’s a Nobel nomination.

Everything’s a PowerPoint now. “My PSA was 26. Gleason 7. Cribriform.” I nod like I care. I don’t. I care whether he’ll stop glaring at the toaster like it started the cancer.

Sex is extinct. The doctors say desire may return, like a misdelivered package. Meanwhile, he binge-watches Roman aqueduct documentaries and sighs like a widowed librarian. I didn’t marry Don Juan, but I also didn’t expect to be living with a martyr who smells like Lysol and unresolved trauma.

And the worst part? I still love the miserable bastard. Not storybook love. More like you love a dented teapot: useless, slightly toxic, but familiar. You wouldn’t take it to a dinner party, but you’d notice if it was gone.

2. A Dog’s Perspective
Subtitled: “Something’s Wrong With My Human and I Can’t Pee on It.”

He used to play. Not joyfully — he’s always moved like a man impersonating a broom — but he tried. Ball, ear scratches, muttered affirmations. Now it’s slippers scraping the floor and a sigh that smells like disappointment and expired vitamins.

There are new smells. Sharp. Clinical. Worse than vet. Vet ends. This… doesn’t. It clings to him, like sadness in a bottle.

Sometimes he forgets dinner. I forgive him. It’s what we do. I sit closer. I lean in. I watch his eyes fill with water he won’t admit to. He says, “Not now, buddy,” like love has become a burden.

No more trails. No squirrels. I bring the leash sometimes, for old time’s sake. He smiles like he’s remembering a better version of himself.

He doesn’t yell anymore. Even when I chew the couch. That scares me. At night, when he cries, I pretend I don’t hear. I curl against him, hot as he is, because whatever’s burning inside him feels like it might eat him whole.

I don’t know what prostate cancer is. But I know he’s disappearing. And I’m still here. Every time. Every goddamn time. Because I’m a dog. And this is what loyalty looks like when hope has packed up and left.

3. A Cat’s Perspective
Subtitled: “He’s Home More, Which Is Frankly Annoying.”

He used to leave. Now he lingers — sweaty, sighing, radiating damp existential dread like a humidifier full of despair. The sunbeams are fewer. The quiet is gone. The drama? Constant.

He reeks of chemicals and melancholy. He mutters about PSA scores and Firmagon — which I assume is either an alien overlord or a particularly joyless narcotic. I don’t care. I just want my window seat back.

The dog is hovering. The wife is fussing. I observe. No one asks how I’m coping with this cortisol carnival. The crying. The thermostat battles. The loss of basic grooming standards. He pets me like I’m a stuffed toy. So I retaliate with strategic vomiting and paperwork sabotage.

And yet... there’s a shift. When he speaks to me now, there’s something stripped bare. Not affection. Regret, maybe. Or recognition. Like he knows he’s halfway gone.

I don’t do sentiment. But once in a while, I curl beside him. Not for him. For warmth. For memory. For the ghost of the man who used to chase me out of the pantry with a dish towel and a grumble.

Because I’m a cat. I don’t do devotion.
But I do bear witness.

4. A Goldfish’s Perspective
Subtitled: “I May Have a 3-Second Memory, But Even I Know Something’s Wrong.”

People think I don’t notice. Just a swim-bladdered idiot in a watery loop of déjà vu. But even in this bowl, patterns matter. And something in this house is broken.

He used to feed me at 7:15 sharp. Now it’s whenever. Sometimes twice. Sometimes not at all. And when he stares into the bowl, it’s not to greet me. It’s to look at something that can’t talk back.

He mumbles things now. Words like "PSA" and "Firmagon" — not exactly the language of joy. He slouches like the air’s heavier than it used to be. The light behind his eyes flickers.

I watch. Always. The crying. The silences. The way the dog curls tighter and the cat glares harder. I may be trapped in a glass prison, but I’m the only constant he has left.

He taps the glass sometimes, like I hold answers. I don’t. But I swim closer anyway.

Because memory isn’t about what happened years ago. It’s about noticing that today doesn’t make sense.

So I swim. I watch. I float in circles while the world outside mine slowly falls apart.

Because I’m a goldfish. And sometimes, the last thing to go is the one who can’t leave.