It is 3:22 am, on a Sunday night. The undertoad keeps me from sleep.

Last week I went to see my urologist, to get what I thought was routine information on the composition of the 6mm stone that was removed 5 weeks ago. Boy, was I looking forward to unearthing the culprits: splenda? cottage cheese? diet cola? all dairy? All disposable, anything to never go through this again.

This is what happened: the doctor tells me I have a 12mm lesion on my kidney. It showed up during the cat scan from 5 weeks ago, the one they made me hold still for during the worst pain my life, the day my kidney shut down from the stone.

He also tells me I have a greatly enlarged prostate, and that there are palpable abnormalities in it.

So he sent me for lab work, and in a week I will know if it's kidney cancer, or prostate cancer, or hey, maybe both!

He outlines 4 procedures I will go thru over the next 8 weeks. One involves a kit they gave me, to be used over a 48 hr period, 3 weeks before the second procedure. A box with instructions and disturbing vials and tubes in it. But that's the easy one.

The other things are worse. One of them is like the shunt removal, involving a penis clamp and some guy inserting an instrument into my urethra in order to root around my prostate. Another is an intra-anal sonogram. Both of these, he concedes, are "extremely uncomfortable". Both of these are prep for the 4th procedure: a "heat reduction" of my prostate. Relatively new, this is now the preferable alternative to a lifetime of pharmacology. And fewer side effects.

Except the two weeks of pain after the procedure.

Unless the blood screen shows cancer. It seems I have a 1 in 3 chance of that.  Hard to tell, exactly. I did the inevitable Google on it. But if it is, then this is what is next, this is why I am here and not asleep: they remove my kidney, perhaps part of my prostate. If it is already in both then hasta la vista, baby, no one comes back from that, multiple organ involvement, ya da ya da, better take that vacation now before the chemo makes it no fun at all, get your house in order kee-do.

Wait, there's more: my landlord -- I have one of those for a year now; we sold my only home to avoid bankruptcy when my wife got cancer 18 months ago -- has decided to sell his house, to fend off his own woes. So this will also be the summer of the 2nd move in 15 months.

I have two daughters in high school. Tonight the four of us, including my words-fail-me Good Wife Deborah, went to see The Soloist. Perfect, right? Just the thing. Silly me, I thought it would be uplifting: a Disney ending, concert with the philharmonic, life-back-on-track fable. No such luck. It was, unfortunately, a better, more realistic movie than that.

So now here I sit, alone, after hours of thrashing, trying to sleep. I wasn't going to write about this. How boring. Plus: write what? what MIGHT be?

I am thinking about what I will miss. I am wondering if I will get to take, finally, my 2nd vacation, in 25 years, with my wife, the pity vacation if it is C, or none at all, deferred again if it is not. Bittersweet, that.

I am thinking about my middle daughter's prom last month, my youngest's, coming up, in two years. I am thinking about all three of my girls being without me, at some bat mitzvah or wedding someday, unseen by me. Merely remembered. I have to stop this maudlin shit.

My Shi Tzu has padded over to me, looks at me with that empty-headed intensity, cocked head, bulging eyes, whines a little, like what are doing up? what is that noise? and I say, like I never do, in baby talk that I loathe, to a phony infant in fur, I say: Shh. Sad sack Daddy is crying.

Jesus.