Sorry I've Been Gone

I didn't realize it's been over a month and a half since I updated the blog until I logged on and saw the date of the last entry. I hope you can all understand but it's been a really rough road and there are so many times lately where I feel myself starting to break. Here's whats happened in the last month and a half:

After the last entry I did chemo number four. It really never gets any easier and I am really beginning to understand the dreaded "cumulative effect." I take the nausea medication as prescribed but it has it's side effects that are painful and often times worse than a good old-fashioned trip to the toilet to upchuck (gross...sorry). Two weeks after chemo #4 I had a PET scan to determine if the chemo was even working. If you recall, the doctors couldn't tell from blood tests what exactly was going on with the cancer because it didn't produce some certain protein. That's possibly why I went undiagnosed for so long. Anyway, I had the PET and we waited three days to see Dr. McNamara for the results.

I went to my appointment for the PET results. Steve and I, making small talk and listening to Mark and Brian, drove up to Pasadena for the appointment. I found out later that Steve was just as nervous and anxious as I was about getting the results. It seemed to take forever just to be called into the examination room. But finally Dr. McNamara walked in. I had wondered how he would present the news to me. Would he sit down and look through my chart and start with, "Well, we got the results..."? I pondered whether or not I would be able to tell if it was good or bad news from the look on his face when he walked in. Finally, the door opened. It was Dr. Mac (that's what his staff calls him). He walked right in, put his hand on my shoulder, and announced, "Great news!" And then he gave me a hug. What a moment! I felt like crying. I was elated, relieved, grateful. He said the chemo was working better than he could've ever hoped. The retroperitoneal lymph nodes had shrunk 75 - 80% and the cellular activity level had dropped to normal range, the best possible news. The next step was a surgical consulatation with Dr. Paz, the surgical virtuoso.

I managed to escape chemo #5 that day and waited for my appointment with Dr. Paz which was the Monday following the Thursday that I met with Dr. Mac. I spent the weekend feeling like this whole fiasco was all but over. I wasn't prepared for the news to come. Steve and I, feeling confident, went to meet with Dr. Paz. He was older than I expected and a little arrogant, not what I expected from the City of Hope. He started by asking me how this whole situation presented itself. I gave him the history. Then he hit us with his professional assessment/opinon. He said that based on the location of the mass, I was considered stage IV. And because of that, they were fairly certain that the cancer was in other places, although there was no evidence to suggest that. He said I could rest assured that the cancer had already made it's way to my liver and lungs at the very least, but it just couldn't find a place to grow there. He said that when Dr. Mac called him about performing surgery he said absolutely not. He thought it was a waste of time since the cancer had to be other places. Dr. Mac wouldn't let him off so easy and since Dr. Mac was so persuasive, he decided to meet with me just to see... What did that mean? I didn't get it. I felt like he was writing me off. We left the appointment devastated, just devastated.

I got a call two days later from Dr. Paz' nurse saying Dr. Paz ordered a CT scan with contrast. I hadn't had that since being in the hospital. Apparently it gives them a much better look at the organs and the blood flow in and out of a tumor. I was surprised since he said he probably would not do the surgery. I had the scan and went to see Dr. Mac on June 9th for a regular appointment and then chemo. Dr. Mac got the results of the CT and said nothing had changed. It didn't show anything new. He also said Dr. Paz was going to do the surgery.

Chemo #5 was the hardest yet. Enough said about that. Just thinking about it makes me want to throw up. Seriously, Steve knows to tell people that I can't talk about it.

I went to work the other day to get a few things from my locker and ran into Capt. Green. Even though I don't have much contact with him, he always seems to say something that resonates with me and somehow keeps me going. When I was in the hospital, I got an email from him telling me to stay strong and that it was 90% mental. I think about that all the time. And when I ran into him the other day he told me that the reasons for this are not clear to me now but they will all be revealed eventually. He didn't say it exactly like that but that's what I took away from what he did say. I told him I just want my life back; I just want to come back to work. He understood.