Waiting

Today started out pretty well.

I woke up around 8:30 a.m., wandered out into the living, and fell asleep again on the couch until about 10 a.m. Then I had peach pie for breakfast. Nothing beats having pie for breakfast. Well, except for maybe warm lefse with sugar and butter, but it's definitely a close call between the two.

Anyways, I didn't do anything productive for the rest of the morning, so onto what happened at the doctors today...

We met with Dr. Bruining, who reviewed what's going on and the options for what's to come. He told us that the upper CT-scan and bone scan showed that the cancer hasn't visibly spread anywhere else, but that it is definitely in my hip. Then we waited for Dr. Cima. He arrived and told us the options were: A) surgically remove the tumor and postpone chemo a few weeks. B) put in a stent to prevent the tumor from closing and start chemo right away. The end decision was to proceed with getting a stent put in and to start the chemotherapy process.

So we left the Mayo building and headed for the Gonda building to meet with Dr. Erlichman, my oncologist.

This is where the real waiting began. We sat in the office for almost 45 minutes, with only a couple magazines in the room to entertain us. It was like the show Survivor, a test to see how long we could remain patient and not explode out of the door in boredom and ask where the heck Dr. Erlichmen was. Finally Erlichman shows up with his resident in tow. He explains to us what's going to happen with the chemo therapy. It looks like I'll be having a port put in to make injecting the chemo a little easier. Then every two weeks I'm going to be hooked-up to a pump (that's supposedly small enough to fit into a fanny pack so I can be mobile and receive meds at the same time) for 48 hours and receive a dose of four different substances to help battle the cancer. Also, every week I'll be going in to have blood drawn to see if the chemo is helping and to check iron levels.

Doc says I may lose some of my hair, probably not all of it, but then again it just all depends with how I actually react to the treatment. I'm not too concerned about losing my hair. I mean, I like having it on my head, but I've always wondered what the actual shape of my head looks like. If I do start losing my hair though, I will definitely need some guidance from Nikki about how to fashionably tie a bandana on my head because I am completely hopeless when it comes to tying bandanas.

The symptoms I'm most concerned about are the nausea and the pins-and-needles sensation in my fingers. I don't know how well I'll be able to play the piano or saxophone if my fingers feel all funny.

Which brings about another point.

I was so excited for tomorrow because I didn't have any medical appointments planned. I could get up in the morning for my saxophone lesson, even though I haven't practiced, and in the evening I could go to clogging/Irish dance lessons. A normal day. No being poked with needles or having something shoved up my bum, just a relaxing day where I could spend time how I wanted to. But not anymore. They went and scheduled my colonoscopy/insertion-of-stent for 8:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, the exact time my sax lesson would be ending. To add to that, you get sedated for colonoscopies (though that didn't really work for me last time), so then you aren't supposed to do much in the way of exercising for the rest of the day, which means no dance either. Grr. It would have been nice to have a break just for one day this week. Meh.

However, on a happier note...





I would like to thank Corey, Jon, Missi, and Brandon for sending me the lovely flowers and stuffed animal monkey. Receiving them was truly the highlight of my day.

I would also like to thank Phillipa for sending me the lucky bamboo. It's adorable and I'm sure it'll bring me luck. =D


Another thanks to everybody for your support.

Much love,
Cheryl