Update Meant for Yesterday- Sorry...

Hey.

Well, life has gotten pretty eventful lately and an update is needed.

I had a good Thanksgiving. I went to my grandparents' house, ate lots of good food, and watched a movie with my family. It was a fun time.

During the break, Greg and my friends all got to come home. Greg was hunting with Dad for a few days over the break, so I didn't see him much then, but I got to chill and visit with him still since he had a longer break than most people. My friends and I went to see the movie August Rush and hang-out afterwards last Wednesday. I liked the movie and seeing friends that go to school farther away is wonderful. I can't wait until the holiday break to see everyone again.

I'm trying to remember if anything else exciting has happened before Thanksgiving since I last posted, but I can't think of anything. So moving on...

I had not been feeling well for the last couple of weeks, and this last Saturday I started running a temperature. It got high enough that the oncologist on call for the weekend said I should go to the emergency room. What I thought was going to be a short visit, however, snowballed into quite an event:

I got to the emergency room at 8:30 in the morning. We checked in right away and I went back to have my blood pressure, heart beat, and temperature measured. We found my heart beat was very fast and my blood pressure was really low: I was really, really dehydrated. They immediately hooked me up to an IV with a humungous needle (at least two inches long) and accessed my port and began giving me bags of fluids. Blood tests and cultures were taken. Then I got moved to intensive care. It was not fun. I was there forever, waiting. I had to wait for a CT-scan, which showed that bile ducts in my liver are clogged with tumor. I also had to wait to have an ultra-sound to confirm what the CT-scan showed. We waited for results. We waited for everything. We waited for the "Okay" to go home. It didn't come. They told me I was being moved to the intensive care unit at Methodist, where I had to spend the night. I was so miserable. I hated being wired to everything and bedridden. I hated that they connected me to the machines and fed the wires through the top of a gown that wouldn't snap shut anyways so that I was forced to lie exposed to the world. I hated that they wouldn't let me eat and the only thing I had eaten that day was two pieces of toast. I hated that results were so slow in coming and that no one seemed to be making clear decisions because they thought that other people were responsible for making them.

It was late Sunday morning when I finally met with an oncology team who gave us the real scoop:

Like I said, my bile ducts are clogged in my liver and are not draining properly into my intestine. This means that I have to have a procedure done where they shove a scope down my throat, through my stomach and pancreas, and then back up through my intestine and into the ducts of my liver, where they will insert a metal stent to force the ducts open so they can drain. The other option is having a tube come out through my skin and drain into a bag. I'm having the first option done this Wednesday. Hopefully the clogged section is in the lower part of the ducts so that the stent can easily be inserted and work properly. If it's not, I may be stuck with the second option.

So I got this news from the oncology team. Then they told me I was going to have to stay another day in the hospital. I said, "No." I was not staying there another day. I thought I was going crazy being stuck there. So my parents and I put up a fight and I got to go home. We stressed the fact that Greg was home and that I wanted to be with him more before he went back to Iowa. The head oncologist of the team took pity on me, seeing how upset I was, and decided that quality of life was also important to my health and that my parents are involved enough in my life that he knew they would bring me back if anything started to go wrong again: he said I could go home against all better judgment.

So that's my weekend. It sucked. I'm scared about the procedure. I worry that the new chemo is not working. I don't know what's going to happen or how long things will keep going "well." I don't feel I'm in control of anything. Everything is a mess. =(

The only good thing I can think to report is that my orchids are still blooming and it looks like my Odontoglossom orchid will also be blooming within the next couple of weeks. I plan to get pictures up as soon I can find my little digital camera and charge its battery.

Band at RCTC isn't as exciting because our Christmas concert is within a couple of weeks. This means we're basically playing the same music as last year and it's all easy.

I'm too far behind in photography for it to be fun. I never finished my song assignment, haven't started my portraits assignment, and have no plan for the final assignment. I'm going to e-mail my professor and let her know everything has been too chaotic for me to keep up and not to expect anything more to be handed in from me.

I'll try to post later this week to let you know how everything went Wednesday and if any new plans have been determined.

~Cheryl