Good News!

The good news first: all scans show no change. 

The bad news is that I am wiped out from two days of hospital visits and weeks of anxiety over the results, and I get to do it all over again in four months. Oh well, I am grateful that my cancer seems to be holding steady and not advancing past the two spots in my bones. So I will continue going up to Chapel Hill for my monthly infusion and injections and will see my oncologist every other month.

Before my regular oncologist came in, an oncology fellow came in to check me out. She was very nice and started asking me lots of the normal questions: “how are you”, “are you having any pain”, etc. After a couple of more questions I finally piped up “I’m sorry, can I stop you for a minute? Will you give me the results of my scans?”

"Oh, yes, you would want to know that right away wouldn't you." So young with so much to learn! Of course when Dr. Carey walked in, the first thing she did was give me a big thumbs up.

Other highlights: 

• They only give you an extra large size of soda mixed with contrast to drink before the CT scan instead of what seemed like a double Big Gulp size. 
• There was a farmer's market going on in the hospital lobby Wednesday so I bought some fresh, just picked figs! Yum! 
• The oncology nurse saw me reading Stig Larson's second book, The Girl Who Played With Fire and told me that Daniel Craig is set as the lead in the American movie of the first book in the trilogy. Now who will play Lisbeth Salander?
• I fell asleep as soon as I reclined the car seat and didn't wake up until just a few miles from home on the way back, leaving Doug to deal with the traffic and delays on I-40!

So now I'll take a few days to deal with the side effects of my treatment, relax from my pre-scan stress and get back to the many projects I kind of let slide this past week. Life as usual, or in my case, life as chaotic as usual!

Anticipation......

Well, it is just a couple of days away from my next set of staging scans. I know I really should post this AFTER my scans so y’all don’t have to wait for the results, but I figured if I had to endure the wait, my friends can wait along with me. I know that isn’t very nice of me, but then people with cancer don’t always have to be nice, do they?

The worst past, is somewhere inside of me I want the news to be bad. Not that I WANT the news to be bad, but the waiting for the other shoe to drop is the perpetual state I seem to be in. Eventually the news will be that the mets have grown, or spread to other organs. That is just a fact of stage IV cancer. Having them spread isn’t a definite death sentence, but it does mean a step up in treatment and the idea that the cancer is becoming more aggressive. So each time I get scanned the possibility of receiving bad news is there. Unfortunately, getting good news keeps me in a state of anxious anticipation, but then at this stage, getting not so good news also keeps me in this state of unknowing. Cancer really sucks! I know that there are some people who seem to be pretty good about just taking things one day at a time, or looking at the glass half full. In other words, each good scan is the expected result, not that bad news is inevitable. I’m not one of them….

Actually, I’ve not been as bad as I usually am pre scans. I guess the Zanex helps, as well as being totally preoccupied with preparing for the upcoming, first ever, Meddin Family reunion, thanks to a generous offer by Meddin Studios, the group who bought my maternal grandfather and his brothers’ old meat packing plant. Keeping the Meddin name for their business and including the flavor of the old plant, they wanted to know more about my grandfather and his brothers, and the Meddin family. Except for my first cousins, and a few other cousins who still live in and around Savannah, I haven’t seen many of these family members for 40 years or more. Also included are some branches of the family that were recently discovered by two cousins who have been doing genealogical research. So seeing old family and meeting new has been the better part of my anticipation this summer.

The other things that has made my summer less stressful was a first ever vacation with my husband. Our two children, who honestly haven’t ever been too consistent at remembering our anniversary did something unexpected, they sent us on a cruise to Alaska for our 30th anniversary! Our past trips have always been to see family or a quick weekend a short drive away. We had planned our first vacation, to the Gran Canyon, for our 25th anniversary but had to cancel the day before we left due to an illness in the family. So this trip was a much appreciated gift and the timing couldn’t have been better. A trip narrative and pictures will be forth coming when I can cull down some of our 5,262 shots! How many whale tails and eagle close ups are you really wanting to see?

So, our plans for this week are a cardiologist visit for Doug, driving up to Chapel Hill the next day for bone and CT scans, spend the night at the Carolina Inn (thanks to Priceline, at less than the internet price for the Day’s Inn!) and then my appointment with my oncologist for the results and my infusion treatment and falsodex shot. Unfortunately my scans come on my daughter’s 26th birthday. She gets to spend it pet sitting for us after work, but we’ll celebrate it with a dinner out at another time. Life has its priorities, unfortunately not always what we would choose them to be.