Thursday morning I was tense from the moment I woke up as anyone can imagine, knowing that today I would hear whether the news was really good or really bad. I know people say to me that I need to get used to the anxiety surrounding having scans done, or that I should be able to some how accept whatever results come in, but to them I say BULLSHIT. What 25 yo is ready to die? Or even less dramatic what 25 yo is ready to hear news that you have stage 4 metastatic cancer only 3 months after initially finding out you had any cancer at all? I'm going to go with "not many". Trust me, one of my biggest aspirations and hopes for this experience is that I will somehow manage to find a way to be at peace with myself. That may sound a little hippy dippy, but it's become the most crucial thing in my world these days. I don't have any regrets, which is a good starting point, but I still feel jipped that I may not have the opportunity to have a family, be married, buy a 1st house, all those things.. actually I feel more than jipped that shit pisses me off. So like I said there's quite a few things I need to reach a compromise on with myself. Like I need to learn at some point to be o.k. with dying before 90-100 years old (not saying that I will, but I very well could and this has made that much more clear). I've been trying to refocus on this that I feel are priorities in life for me, the things that will help me feel like I've done everything I've wanted to do, but its hard because just surviving these days takes up most of my waking hours. I know that sounds like oh poor pity me, but its not a calling for people to come save me, rather just how the days feel recently. I do feel lucky in that I have a very beautiful young niece whom I've had great opportunity to see weekly for quite a few months now, she is both a blessing and a remembrance of the things I want. Though I try to tell myself that if something happens and I know I won't have the chance to have children that maybe my brother will let me borrow her for a few months or however long it is they say I have left. Then I could at least experience what caring for a child and loving a child like your own would be.
O.k. sorry I went a little off the beaten path there, talking about kids always gets me a little teary. So back to Thursday. I came in to the office and luckily had a meeting scheduled for first thing in the morning. I apparently did not contain my anxiety as much as I'd hoped as my coworker approached me later saying he was concerned and wanting to know what happened (almost my entire office knows about the situation, which is actually a lot easier for me).
When I came back down from my meeting there was an email from Dr. Sato as follows:
On 5/8/08, Takami Sato
Your images were reviewed by our MRI specialist.
We concluded that the lesion in the liver would be a "Focal nodular hyperplasia (FNH) ". This is a benign liver lesion, frequently seen in healthy people. Based on your history, we would suggest repeating MRI in 3 months (this is already planned for sutent). Once you have all necessary tests, you could ask Dr. Friedlander to check the results. If he is comfortable, you may start med.
TS
Woot woot! Seriously this was the best, most relieving day I'd had yet. I was beyond myself so happy that they had a name for the mysterious benign spot and that it was in fact benign - yay!
So that meant I got to go in the next day (Friday) and have 3 heart tests done, and then meet with my local onc. Dr. Friedlander to review the heart tests and to get baseline blood work done. He said he would call me Monday afternoon and let me know the blood results and if all was well I could start that afternoon!
All was well, and I am now on day 11 of my oral chemo, Sutent. So far so good. The side effects vary with every person, as does every treatment that cancer patients receive, but can range from: upset tummy, fatigue, headaches, low white blood cell counts (the kind of blood cells that fight off infection and support your immune system), low platelets (the things that help your blood clot), anemia, chemo anorexia, high blood pressure, white hair, and a slew of other things. Some people have these plus others, some people don't have any, and I honestly don't think there's a guideline for saying "if you don't feel this by day x then you won't throughout treatment" -- so I'm just taking that one day at a time. I would say I am fatigued, but as my mom knows it's usually because I don't sleep and am constanly going - not from the drug :)
As for monitoring I'm the lucky gal that gets to go in every week to see her oncologist to get a few vials of blood drawn and my vitals done to monitor my body's reaction to the chemo. My poor doc, I seem to have white coat syndrome around him so my normally very healthy and low blood pressure (105/65 or so) skyrockets -- this past Monday (5/19) it was a whopping 158/92 I think the guy thinks I'm lying -- so I bought a digital blood pressure cuff at my mom's suggestions (good idea mom.) and have been monitoring myself at home/work where I am more relaxed, and low and behold, my bp is actually low. Must be all that running and eating of nuts and seeds.
Speaking of running, anyone interested in doing a 5k or half marathon? I've been dying to set an exercise goal so I can get out of my "do the elliptical" rut and think I could manage one or the other. There's a LiveStrong (Lance Armstrong's foundation) 5k in Philly on the weekend of August 23rd-24th that I'm considering, so if anyone wants to join I'd love to have running partners and maybe even a team. I might get even more inspired and make us all eye cancer t-shirts if you're lucky! :)
Next post, my tyrst into the somewhat wacky but very helpful world of Eastern medicine.
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