Today was my least favorite semi-annual day, the one where I schedule all of my doctor’s appointments and get all my bloodwork and stuff. I was so relieved when I was leaving the oncologist that I teared up a little bit in the elevator. I guess when you get on an elevator at the oncology floor and look teary, people think they should try to pray for you right there in the elevator. The very nice older gentleman didn’t seem to want to accept that they were tears of relief. I don’t stress about this day at all until it’s here, and then I work myself into a silent panic until the results all come back several days later.
I had an appointment with my surgeon this morning and she’s very pleased with the results of whatever she injected into my scars last time. I don’t know that I see any difference, but it made her happy, so I guess that’s something. I’ve been having some pretty significant pain in my chest; if it weren’t on the right side of my chest I would have thought I was having a heart attack. Last time I was in her office, I told her about it and she offered to send me out for scans or write me a prescription to reduce inflammation, which is what she felt it was. I did a fairly horrible job of actually taking the prescription like I was supposed to , so I got it refilled and tried again. The pain isn’t every day like it was, but it’s still there occassionally. We decided to skip the scans, mostly for my mental health; they just cause more anxiety than they’re worth. If the pain gets worse again, we’ll revisit, but she and my oncologist both seem to think it is just inflammation from all of the surgeries.
Speaking of surgeries, I’m going to have another one. Some of my reconstruction didn’t “take” exactly like it was supposed to and because of the infection and fluid that I had after my original surgery, there is a lot of nasty scarring that I could do without, so I’ve signed up for surgery #5. This one will be a very quick, one-hour procedure and I don’t think I’ll have to be under general, just sedation. Given my fluid issues in the past, there’s a possibility that I’ll have a drain for a couple of days again, but now that I know I can get a better result than I have, I’m eager to get it scheduled and over with. So that will be sometime in August or September and will just be an in-and-out procedure with no hospitalization.
After the surgeon I had my oncologist appointment. I think they purposefully assign me to new nurses as some sort of joke. They always panic when they take my blood pressure -- it’s freakishly low. I gave my required amount of blood (only 3 tubes today!) and then waited for Dr. S. The computer in my exam room was on, so I could see the results from the first blood tests come back before he was in the room. During chemo, if I had seen some of those numbers come back in bold red the way they did today, I would have run from the room in fear of that stupid “booster” shot, but now I just get a lecture of taking better care of myself. (Some of my counts were low, but I’ve been working hard and playing hard the past month, so it’s not a complete surprise)
When he came in the room, Dr. S congratulated me on making it past the halfway point. I’ll hit the three year mark on tamoxifen in September, with two more to go, and in the beginning I don’t think either of us thought I would last this long on it. I asked him what it meant to make it to the halfway mark, and he said it means I’m tolerating the medicine well (tolerating being the operative word) and that my chances of recurrence are lower every day. He did say that some people still recurr on the tamoxifen, but right now we’ve got no reason to think I’m going to be one of them. I told him I better not be, because I’m pretty in love with my life right now and while I’m getting a little restless for something big to happen, cancer is not it. He’s not offering me any guarantees, but thinks everything looks great. He gave me an Rx for another year of tamoxifen and sent me on my way.
As I was leaving the office, I heard him yelling my name for me to come back. That scared the crap out of me. He said he just noticed that I had lost 20 pounds since I was there last summer and wanted to say congratulations. That was pretty big coming from him, because we almost broke up over this topic a couple of visits ago. I was miserable on the medicine, he blamed it on my extra weight, the extra weight came from the medicine, it was a endless, no-win loop. But I worked my ass off, and he was genuinely happy for me. I’m within four pounds of my pre-diagnosis weight and I’ve signed up for a boot-camp that starts next month to help me get rid of that and get back to my college weight by the end of the year.
So tumor markers should be back next Wednesday. I’ll let you know when I hear from them!
