Woo Hoo! Good News for a Change

So, I assume those of you who are also living with cancer could see through the humor in my most recent couple of posts to the fear lurking in the background.

A Freudian Morning?

No Break for Me

After all this drama and two weeks of anxiety, not to mention numerous scans of pretty much every part of my body, I saw The Bone Guy this morning.

He was running an hour late for my 10 a.m. appointment, which was one more hour for me to sit there and watch my blood pressure rise. (To about 150/106.)

However, he turned out to be a great guy, and I wasn't even mad about missing my lunch date with my friend Gloria, which we had optimistically scheduled for 11:30.

The really funny thing is after getting all those MRIs and CTs and PETs that I blogged about yesterday, and carrying them to him on CDs, what he wanted to see was a simple X-ray of my arm. (To add to the humor, when I told my medical oncologist a week or so ago that the arm was still hurting, I asked if we couldn't just do an X-ray to take a look at it, but he sent me for the MRIs.) Turns out, X-rays give the clearest picture of what the doctor wanted to see.

So I went downstairs and got the X-ray (15 minutes, tops) and then went back upstairs to get the good news.

The old break in my arm has healed extremely well. It's very solid with lots of bone there. The arm bone itself is crooked, because I never had it pinned when it broke five years ago, but that's no big deal. The spots in there are probably cancer, but just more bone mets like I have all over my body.

He thinks the pain and inflammation in the bone marrow got stirred up when I worked so hard on Monica's garden, because of my old injury, but that's all he thinks it is.

So we are taking a conservative approach: Wear the brace I wore when my arm broke five years ago. Take pain meds. Baby the arm.

I'll go back and see him in six weeks and we'll take another X-ray. He doesn't think we need to biopsy the spots in the bone because he is quite sure they are my same cancer, not a new one.

We can't radiate these spots, because they are right in the field where we radiated the arm before. So if the mets are big enough, then I'll go back on treatment. (Which will mean the end of my break, but I'm going to fight for that. I WANT MY BREAK.)

This may all change once my other doctors weigh in, of course, but for now this is the plan and it makes sense to me.

So of course I'm exhausted after all this worrying and trying not to worry ... I felt a burst of energy when I first got the news--that "I can take on the world" feeling, but now I'm feeling a bit tired and I have my writing workshop to teach tonight. So maybe I'll take a nap.

A P.S. Going back to SCCA was tough for me. (This doctor is at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, where I got my treatment until a year ago when Dr. Livingston left.) Some bad things happened at SCCA, including violations of my patient privacy by staff, and some other problems that I've blogged about a bit.

So who should I share an elevator with up from the underground parking garage? SCCA's head honcho, who is on the very short list of people I dislike intensely. It was bound to happen.

@ Jeanne Sather 2007.

Comments

[Sara]

Yay that it's nothing new!

(insert party blower noise here)

Naps are good. Enjoy.

[kate fuehrer]

Three cheers. You deserve more than a break; you deserve a celebration. I'm so glad for you.

[Teri]

Woo Hoo!! Bring on the pain meds, and keep those cancer treatment meds away for another day!
And there is probably some rule of the universe that said you had to have one of the persons you dislike most intensely show up on the one small space you had to occupy today... So very glad for your news!

[Jeanne]

Celebrate? Oh, yeah, I think I can handle that. Jeanne

[laurie]

YES!!!!

[Lisa]

I'm so glad that you still get your break. Yeah.

[Jeanne]

Hi Lisa--I'm not entirely sure yet if I get the break. I see my oncologist on Monday ... but at least I've gotten this much of one: almost two months. And I'm going to push for it to continue.