How can I describe what it feels like to be pulled from my chemo chair to be told that I have spots in my bones and masses on my liver? What can I compare that to? I can compare it to the moment when my brother and sisters and I had to remove support from my mother as she lay in a stroke-induced vegetative state, and then help her die. That would hit it. Like this, that was a long extended period of pain. Painful, horrifying, never ending.
For the last many days I've been living with a giant sword over my head. Is there cancer in my liver? Are the masses on my liver just annoying hemangiomas? What the hell is going on? Thankfully my nephew Josh and his wife Niki flew in on Thursday and stayed the weekend. That helped keep the weekend a little less hellish. But I have been breaking into tears at surprise to others moments, and at this point if a dirty homeless man offered me a hug, I would take it and hold on hard.
Soon I should know the whole story. Today I had a thoracic MRI to get further info on the bones, although the oncologist says this is less concerning than the liver. Tomorrow (Tuesday) my doctor was able to get me an appointment at Suburban Hospital for an ultrasound guided liver biopsy. When my uncle Mike asked what they would be doing to me during this procedure, I replied that I didn't know or really care. I just do what they tell me at this point. Wednesday I have an MRI of the lumbar and cervical spines (more bone stuff). And finally on Thursday, I start chemo with a cocktail of Taxol and Herceptin - thank God.
So even though I don't know what is going on with my liver, I do know I'm starting treatment. I'm actually afraid to even find out about the liver. Every call I've been getting in the last month has pretty much started with the phrase, "I've got bad news for you." Maybe they can change it up a bit and say something like, "Do you like green M&M's? I do." and then go into their cancer result patter. That would at least be a nice change.
No comments:
Post a Comment