3 Month Checkup

What do you do when you are nearing panic and your 3 month cancer checkup runs two and a half hours late? You go shopping thats what.

There's just nothing like shopping to refocus your thoughts. And when the mall is having clearance sales on summer stuff like swim suits, shorts, cute dresses you can make off like a bandit. Spent close to $200 shopping today and really only need to pack brand spanking new clothes for my trip to Michigan tomorrow and it was worth every cent to me.

Having my sister with me in the waiting room, torture room (where they draw the blood) and exam room was priceless.

Six vials of blood, 18 (yes, thats right eighteen xrays) and an hour with my oncologist and I missed my whole shift at Target. You know what? I don't even have my cancer marker results or 16 of 18 xrays analyzed and I feel so much better than this morning.

What I love about my oncologist, Dr. Judy Schmidt, is that she doesn't sugar-coat anything and thus I trust her 100%. I was completely open with her about my bad habit (daily wine consumption) and with my belief that my cancer will recurr. I told her the reason I am so certain is because of my high oncotype , grade and mitoses scores. She did not tell me to just relax and stop being so negative. What she told and showed me is that I will be watched very carefully over the next 4 years. Three years of seeing her every three months, then 1 year of seeing her every 4 months, followed by X years every 6 months. She also told me that the mean recurrence time for an aggressive cancer, if it were to recurr, is 30 months thus the aggressive monitoring.

My complaints were aching and stiff joints, which I've bitched about plenty on this blog. Sore ribs on the cancer side and a sore spot in my clavicle on that side. Although she spotted a torn ligament on physical exam that is undoubtedly the cause of my lower rib pain, she ordered the 16 additional xrays just to rule out cancer in that area. Those xrays combined with the results of a couple of cancer marker blood tests will determine if we look any further into the rib pain. If she doesn't like the blood test results or xrays she will order an MRI.

They are short staffed in the lab so I will likely need to wait until monday for the cancer marker results. I should have the xray results tomorrow. They'll call my cell phone. I have to tell you that phone calls from Guardian Oncology give me a few seconds of terror until I hear the results. Makes me not want to answer my cell phone for the next few days.

Dr. Schmidt also ordered ovarian cancer marker and arthritis tests. She wants to make damn sure I don't have anything bad brewing down below. She stated that I still have an elevated risk of ovarian cancer even though I have my ovaries taken out. NOW THEY TELL ME! I actually think she has her statistics wrong on me still having an elevated risk but I wasn't going to argue. What's another vial of blood right? I had a clear pap smear a couple weeks ago. So that is cool.

My white blood cell count is low which she said is likely still because of one of the chemo drugs, cytoxan. Gonna take more vitamins (folic acid, vitamin d, vitamin b-12) to try to bring it back up.

Well thats it in a nutshell. Where I was quite stressed and panicing this morning, I am feeling better tonight. Thanks to Dr. Schmidt, sister Annie and my sweeter than sweet husband John for calming me down this morning.

Gotta go pack. The laundry that needs to be folded is gonna wait. I'm off to see my Michigan homies tomorrow! Can't wait.