Two weeks ago I was the lucky recipient of an MRI, two doctor's appointments, blood testing, and yet another chemotherapy round. This was all done since it had been just over a year since diagnosis/brain surgery of my anaplastic astrocytoma.
The first bit of news, I am apparently the recipient of being "Mrs. May" for the hospital's yearly oncology calendar. One of my appointments ended up being me going to Dr. O's conference area and getting some "realistic" pictures of me pretending to teach a science lesson. I do not think that I have ever taught such a terrible lesson in my life; "tip your head to the right", "smile more", "stand facing the other direction", "can we adjust the light?", "pretend that we are students". Ugh. I was given a copy of the finished calender, and have passed it on to family, however, I have no desire to ever show it here. While I agree that the picture taken of me is decent, the information written by Dr. O could not be any more corny and sappy. As a result, if you want to see it, you'll need to get it from the hospital yourself. The only reason we have one of the calenders in our house right now is because my husband has hidden it from me. I think that burning May would be more appropriate.
The next set of news is that there is thankfully still no sign of tumor regrowth. The only worrying thing that came up is that there is still a section of the left side of the brain that could be considered suspicious. The area where my tumor was surgically removed has shrunk slightly in size over the last four months from 8.3cm to 8.1cm, but has not gone away completely. This could mean two things; first, that the tumor is still there, but is shrinking due to continued chemotherapy treatments. Option two, that the tumor is gone, and my brain tissue that was compressed by the tumor is slowly relaxing enough to fill in the empty space. I am personally a fan of option two.
The last bit of medical news is that unless there is a clear sign of tumor regrowth, that I will be done with chemotherapy towards the end of February. The one annoying thing about that? My scheduled chemo rounds are not timed well by any stretch of the imagination. My next round in January is the week of my birthday, and my last round (knock on wood) in February is the same week as Valentine's Day. While the timing is not the best, I am still going to bug my husband into us celebrating in some way. Unfortunately the anti-seizure prescription has made me sensitive enough to anything alcoholic that if I even smell it I get tipsy, but I think that bugging my husband into taking me out to dinner is reasonable :).
Finally, I have met my New Year's resolution from last year. To quote my blog entry on it from January 1st, 2013:
"James Dean, you're going down. And I'll make sure that you go down with
plenty of show just to illustrate how obnoxious and stupid you really
are (even though in real life James Dean looked like quite a dashing
bad-boy)."
If you want to make a bet to try and win the lottery, I would do it. I never, NEVER, actually hold my resolutions for the whole year. Who cares about the tumor? I managed to stick to a resolution. It is a miracle! Now it is time to get ready for my resolution for 2014; to continue to keep my James Dean tumor in time-out and enjoy another year of being tumor free!
