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| I'm free! |
The best news of all of this is that I can now take a shower normally! I am supposed to let the staple wounds in my forehead "breathe" for 24 hours, then I can scrub them shampoo as much as I want. I am considering walking down the aisle in a store with the staple wound visible just to see how many men I can get to collapse. (They did let me keep the staples :)
On another note, my tumor sample sent off to the specialist still has not been returned. Apparently the specialists sent it off to specialists of the specialists. It has now hit the point where it could take up to a month since my James Dean tumor is so obnoxious in its indecision. So, the tumor board decided to go ahead and meet.
This is where news is not all good. They have made the decision to classify my tumor as cancerous. Ugh. As a result, I am going to be having radiation and chemo treatment. Double ugh. That means I am now graduating from Dr. O onto Dr. Wagner, Dr. Remmington, and Dr. Stille (pronounced "style", not "still/steel". Pronouncing it "steel" would be cooler after Remmington though). I have my first appointment tomorrow with Dr. Remmington. All I know so far about treatment is that they plan on being really aggressive with radiation (5 days a week!!) and will be less aggressive with chemotherapy. It will be mostly outpatient with low dosage.
Well, sorry it couldn't be all fun and humorous news. Just know that should the chemo be strong enough that I lose my hair, I want it to grow back either blonde or neon green.
This is going to be ok. I still think they did a rockin' job of preserving your hair. Really. Sometimes patients just get a very awkward and lopsided buzz cut, and yours still looks nice!
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you've got a lot of talented doctors (with cool names) on your side. It's good that they're taking the more conservative-better-safe-than-sorry approach with treatment. And when they get the tumor samples back with results, then they can change the game plan as they need to. Imagine on the flip side...if they decided to do nothing now and then it did actually turn out to be cancerous....oops...so this part is actually a good thing.
Radiation is usually always 5 days a week, but the treatments themselves won't take long once you get going (15 minutes usually). They'll do a sort of 'dry run' where they get you all positioned on the equipment so that you can they can see how it's going to go. Side effects won't happen right away, and your hair might thin rather than fall out. You can still dye it though..that won't affect anything! ;)
You'll have a great team of people making this as not scary/weird as possible, and the best thing about seeing them every day is that you can let them know right away if you have questions or concerns about how you're doing/feeling.
Yep, just breathe. It's gonna be okay.
Tell Rock I'm a flyfisherman too. 43 staples..Cool!
ReplyDeleteCancerous... that sucks! I'll continue praying for you! I also have to tell you I love reading your blogs. You are real and see things for what they are, but your humor is so inspiring. :-) It's definitely a gift! Thinking of you!
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