cancer – day 48
I called Sutter this morning and told them I’m not going to do the clinical trial. I just couldn’t stomach the idea of being randomly selected for chemo when I wouldn’t have done it, or randomly selected not to have chemo when I would have. I also called the place that does the onco dx test to make sure it’s covered by my insurance, because I guess this test is really expensive (they said “thousands of dollars” yesterday), but they have a contract with my insurance company so that’s all good. So in two weeks I’ll see Lombardi again and find out what my recurrence score is, and then we’ll know with much greater certainty whether or not chemo is going to do me any good. And if I’m still in the gray area where they’re not sure, well, I’ll have to take into consideration the fact that I have to come off my heart medication for chemo, and what level the recurrence score is, and decide. Oh, and my dad found the information for the county adoption records where I was born/adopted, so we’re also going to try to follow up on the medical history of my birth mother and her family. I don’t know if we’ll be able to get it, so I’m still thinking about getting the other genetic test done to see if I have the BRAC 1 or BRAC 2 gene that shows a hereditary inclination for breast cancer, which I think would possibly skew me toward being slightly more aggressive about choosing chemo if my recurrence score is in the mid-range where I have to choose.
Then again, my recurrence score could be a 10 or less, and then we know for sure that chemo won’t help prevent a recurrence in me.
We’re in a holding pattern again, and unsettled again. It’s a relief not to have to start chemo on Monday, and I’m honestly ridiculously relieved that I have two more weeks to work and get the MBBC report done, because I felt so bad dumping that on Chain and it bothered me to know that the report would either be late or of lesser quality than in the past if I were gone the last two weeks of the modeling/report cycle.
I didn’t have any doctor’s appointments scheduled today, but I ended up calling and going out to El Dorado Hills to Dr. Almonte’s (the plastic surgeon) this afternoon. Both of my surgery incisions had under-the-skin absorbing stitches, but on the incision on my breast, a little bit of stitching poked through the end of the incision and had started getting pulled by my clothes when I moved around and today it started to sting like it might be getting infected. Mark thought we should just pull it out ourselves, but a little bit of the knot was showing at my skin and I didn’t want to take any chances that we may pull on a stitch that wasn’t quite done dissolving and next thing you know I’m a bleeder again. So Dr. Almonte took it out, and put an antiseptic goo that’s also supposed to help the scar. Plus I’m supposed to be massaging the scar tissue to help it heal. Ugh, the scar under my arm, for the removing the lymph nodes, that one is sooo sensitive, I am loathe to press on it to work the scar tissue. But it’s sooooo hard and swollen and scarred right now that it could be affecting the nerves a little bit. Dr. Lombardi said it’s not uncommon to have some temporary nerve issues in the arm after having lymph nodes removed, but that the numbness generally goes away. I hope so, because my poor right hand has been taking a beating with getting bumped and scratched and nicked and whatever else because I can’t feel it very well. It’s hard to be careful of. Especially when we were in Folsom tonight to pick up Mark’s new bedroom set, it was so frustrating not to be able to help lift and move things.