cancer – day 10
OK, this is going to sound dumb, but for those of you that know me professionally as well as personally you’re going to totally get a bang out of this little story.
I met with the radiological oncologist today. I thought it would be the typical 15-30 minute consultation, but it was 2-1/2 hours! You wouldn’t believe how much I know about cancer radiation treatment now. And it’s pretty fascinating stuff, how they model and analyze and simulate prior to radiation treatment, and same thing for chemotherapy treatments, though we didn’t talk about that too much since I will meet the medical oncologist to talk the chemo separately.
But here’s the funny part. Two and a half hours of talking cancer treatment, and I came out of there and called my parents to tell them that it was FUN! I haven’t totally geeked out in a while, and we really got into all the details, seriously. We were talking mathematical modeling and simulation and quantum physics and negatively charged electrons jumping and how that affects the relation to the to cell nucleus and all kinds of geeky brainer stuff. I think he was getting into it, maybe these guys don’t get to talk about the quantum level of how this stuff works much, and they must get a little jazzed when they get to talk about it to someone new who finds it interesting. Maybe that’s why it took so long. On the other hand, my gosh, how do people get through all this and comprehend it all and understand what’s happening to them and what’s going to happen to them in treatment and recovery and all this mess that is dealing with cancer? It’s unbelievable how complex it all is and how many extremely educated specialists are involved for just one patient.
One nice tidbit to share with you also. . .the oncologist made a comment at the end that it’s good for my treatment and recovery that I’m taking such a proactive position in understanding and addressing the cancer and the possible scenarios we may face and the likely treatments and everything. He said it’s really good because the more active a patient is in their own treatment and recovery, oftentimes the better their recovery. I thought it was nice of him to say that.
Of course, my parents and I joked for a good twenty minutes about how these poor doctors just don’t know what they’re getting themselves into, taking me on. I’m not exactly a person who accepts a vague answer, nor am I especially tolerant of someone witholding information, nor do I sit around waiting for their assistants to call me to schedule appointments. I think me being such a get-it-done person in business is making me quite the handful for my doctors and surgeons. But at the same time they seem to love it, once they get used to me always following up and being informed. All together I think that’s really saved us quite a bit of time in the “process” while still being able to be completely thorough.
So these doctors basically have weekly or more frequent meetings to discuss their shared patients and the surgeries and treatments and stuff, to coordinate everything, right? My mom joked that they must really get a kick out of talking about me and I told her they probably always talk about me first to get it out of the way because there’s always something going on. It was a fun conversation.
Actually, aside from the fact that I was up working at 6AM on 4 hours sleep and pounding through my work to get out of my office to get to the oncologist’s this afternoon and then spending waaayyyyy more time there than I’d expected, aside from feeling like I’m working two full time jobs to do my work and also “manage” my cancer, I actually had a really good day, and it was even fun for me. And tonight Mark and I went and practiced like we used to on Mondays, but at Firehouse 5 instead of Spotlight since we’re not doing the showcase because of my surgery and all this, but anyway, getting to practice again was practically a treat, spending some focused time in tango with just Mark and the music and no distracting lessons going on on the sidelines, we were the only ones there, and though I wasn’t dancing as well tonight as I was just before all this came up, tonight was still actually the best dancing I’ve done since the day my gynecologist found the lump. So all around, a pretty awesome day. 🙂
Tomorrow morning I have two more biopsies that will determine if I have a single lumpectomy, bilateral (dual) lumpectomies, or a radical mastectomy with or without a lumpectomy or (possibly) even another mastectomy on the other side. Yep, this case is keeping a lot of doctors on their toes and putting them through their paces. But Mercy Medical is one of the top medical centers in the country actually, and they’ve been pretty amazing with all this mess so far.
Of course, the road ahead is long and winding, and it could easily be next February or so before I’m back to a normal non-chemo non-radiation cancer-controlled state, so I’ll take my amusement where I can. . .like in the geeky quantum level discussions. 😉