cancer – day 12
We got our first good news today. None of the new biopsies showed additional malignant tumors. The left side biopsies all showed normal (but very dense) fibrous tissue, and the right side tested as benign but they’re going to take a big chunk of it during surgery anyway and do a more extensive pathology on it.
Surgery will be Monday or Tuesday next week, and this Friday I’ll have the surgery prep where they’ll do all the blood work (again!) and a nurse will go through everything that’s going to happen in the surgery. There are actually several surgical procedures for my surgery: first they have a surgeon who puts in the lead wire that will guide the surgical staff to the clips marking my tumor, then they take me into radiology to get radiation markers to identify the seminal (sentinel?) lymph node so they can do the next procedure which is to biopsy that and a couple other lymph nodes to run pathology to find out if the cancer has already spread to other parts of my body, then we finally get to the surgery where they will remove the tumor and other iffy tissue and finish up with reconstructive surgery with an implant.
Then a month or so later I’ll be going to South Dakota for three to six months of chemotherapy treatments, then a month or so after that I’ll be back in Sacramento for daily radiation treatments for 6-1/2 weeks. So all in all, we’re looking at somewhere between six and nine months of all this cancer stuff. And then, after all that, I should be able to enjoy a little quiet time at my property. Just in time for the snow.
As an aside, Mark and I had lunch with Belinda today. Belinda is Rusty’s wife, separated, and Rusty is Mark’s housemate here in Sac. So when I’m staying with Mark I’m really staying at Mark and Rusty’s place. Rusty reminds me a lot of Todd Brown (nicknamed “Big Head”) with his laid back attitude and unsupposing character. Belinda, on the other hand, is more than just a bit of the Princess, and is probably not someone I would ever have met were there not this situation of Mark and Rusty living in the same house and Mark being a mediator for Belinda and Rusty’s “separation.” Anyway, Belinda is an entire story unto herself, but today we had lunch with her to give her a check from Rusty and get some financial stuff from her that Mark is supposed to use for their budgeting. She’s way better today than the first time I met her (just a couple days ago), but still makes me nervous for both Rusty and Mark. She needs someone to talk to, and unloads on Mark all her issues with Rusty, and it’s really draining on the energy to receive all that. She’s better now though, since her sister moved to town and she has someone close to talk to. Today she also wanted to know more about my cancer, since Mark told her that our lunch with her was not the most important meeting on our agenda today because we were going to meet Thayer for the latest biopsy pathology reports.
Besides all the cancer stuff, there’s all this life stuff going on, ya know? What do I journal on? A bit of everything I guess.
Tonight I’m working, trying to get the MBBC organized into projects Gary can hand off to different people and still get everything done and keep growing, even with me possibly out of the picture. But I think, with the exception of taking sick leave all next week for the surgery, I will surely be able to work at least half-time during chemo, so that will help Chain out a lot. Still, I already had way more projects than I could execute in the next nine months, so now we’re going to need even more people. And I’m supposed to have all that outlined to discuss with Gary tomorrow. Gotta gret my work groove on.
And still, I really need to find out what the company (or my insurance? Or CA short term disability?) does in this sort of situation. I don’t really want to create any stress by trying to work when I could be completely on leave to focus on the treatments and recover with short term disability. How am I going to figure this side of it out?