Future Imperfect - Next Steps

Thanks to everyone for their comments, I'm actually feeling much better about my future. Especially to my members of RCRWA. I first got the diagnosis the Thursday before the Winter Intensive, but no way was I going to let that stop me from going. I called in for the results of the biopsy as ordered, thinking it would be nothing (yes, you can still be naive at my age) and had the nurse tell me the doctor wanted me to come in to give me the results. Even I knew what it meant when they don't want to tell you over the phone. Still, I told her sorry, I'll be on a plane to Portland Friday, so they had to give it to me now.

I'm neither a Type A or detail oriented, but somehow in the past week I attended the conference, set up an appointment with not one, but two oncologists (I'm the kind who has to have things double checked) and arranged for my medical records to be sent all over the place. I met with the first guy last Wednesday, the second comes on Tuesday. Apparently I have a Grade 3 tumor behaving badly cancer. (I never knew before that some tumors actually behave well). I also never before heard a doctor use the words "Aggressive" and "It can wait" all in the space of five minutes. See, he's going out of town - probably already gone, and can't do anything until the end of March. He has this great bedside manner, the kind that could say you have six minutes to live with a grin.

Anyway, I'll see the second one tuesday. Turns out I actually know people, a friend of a friend got me in to see one of the specialists at the University of Chicago. So I may find myself on the operating table a lot sooner.

P. S. This has not stopped me writing. I may even get a memoir out of this deal.

Future Imperfect

This time I have a reason for the long absence. This may be TMI, but in January I began having a "feminine" problem that had me at the gyne for testing. She thought it was a fibroid, and I needed a little inner cleaning, a D&C, one of those thing I never expected to have, especially since I passed menopause years ago. Thinking that plumbing was a bitch, I got on the operating room table a week and a half ago. Woke up to find things had only just begun.

You know how you hear things, but not really. I heard that it wasn't a fibroid, that she found a soft tissue mass, but for some reason I didn't really think a lot about it. Until I called in Thursday for the lab result and the nurse on the phone said nothing was in my chart. She went to check, and I still thought things had been mislaid. Until she called me back to say the doctor wanted to see me in person about the result.

Finally, alarm bells began to ring.

If you've guessed things, you're obviously quicker than I was. Uterine cancer. Worse yet, there's something unusual about my cancer. (Unusual is never good) She wants the gyne-oncologist to give me the really bad news. I'm off to see him tomorrow.

Maybe for once being a pessimist will be a good thing. The news can't possibly be as bad as my mind is making things out to be.