On Monday, I had a three-hour session in hell; I mean I had an MRI of my entire spine and brain, with and without contrast. After that, I met with my radiation oncologist, Dr. John Buatti, to hear the results.
It turns out that I had all sorts of misinformation floating around in my head, perhaps too many uplifting cancer-survivor movies on Lifetime, I can’t really say. For some reason, I had it in my head that five years post-radiation was some magic number, and since we are on year 3.5 it seemed to me that these appointments were soon to be a thing of the past. Not that I don’t enjoy chatting with Dr. Buatti every nine months, but the MRI (and the bill) I could do without.
It has been almost four years since my former oncologist told me that I would be, “…dead or in a nursing home (waiting to die) in nine months.” It has been just over three since my current oncologist gave me two years to live.
But, Monday things looked good. No new growth from the remaining tumor. No new tumor “seeds,” although there were a number of spots on the film of my spine that we are calling blood vessels. Our plan is to keep an eye on those in case we, meaning the doctors, are wrong. So, I found myself so thrilled that I actually started thinking about how I was going to miss these little visits. I started thinking about what a character-building thing this has been for me. Perhaps everyone should look death in the face at 29, I thought. I asked Dr. Buatti if we could put off our next visit a year or two, thinking that, really, we were so close to the magic five year mark that he might just go for it.
That’s not exactly what happened. First, Dr. Buatti and his sweet nurse, Kelly, looked at me as if I had lost my mind. Then he told me that while he couldn’t say with 100% certainty, he felt that I had a 70-80% chance of a recurrence, that as far as he was concerned it was just a matter of time until they came back. He said that these visits were not to get me toward some magical “no tumor” date, but were, in fact, to catch the ones that ARE GOING TO COME as soon as they can.
So, seems that my tumors don’t subscribe to the whole remission thing. In fact, just to be difficult, as I know many out there are thinking that I can be, my tumors decided to be of the “coming back no matter what you may have thought” variety.
So, since Monday I have spent much of my time reassuring my friends that, while this sounds like it might be bad news, it really isn’t so scary. I told them, and myself, that the doctors are keeping an eye on things, and that’s a lot. I told them that most people have no idea what is coming to get them, so really I am lucky to be able to keep a lookout. I told them that in the nine months that I was pregnant with Emily “they” came up with a whole new radiation treatment to offer, one that allowed us to have Claudia, so who knows what might be just around the corner?
But, the truth is, I am narcissistic. I can’t imagine not being here, in the biggest sense of here. How could things just go on with me gone? How would my kids do in daycare all of the sudden? Who would do the laundry, and the house cleaning? Who would make diner? Who would tell the girls how much my parents would have loved them? How much it would have broken their hearts to miss these sweet children? How could I go when I’ve only recently figured out how to life this life that turned out so differently that I always imagined.
For them to have never known my mom and dad, and then to lose me, it is almost more than I could bear for my girls. It just seems so unfair… and life isn’t unfair, is it? At least I hope it’s not. That’s what I have pinned my hopes to.
Better cross your fingers.
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