Thursday, 13 October 2005

day 112 "name the tumor"

have you ever done something that somebody warned you NOT to do, but you decided you knew better than they did and did it anyway?
i'm feeling kinda like the time i was a child and decided i couldn't wait until Christmas day and snuck down and unwrapped a present under the tree .. and afterwards i felt awful and realized that the surprise of unwrapping a gift on Christmas day was a lot more fun than finding out what i was getting before Christmas
i just got back from having the xray and blood work done .. and realized nobody told the xray technician that i wasn't supposed to see the xray
i told her that i really wanted to see it cause my tumor was feeling like it had been around long enough that it had qualified as "one of the family" and wanted a name

she laughed .. "once it has a name, its going to expect a present at Christmas"
"and of course, its going to expect to be invited to Thanksgiving dinner" i added

"and i suppose you'll have to take it trick or treating"
"not only that" i joked, but "its going to want a costume for Halloween and i have NO idea what kind of costume to get a tumor"
"maybe it could be a cotton ball" she suggested
"nope .. that wouldn't work .. its more of a rectangle shape, so probably more along the lines of a Volkswagen van"

"ohhh !! we'll paint it florescent green with peace signs all over it!!"

but i shouldn't have looked at the xray .. i'm NOT a specialist .. i can only guess .. and from where i was standing, my tumor doesn't look any different than it did back in June

i've got a call into my sister Susie to double check to make sure the doc said no chemo or avastin tomorrow if the tumor hadn't responded .. i just need to make sure i didn't make that up and that he really DID say that to me

of course, i could be wrong .. maybe i don't remember what my tumor looked like

i just got a call back from sister Susie and she recalls that the doc was rather ambivalent about plan C .. remember, there is basically NO research done on treating patients with stage IIIa non-small cell lung cancer with Avastin .. so he may decided to hit it again or give up on the chemo/avastin treatment and go straight to radiation treatment

so now i'm off to call my wife-in-law (my ex-husbands wife) since she was in radiation oncology for 3 years and get a little more info from her as to what to expect if i end up needing radiation

now i have the added stress of naming the tumor .. "tommy tumor" sounds so pedestrian .. any good suggestions?

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