Grrrrrr

I was meant to have chemotheraphy today but didn't as my blood counts are still low from last week's dose. The nurse was concerned I might be upset by that but that is fine by me - I would rather wait a week than get some bug and end up extremely ill because my immune system is compromised.

So that isn't what is irritating me. The thing is we had to traipse into the hospital this morning after I had taken the mind numbing anti nausea drugs I have to take first to find out that the blood test that were available yesterday afternoon suggested that I didn't need to be there and definitely didn't need to take the mind numbing drugs. A phone call would have been helpful.

It's 4.30pm and I am still not fully functioning from the pills I took at 8.30am - hope they wear off soon (at least I don't need to take the evening dose)

And thanks Sue and Lou for the blog awards - I'll deal to them when my brain works properly again.

I didn't think I was finished yet - but maybe I am...

It has been a very bad couple of weeks.


Weeks that involve hospitals are generally bad of course, though when they combine morphine with the hospital experience it gets marginally more bearable. Not much, but slightly.


As absolute low moments go the late evening when a surgeon stood at the end of my bed and suggested that there was a possibility that they had perforated my bowel and if so I would die in the very near future as he wasn't going to operate given I was terminal anyway was probably a once in a lifetime low. (But I guess if they had actually perforated my bowel it would have been worse - thankfully they hadn't) He then had the audacity to say he knew how I felt! I told him fairly sharply that he had no idea how I felt at all and couldn't possibly and he did have the grace to look slightly abashed.

Anyhow he wasn't the only person who used the terminal word. And they combined it into sentences that were instructions, like "You need to accept you are terminal".

Actually I don't have trouble accepting I am terminal when I stop to contemplate it. I have no problem understanding that this cancer will kill me. That has pretty much been a given for a long time since there has been a complete disinterest in actually doing anything to positively improve my chances of survival for the last five years. I have a great deal of difficulty getting my head round time frames (of which there are none but sooner seems to be used rather than later - though they've been wrong about that for about four years too) - and we are all dying after all.

So in the spirit of being a good patient I wrote down some funeral instructions and a quick list of items I want to go to certain people. I guess that is admiting that sooner rather than later might be a possibility.

Anyway I'm home now, should survive the weekend, no longer subjected to hospital jelly or carrot soup (who on earth invented clear carrot soup!) and life is on the improve.

Credit where credit is due please!

A long time ago - about March last year - I decided to lose the chemo weight I've been carrying round for far too long.

According to various people (mostly American hence the lack of metrics) taking a course of taxol is good for an 25 pound weight gain. I've never been an underachiever so I managed to put on 20 kilos. That made me just on clinically obese according to the height and weight charts. Clinically obese is not a pretty term... Also when I am clinically obese my knees hurt in the morning and I have difficulty getting on my horse (and I'm sure she wasn't that impressed with 20kg extra either).

I didn't make a big fuss about it - I just made a conscious effort to eat better and a bit less. And my weight has very slowly drifted down to where I wanted it to be, which I hit about three weeks ago.

I might add that that weight - while healthy - is still 10kg higher than my lightest adult weight and 6 kg higher than my pre-children average weight, so I hardly have bones sticking out here. Skinny wasn't something I was designed to be.

It took 12 months for anyone except my husband to notice I'd lost weight. That's okay I didn't feel any real need to talk about it.

Then my manager (who I don't see very often) rang "I hear you've got all skinny" she said. Apparently one of the other managers who I occasionally drop in for a chat with when time allows had noted my weight loss, and being aware I have cancer was a bit concerned that I was being overworked at a time when I wasn't well. Which was sweet of him but a trifle too PC... I reassured all involved that I'd worked darn hard at it.

The other person I can't convince is my mother. She believes come hell or high water that
1) I am too thin
2) This is entirely due to the cancer which must be taking hold and getting the better of me.
She's felt the need to discuss it with husband on the quiet because she doesn't believe me. He has assured her that I haven't eaten a potato chip for over a year and that he can see how I lost the weight. He doesn't think she believes him either.

*sigh*
So if I get fat it's my own fault
If I lose weight it's something else.

Health update

We have a guy at work who opens his mouth to change feet. His thought processes are unusual to say the least and he never ponders anything before just saying it.

I spent 8 hours in a car with him once and ended up ready to kill him. He would have been horrified if he realised how offensive he is, he doesn't mean it.

The other day he was holding forth in a fairly full room. His second cousin had breast cancer or something. I was 5 metres away talking to someone else when suddenly I was called at the top of his voice "Your cancer is fixed now isn't it?"

All eyes swivelled and there was a momentary silence "I wouldn't say it was fixed" I said cautiously "but I'm okay"

"well it must be fixed then" he said "your hair is really long again, you need a hair cut actually"

People are now looking at me strangely I shrug, say "whatever" and decide my empty coffee cup needs filling.

Anyway it isn't fixed, but it isn't progressing very fast. I am starting a new course of radiation this afternoon and we will see where it goes from there. Apart from the travelling to Hamilton every day I quite like radiation, fast, painless and appears effective.

One thing that was bugging me has changed with the change of government (a coincidence?) Late last year the local medical laboratory introduced a charge for a blood test that is an ovarian cancer marker. At $10 a time it wasn't a large charge but I objected on principle to having to pay anything. It felt as though they had singled out the women this test is important for and decided to hit them up because they are a fairly captive audience. I was so annoyed that I walked out and complained to everyone I could think of including Tony Ryall (National Health Spokesman at that time Minister of Health now). Eventually Tony sent me an email explaining they were allowed to charge for some tests in their contract and there wasn't much that could be done about it. I corrected the misinformation they had given him that they had been charging all along but really wasn't too much to be done except continue to complain to anyone who might be vaguely interested (health professionals mostly). As of this week they dropped the charge (said they just decided they would). I claim the victory as mine :-)

Even more over it

Finally - some time longer than the 21 days it was supposed to take - I got my patient file yesterday.

Well approximately half it - there are some huge gaps in there and there are some double ups that even the most incompetent admin person should have seen I would have thought (one specialist letter was forwarded to four different staff with a note that "from recent visit to ****** on ****." I got that five times). A somewhat condescending letter from a few months ago advising me that should I be aggrieved with my treatment I could seek a second opinion privately from (person named) as they are sure their opinion would be similar but I should note that this will cost several hundred dollars, is missing. All information on the 30 odd CT scans I have had is omitted - apart from about 10 notes referring me for the same CTs

Some file alteration has also occurred. (I'm blessed with a photographic memory and have no problem recalling actual sentences from previous - I had also noted them in my own diary.) I must admit that some of it was downright untruths and should be amended and the rest was probably unacceptable comment. But if they told me a lie and wrote it on the file it should stay there.

I have requested the rest of the file. Reading to date indicates that a lot of thoughts uttered by individual medical persons without any proof have become gospel without any further investigation. I would suspect the person that stated these thoughts wasn't particularly sure of their ground as so called 'givens' first show up in the notes in sentences like "It is possible that..." or "in similar cases it was found that.... can occur" Much of this stuff has never been shared with me.

I lack the necessary couple of hundred thousand required to sort this out privately so guess I have to persist with the public health system. I am just not sure what the next move is. There is an answer out there, I need to get out of the care of those who can't see it.

Really just SO over it

Our health system that is.

I have just requested a complete copy of my records, as I suspect that bits I read last year (and noted in my own diary) may now be missing.

Currently I am getting steadily, but very slowly worse. That's okay apparently I'm not sick enough to bother doing anything about it. Of course when I am sick enough that they have to do something to keep me alive I will be too unwell for them to do anything about it and they will shrug their collective shoulders.

There are actually three different options out there - surgery, chemo or radiation.

Somewhere along the line someone has decided surgery is not an option again. I can't find out who decided this, what qualifications they have to make this decision or whether they have even examined me - I just keep being told that is the decision. People with much more widespread cancer than mine get surgery, but I can't. No idea why. It would appear from the info that I have that surgery would be highly effective for several years at fairly reasonable cost considering.

Chemo - there are about six drugs left I could try. Three are available within the health system. Funnily enough a smart arse oncologist told me last May with absolute seriousness and his hand on his heart that there was no other chemotheraphies available for me. He's a big fat liar obviously. Same man told me that there were NEVER clinical trials done at Waikato - yet a quick search of the internet will show that there are dozens going on all the time, several with smart arse oncologists name on them. I no longer see him as I got sick of the mind games. However he still has authority over what I get to take and his call is that there may be three left but he doesn't think I should take any of them until I am critically ill. That's fine who in their right mind wants chemo. The lies and the lack of choice isn't okay though.

Radiation would take all tumours back to managable levels and get rid of my constant pain. Apparently that isn't an option either - not sure why, again no one will give me an answer. Too much radiation makes surgery very difficult but as surgery isn't an option what does it matter. We will wait again until it is life threatening.

I have declined to go through any more of this crap for six months. I am just not interested in being told that I am getting worse but I should take some paracetamol and maybe a codeine. If I don't feel significantly worse in six months I won't bother going back then either. However a thorough read of all the records might be interesting.

I have a nasty feeling that if we had just a little more money I could privately buy myself a lot longer life expectancy. Though I have a lot more intention of living than the professionals seem to think I should have.
I am forever being told that I need to accept that this isn't curable (I do, but I don't accept that it isn't controllable. And actually while I don't believe I will ever get a cure I do know that some people do so a cure is not impossible technically)
I am also often told that I am 'lucky' as I have gone statistically past the point they thought I would have (what the hell is lucky about having cancer FFS - but whatever)
They express surprise that I am still working full time too (I guess I am supposed to be sitting round getting ready to die - unfortunately I need the money)
And I need to get past the angry stage and learn acceptance. (when I die I will accept it - until then I will remain angry, particularly when I am not allowed to ask questions or have any say in my treatment)

Was also reading the other day about tumours with low malignancy potential. These are growths that are cancerous but don't tend to invade anything vital, so while they grow they don't cause a lot of harm other than leaning on other body parts. Very interesting reading - often misdiagnosed in histology as more malignant tumours, and I fit the statistics for time to recurrence, sensitivity to marker blood tests, response to chemotherapy and age. I don't fit the statistics gathered from the normal ovarian cancer at all. The interesting thing about tumours with low malignancy potential is that the mortality rate is very very low - women die with them but not because of them.

This reminds me that I was never adequately biopsied.

So maybe lifethreatening won't ever happen.

Things come in threes - over three days

Have had such a good three days.
On Wednesday we went to Wellington to see a specialist oncologist who told me as far as he was concerned I have a chronic disease not a terminal one. So it isn't going to kill me any time soon, needs monitoring and prompt action if something goes wrong but otherwise I should carry on as normal.

The next morning (after a really solid 12 hours sleep as we had been up so early the day before) we headed over to Masterton and picked up a very special horse.

Roxey is an orphan who's mother died at her birth in December 2005. She was handreared after attempts to get her a foster mother failed by the mare's owner Lou and returned to her owner (who had leased the mare to breed from) at three months old. Her story is on Lou's blog She hasn't had much handling since. We got Gavin Morison a Wairarapa horsebreaker out to load her on the float and she got the idea very well. (I am so impressed with Gavin - a man of few words but an incredible way with horses - if I ever get a chance to do a clinic with him I'm going to) She then travelled like an angel back to Tauranga with a few stops to give her hay and water and has settled right into the front paddock - she particularly likes the yard.

When I grew too big for my 13.2 hand pony my first hack was a clydesdale cross stationbred four year old mare about 15.1 hh. She was a one in a million mare - I used to ride her along the main road bareback and in a halter (I used to jump her bareback in a halter and without a helmet too - what was my mother thinking!) She jumped fantastically, but always refused the first jump when I took her out (then she would generally go clear) and had a slight tendency to jump out of dressage arenas which meant that when we actually had completed a test there was always a comment about lacking impulsion in the corners. Anyway I'm planning on reliving my childhood in due course and having another clydie cross mare.

Then this morning we agreed a price and shook hands on buying the neighbours property. So we are moving - two doors down the road.
We went over this afternoon to have another (more thorough) look at it. Husband is delighted to find that the garage and shed are both bigger than he thought, I have decided that the bathroom will last a little bit longer and the kitchen will also probably do for a while but the downstairs area needs work soon and our plans to put another bathroom in the basement area will be held back by the septic tank which for some unaccountable reason is at a fairly high point. I'm just pleased with the 10 acres of land, most of it flat. And the house will be gorgeous in due course.

A few more things - catch up

My sick car is still not particularly good. It is running but you couldn't call it running well. We have a stand off about who owes who how much (I think we are on the winning side at the moment) but I really wonder if I will ever have a car that goes the way my old one did back again. Very irritating.


I have an appointment with a "second opinion" surgeon/oncologist just before Easter. I am told he will be able to give me an opinion on what is the best course of treatment from here. I hope so as he is charging me quite a bit to see him - would be cheaper if I had a Community Services Card. Also informed that if I had a community services card I would be eligible for travel expenses. Isn't that lovely, my tax money is shared around so freely.

I really am going to take a submachine gun to someone

Oncologist gave me some pills he thought I should take.

I thought about it and decided to take them. No big deal I thought (he gave me that impression too).

So I've taken five days worth.

And I have got steadily worse pain in all my joints. Today all of me really hurts, ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows, wrists neck - every joint I have and some places I wasn't aware I had moving parts in hurt too. Today I can't sit down comfortably - which is wonderful as standing up hurts quite a bit as well and so does walking. Lying flat isn't much use either.

I had a look at the brief fact sheet that came with these pills. It's not listed as a side effect that needs urgent attention. So I get on the internet and have a quick search. It comes up just about straight away "25% of patients report some joint pain, from moderate to severe. Symptoms can be ongoing"

That's just lovely. I also found out that in cases like mine there was a positive effect in around 10% of patients. Those odds really are a bit slim.

I haven't taken them tonight.

F#*&%@& health professionals

As my regular readers know I have an ongoing battle with the big C. Most of the time I am winning, or at least I am not losing ground... (I should statistically speaking be dead by now but it wasn't on my agenda so the funeral arrangements are OFF)

Anyway I have been contemplating this for a month or two or three or six. Nearly two years ago surgeons in Auckland figured I was so terminal I wasn't even worth biopsying and closed me back up. It was only the other week that they admitted that to me. Nearly two years later my only health problems are those caused by surgeons and extra heavy doses of toxic substances into my bloodstream (chemo that is, but a hard drug addiction would not necessarily be more harmful I think occasionally - and would probably be a darn sight more fun). Yes I still have cancer but not to any degree much greater than I did two years ago - and it is less than what I had initially in 2000.

In October 2005 I told them all to sod off and I wasn't having any more chemo that wasn't likely to work anyway, they could give me a ring when they wanted a new wonder drug tested. I had to tell them repeatedly to sod off over three months as they kept sending me appointments. After that I gave in and went and had a scan (had always intended to do that anyway, was just sick of it all) - and I had another one six months after that which showed some growth in the main tumor they keep monitoring. So they zapped that with some radiotheraphy and that did exactly what it was hoped it would do - reduced the thing to a quarter of it's size.

So over the last two weeks I've been scanned and inspected by the Gynacologist and the Oncologist. And right now I am furious.

There is a thickening in the scar tissue (that's where they have sliced me up the middle twice) that wasn't on the last scan. The radiologist recommends further investigation. The Gynacologist wants to biopsy and look at surgery or radiation for this new bit if it proves to be cancer. He is willing to consider giving my insides a good going over as he wonders why some of those unbiopsied bits haven't done anything and thinks it wouldn't be unreasonable to have a look at them. They may not be cancer. It is perfectly common to have cysts on your internal organs. He does however freely admit that he is not an Ovarian cancer expert, his speciality is a bit different and he has me on his patient list because he is the best there is in this area, not the best all round.

So today I get to see the Oncologist. This guy is apparently God - ask anyone who knows him. Actually I quite liked him until today, now I want to take a submachine gun to him. (would be something immensely satisfying about laying waste to a heap of hospital staff somehow). He might as well have not seen me today. He finds the biopsy idea "pointless" (his word) surgery or radiation "a waste of time" and his best recommendation is I have some more of the chemo that didn't work last time. When I said it didn't work last time he said "well there is a small chance it might this time" I was then shuffled out of the surgery and told to come back in two months - the implication was get my act together in the meantime and line up for some more systematic poisoning.

As time goes by I feel more and more that this is a slow growing cancer, and that long term control is within my grasp if someone would just do something about it (cut or zap the thing out). They are so close to figuring out cures using gene therapy (and as this is a hereditary type I am a sitter for trialling these and possibly getting a cure - there is no cure at the moment, only control). Why can't these so called experts look outside their own tunnels. There is no indication that any chemo will work, lets look outside the square.

Might be time to get a second opinion... the guy I would ideally like to see is in Christchurch, it might be worth the plane trip.

And the next time someone tries to fob me off I'm going to hit them.

I got a tattoo this week

My sister in law has a butterfly on her bum I am told. I think she offered to show me once but I declined. I can't quite remember.

I worry a little about the tailend of the baby boomers and their willingness to permenantly mark themselves. I mean when you are 85 and in a rest home the sexy little tattoo on your whatever is not going to be that pretty. But I suppose anyone that is looking when you get to that age either won't care or won't have that great eyesight...

But I got three small blue tats this week - I asked for a more appealing design if they were going to permenantly mark me but they declined to do a rose or a running horse. Not fair really.

It was actually called a 'mark up' to make sure the radiation I am getting next week will be delivered to the correct area. 10 medium doses they reckon should zap the tumour back into submission. Not that it is rampaging, just sneaking in a little growth here and there.

"where have you been?" someone at work asked when I came back.
"getting a tattoo"
Don't think he quite knew what to answer...

Faith in the medical profession?

I'm pretty cynical I know. This cynicism has grown over the last 10 years or so as I question the things I was taught were correct and sometimes find them not as correct as originally assumed. The last year or so has reinforced my feelings of unease, if I did what they told me to do I would not be as healthy as I am now (which admittedly is probably not that healthy but passable).

The other week I gave my mother some vitamin and mineral supplements that I thought might be useful to her. Now mother has also been fairly well done over by the medical profession. She spent years with a tranquiliser addiction which she struggled to conquer and eventually beat because a GP failed to realise she had post natal depression and gave her the pretty pills when she really needed something else. Then there was the surgeon who took off her whole breast when every other surgeon in the country was doing lumpectomies for breast cancers the size of mothers (caught very early and miniscule) - he also told her reconstructive surgery was likely to fail with her (why I don't know, neither does she) so she got one boob removed when it really wasn't necessary. Along the way were the other surgeons who reported they had removed her ovaries when they hadn't. This caused untold grief when the ovaries that didn't exist grew cancer too. She struggles with bone density problems and they feed her drugs that make her sick so she won't break a hip. When she reports the current meds make her sick they give her other drugs that do the same thing. So one of the things I got her was a calcium supplement that is supposed to be extremely natural and very digestable.

She gave them all back the other day. Why? Because she asked her doctor who said she didn't need any vitamin or mineral supplements so she won't take them. Whatever... I'm not insulted that she doesn't want to take them.

But I don't know why she still trusts the conventional medical people so implicitly.

Or maybe it is that she doesn't trust me.

Actually dying isn't on the agenda

barring falling under buses.

Scanned again earlier in the month. "Have you had a CT before" they always ask. Yes thanks - I've had so many that I actually know your name even if you don't remember me...

And the results are (drum roll) opens envelope.

That tumour they've been watching is possibly even a bit smaller, certainly not bigger. The no-treatment treatment is working as well as the treatment treatment. And the side effects have been minimal.

Everyone is so impressed they don't want to see me for six months. If there was any potential for death over the next week or two they would have told me they'd see me in three months.

I'd like to thank my mother and father for having me, my darling husband of course, my children who were so patient, the cats for purrs when needed and the hens for providing organic eggs. Hugs to my siblings who have been so supportive. I wouldn't have got this far without all those medical people (Without them I would never have suffered as much as I have), and special thanks to all those in blogland for your caring. I would also like to thank blogger for providing this platform for my efforts... *is dragged muttering from stage clutching photocopies of scans triumphantly*

Taking back my life

A quick health entry then I see no need to talk about it until March - so I won't be.

After a 9 months of being cut open, systematically poisoned with various nasty drugs and shuffled round the health system the outcome is..... (this isn't worth a drum roll)... no change. That tumour is exactly the same size as it was in February. Apart from one scan that showed it smaller it has been the same size in all other scans right the way through.

Which leaves two conclusions really - the oncologist favours the various drugs are holding it in check theory. I subscribe to the nothing is actually working and it isn't a fast growing tumour anyway theory.

Actually there is a third conclusion which my mother feels has merit - she goes with the maybe it isn't actually cancer anyway theory. (and since the slackarse surgeons were late for afternoon tea or something and didn't actually biopsy it there is slight potential that Mums theory is the correct one - but I don't place a large amount of belief in the possibility - my family and personal history would suggest that if I believed that I would probably need the counselling they are falling over themselves to give me)

Anyway the upshot, after a careful discussion, is that I am going to ignore the whole thing until March.

I will take no more drugs that make me feel sick and subnormal, I am not going to be mucked around by the health system that attempts to ignore me and when it can't ignore me treats me like a number, (so unimportant that they can actually cancel an appointment and forget to tell me) until March. And then if things are going well I am going to bury my head in the sand for another three or four or maybe six months. The oncologist does not actually approve of this approach - in fact he didn't quite go as far as suggesting I needed mood enhancing drugs but he came close - but does agree that I am unlikely to change greatly for the worse in that time. And though I don't blame him at all I do feel that everything he has come up with to date hasn't been exactly a roaring success, so my plan has (to me anyway) as much chance of a positive outcome as any of his do.

I used to wonder why on earth anyone would refuse treatment. Now if I had the chance to live this year again with the knowledge I have now I would refuse treatment too.

A room with a view

Have just got back from a five day stay in a ninth floor Auckland room with amazing views of the harbour and the skytower. I even had this fabulous room to myself and it had an ensuite. I only wish I had thought to take the camera.

The room service sucked though and the cost of staying included feeling like I had been run over by a truck, and some interesting staple effects in my stomach.

They didn't manage to kill me while under anaesthetic, but I don't think they did a lot of good either, they didn't remove a great deal of the cancer which has now spread.

So it's on to chemo. It's not over by a long shot.

Think positive thoughts for me

They ('they' being some unidentified number of surgeons who consult each other and make decisions - I only got to meet one of them but I am assured I was the subject of serious discussion) have decided to cut me open on May 23rd.

It doesn't sound like much fun.... but they didn't suggest any other options that sounded any more entertaining so guess this is what I have to do.

My mother is just about eight weeks behind me in the process with a probable recurrance of her cancer.

Fatally flawed as a family.... (mutant DNA)

Shuddup and take ya Prozac

Maybe it is me but life is continuing to be seriously strange.

Rang the hospital this morning, last week they were supposed to discuss my case in a meeting, but I hadn't heard. This was because they didn't bother having the meeting. (this is a work practice I haven't yet tried but has definite merit, I mean we all know how tedious meetings can be) . Said I was still in the dark about how widespread the cancer is and I really wanted to discuss this with someone. I was told that I could be referred to a really competent counsellor who would help me deal with the issues that I was currently facing. Would they have my medical records in front of them then? No but they would be a help to me as I came to terms with being a cancer patient! Arghh help!!!!!!
Currently I feel reasonably sane considering but this isn't helping.

One of the guys at work went round the road to buy his daughter a bed. He walked into the shop, bounced on the bed a couple of times, checked out the price. The conversation went like this:
Bed buying person: Can I have that single bed over there
Shop Assistant: No I don't want to sell that one
BBP: Can I have one like it then
SA: No, we have to order six if we order one and we don't want to order six
BBP: Well I could just have that one since you have that one already
SA: No we need that one for display. You can have that King Single
BBP: At the same price
SA : No at the price marked on it
BBP: Okay but if you don't want to sell any singles why don't you sell the display one.
SA: Because people want to see what is available

Maybe I am crazy and just don't know it....

Do not read if you are looking for cheerful….

Thursday 24^th February 2005 was the second worst day of my life.

 

I have only categorized three or four days in order of worst.

 

The worst day of my life was the 13^th of December 2000.  That was the day that I went into surgery to have what they predicted was a  plain ordinary ovarian cyst removed and was woken up some hours later to be advised it was cancer and they had removed long lists of my insides. Literally and figuratively gutted. I was 38 years old – too young to have this happen to me. (however a strong family history of breast cancer should have apparently warned everyone that it could happen to me)  I had some mean and nasty chemo and was declared clear of all visible tumours.

 

In cancer circles they talk about five year survivors. As I passed the four year anniversary I began to plan the five year party when I became an official survivor.

 

Until the second worst day of my life – when they told me my cancer was back.

 

I’m struggling with this at the moment.  I really did believe I had this beaten and it is devastating to find that I haven’t – and to face up to the fact that I probably never will have it beaten, that this time’s treatment might work but there will always be a next time….

 

Over the next week or two they will formulate a plan of what they will do with me. A scan tonight should identify the extent of the recurrence  and then a team of surgeons will decide what the best course of treatment is.  It will probably be fairly fast so there shouldn’t be much time to worry about it.

 

What I really think is SO unfair is If I have to have cancer why can’t I at least be skinny instead of fat?