Last Friday was my last doctors appointment with my medical oncologist at kaiser - Dr Liu. When you are treated for cancer you can have up to three oncologists: surgical oncologist (the Dr that performs the surgery), the radiation oncologist (I don't have one yet - that will happen after chemo) and the medical oncologist (this Dr gives you chemo and any post chemo drugs. They are the one that follows you for the rest of your life. Any complaint in the future (cough? Back pain?) I will have to register with my medical oncologist to make sure the cause is not a recurrence of cancer somewhere). I have been very happy with Dr Liu and wish I could take him with me, but unfortunately I need to pick a new medical oncologist up in Oregon. I have two appts next week - May 2nd and 3rd - to talk to an oncologist at OHSU and one at Providence. I will pick the one that I have the best connection with.
In my appt with Dr Liu last Friday we rehashed a lot of the same things from our previous appointment - different types of chemo, tamoxifen after radiation, etc. This would have been the appt where I picked which chemo to go with. I know that sounds odd - picking a chemo, don't they tell you which chemo to get? Not necessarily. They give you the information on each type of chemo, with the statistical numbers on recurrence with each type and you need to weigh the options of how aggressive you want to be (which is a direct correlation with how much toxicity you are putting in your body). My plan is to go with the most agressive chemo (T and C and A) but not the most aggressive regimen. There is a dense dose regimen where it is given to you once a week, and basically you never really feel good since you have less time to recover between treatments. That takes 4 months. I am instead going with the 6 month plan which is every 2 or 3 weeks and takes 6 months. This regimen will in theory give me some good weeks (or days).
We also talked about how long I had cancer before I found it. He did not have a good answer for that one. We know that the cancer was considered a fast growing tumor (because of the grade 3 assigned to it) but that doesn't tell us exactly how long it had been growing. It could be one year or could be 8 years. We also talked about how the tumor was a little bigger than we originally thought (first measured at 2 or 2.2cm, but ended up being 2.5cms) so I wanted to know if it had grown in the 2 weeks prior to surgery. Again, no real answer there since the difference between 2 and 2.5 cms could just be a margin of error in the initial measurement. What I am finding out about cancer is that it's amazing how much they just don't know.
Moving day is tomorrow (how did it get here so quick?). We were busy bees the last 2 weeks - purging, organizing, packing....the purging part feels good...very cleansing. We are all packed up now, sitting in a living room full of boxes (no TV!) and drinking champagne out of plastic cups, eating leftover pizza on paper plates.
I have had a few moments of sadness over the last couple weeks, but they have been washed over by the overwhelming love and support on visits from our friends, dinners with the girls, and knowing that we will see everyone again soon...either in Portland or in SF.
xoxo San Francisco....
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