New picture -- more of the wigs. I have two others that I haven't photographed, but I don't like either of them that much.
Today I was supposed to have a PET scan. Some of you may think it
means that I needed my head examined now that we have four (yes, four)
animals living in our home. No, a PET scan is really a total body
scan that looks for bunches of cancer cells; I had one at the time of
my diagnosis also. Unfortunately because I taught spin this
morning I couldn’t do the test. Vigorous exercise prior to the test
makes all the sugar stuff they inject into you go to the recently
active muscles instead of the places that have cancer cells. So
now I wait two weeks for the test truck to come back.
There isn't much concern that this test will find anything. My
first scan was clean (except for the breast and some slight node
activity). Since that scan I have had a lot of chemo, so it's a
good bet that this scan will be clean. It's the scan one year
from now that I will be more curious about.
And we really do have four pets now. John and Jane have been scheming
for months to find another cat -- this was news to me! I
have to say they found a pretty good one. He acts more like a
dog. We got him from PetsMart, who allows the humane society of
Waupaca County to offer pets for adoption at their store.
He is a black, long-haired cat named Iggy.
I put a link on this site to some info about breast cancer legislation
– it has to do with eliminating the practice of sending women home 24
hours after their mastectomies. It’s one of those things that has
been circulating via email forwards lately. Julie Waite asked me
about it and I decided to look into it. It turns out that it’s a
fairly current effort. Check it out if you have time. (If you
read to the end I also included a funny email that was passed to me--I
edited it for length.)
I dropped off my proposal to 13 different people on Monday. I am
referring to the proposal to my HMO to allow me to use out-of-network
services for my radiation. It turned out to be over 60 pages long
(I didn’t really count the pages – there were quite a few medical
journal articles and those pages weren’t numbered). The medical
director of the HMO called me right away that same day. He told
me that they won’t send me out of town for my daily radiation (which
would be totally illogical). He asked me if I’d be willing to get
a second opinion from a guy down at the UW Comprehensive Cancer
Center. Of course I agreed. Since I will get services
locally, I will probably be getting them from the person I want to get
them from (Affinity’s radiation oncologists are leaving so they won’t
have any local people) so it’s a great benefit for me to get a second
opinion…just to see what the guy says. I will end up asking him
to talk to the provider up here whom I will use. They can compare
notes and I will end up with the best possible care! While I am
not quite done with this because I don’t have a final answer yet, it
looks like it pays to write a thesis about your medical case to make
sure you get what you need.
Today is chemo day and there are only four more after this! Once
I get my radiation situation figured out, then that will be the next
phase. After six weeks of that, then I will send in all my stuff
to PA for that clinical trial. Reconstruction will happen
sometime after that.
I have been feeling pretty well, but I get tired in the
afternoon. My assistant is off this week and I can’t wait for her
to come back. Things at work are crazy-busy! I feel like I am
missing so much news this time, but I will write more some other day
when my head is clearer. Writing that report for the HMO took a
lot out of me I guess!
Love
Val
No comments:
Post a Comment