A lot has happened in the past month. I’ve had another cancer patient go off on me about how I should be ashamed of myself for telling my story. I’ve had another person recognize me from my blog and encourage me to continue posting. I’ve gone to a breast cancer conference, and had a good friend lose her battle while I was there. I’ve had many pool sessions and am super close to rolling my kayak. I’ve found a therapist I really like and feel like I’m making steps in the right direction. I’ve gone out with the girls and gone on adventures. Including fatbiking, which included a spill on the snow. I tore a chest muscle and broke my ulna this past Sunday so I’m currently taking it easy.
I’ve been feeling very positive. Looking towards the future for the first time in a long time. Seems like the right time for the universe to take me down a peg, huh? As you may recall, I’ve had a lot of anxiety about not having any scans or tumor markers pulled since my treatment ended. I find it hard to believe that the treatment worked without verification. There are several reasons that the doctors don’t want to do this. The scan can expose me to unnecessary radiation is the biggest one. As far as the markers go, they can show false positives as well as false negatives so my doctor, like many others, won’t pull them. Saying that, almost all of my friends have the markers pulled. They’ve all been normal.
I went to a new oncologist for a second opinion on Monday. She runs the young women’s clinic at CU, specializing in pregnancy related cancers (which mine is). She also has the highest survival rates in the nation. Amazingly enough, she was a wonderful person. Made me feel a lot better, noticed that I have developed cording on my left side, and had many suggestions for me. She also pulled three different tumor markers. These markers look for certain proteins in the blood which are present when cancer is present. As you may have figured out by now, one of mine came back high. Like, a lot high. So the doctor was very reassuring that it could be a false positive, that there could be other reasons for it to be like this, but ultimately I need to get a PET scan ASAP. My scan was scheduled this morning for Wednesday afternoon. I should get the results by late Thursday.
So… what does this mean? It either means that something is out of wack and we will get the scan and everything will be clear – or it means that my cancer is either back or never left.
I did pretty well with this the first 24 hours or so, but last night the anxiety started creeping in. Both of the kids are sick and Evelyn kept me awake from 1am through the morning by throwing up all over me. It was a cycle of throwing up, cleaning up, changing the sheets, doing laundry, laying down and thinking while she got some sleep, and then throwing up again. I guess the night could have been worse, but it was pretty bad. It is going to be a long wait for next Thursday. I’ll let you know how it turns out. Happy thoughts.
Jenn's Cancer Blog 