Follow Up

I promised a follow up after we met with the oncologist and the surgeon, and so, here it is. We met with my oncologist first, on Wednesday. He's a very good doctor, but in the first five minutes of my appointment, he asked me if I wanted to do treatment that day, after the appointment. WHAT? We haven't met with the surgeon to even see if the procedure worked, I'm still not recovered from the hospital and surgery. The last two treatments both put me in the hospital and my body is NOT ready to go another round with chemo yet. So...NO, I do not want to do treatment today. I won't do treatment in a box, I won't do treatment with a fox. I won't do treatment, Joe-I-am, I do not want your chemo spam.

We decided to give my body a break for a bit and, in the meantime, they took a special blood sample to see if they can learn more of the properties of the cancer so they can figure out the best chemical approach. They had done this early on, but now it's been a couple of years, so they decided to check again - see what's changed, etc. Once I am ready to continue treatment we'll decide if we do the same drug I was on, just dialed back a bit and/or stretched out to something like four weeks instead of three, or if we go to something new entirely. One consideration is, is that once you start removing certain chemo drugs from your list, you start narrowing that list down...and the list is only so long.

So, for now, we're in a holding pattern on chemo and letting my body regain strength and heal. After the oncology appointment, we went to get the chest X-ray I needed for the next day's appointment with the surgeon. One of the dangerous things about having the results of any tests or procedures loaded onto your personal MyChart site is that there is room for interpretation - notes to read that can sometimes sound really scary.

For instance, that chest X-ray had these notes: Left pleural effusion. Moderate right pleural effusion. Increased infiltrators in lung. So we start thinking "Great. Fluid is building back up in the left sac area and now the right." And then, infiltrators can mean a few things, but one of them is tumors. Tumors in the lung. We weren't dwelling on that, or convincing ourselves that was what it meant, but the possibility was all too real. So, we hoped for the best, but braced ourselves for bad news.

But that bad news did not come! We actually left a doctor's office without complications or another problem tacked on! The doctor said I looked good. The effusions, the doctor said, are just normal fluid. He said that everyone is moving fluids in and out of that pleural sac area all day long. He just said that I'll have to see when I start getting out of breath easily and they'll do an X-ray and see if I need a thoracentesis. So, I may need occasional thoracentesis', but the effusions are not an alarm bell. The procedure itself (attaching the pleural sac to the lung) was mostly a success. I say mostly because there is an area of the lung that is too damaged to ever heal (from being compressed under fluids, etc). It is kind of misshapen and so the pleural sac could not line up with it, or attach to it. Finally, what we were most worried about...the "infiltrators". The doctor said it was absolutely nothing to worry about. He said, it's normal for anyone to have those in their lungs at certain times and mine was most likely from something like a chest cold, or bronchial thing, but they were not tumors. I had/have been congested and blowing my nose the last couple of weeks, so that makes sense. Finally, they pulled my sutures and staples and we were on our way

We actually left the office smiling! We stopped on the way home to celebrate with a donut.

So, what's next? I meet with my VA primary care doctor tomorrow (Monday). I have a follow up in a few weeks with the surgeon. We'll wait for results to come in to my oncologist on the cancer and decide our plan from there. In the meantime, I will continue to recover and heal. Jess and I will continue to march forward, hand in hand, heart in heart.

It's a tremendous comfort to know that we have such a large network of people thinking of us, loving us, helping us when we need it the most, and walking this journey with us. Thank you. :)

• j