July 23

Dr. C called last night. He wanted to let me know that the biopsy results came back and as expected, they're positive. He also talked to Dr. A and also as expected, she doesn't think radiation is an option as far as a permanent solution goes. He then started talking to me some more about the surgery. He feels that the feeding tube in my stomach would be permanent but now he's saying that maybe the trach would not be. Maybe I would just need it for a year or two and then the swelling would go down enough for me to talk and breath again through my nose and mouth. This confused me for a number of different reasons. First of all, he had mentioned that the tumor was right next to my voicebox and that it was a concern. Second, he said that movement of my jaw would be affected with the surgery since the tumor is way down deep, embedded and entwined in the muscle. On top of all this, the last time I spoke to him, he didn't sound very optimistic about the surgery getting rid of all the cancer, in general. His opinion seemed to be that the cancer is going to kill me one way or another. It's just a matter of when, and what my quality of life will be when it happens. I finally stopped the conscious stream of thought thing that he had going and I told him that after our last conversation that I had been leaning towards the chemo, shorter, better life option. He said that if I was 20-30 years older that he would fully support that decision but he said it's very distressing for that to be the outcome for a 43 year old woman. Um, okay. (But he really needs to embrace the whole 'it is what it is' mantra.) He then asked me if I was having any difficulty breathing. Um, no? (And now I'm freaking out, am I going to start having difficulty breathing as this thing grows??) And of course, his final query was about my pain management. Did I need any more Vicodin yet? Nope, still trying to get through the truckload I was given last week. I hung up baffled as usual. I think I'm going to type up a bunch of questions and thoughts for him again and e-mail them to him. It seems that if I give him some specific points/questions to focus on, he is able to do a little better in the communication department.

Meanwhile, I'm still scheduled with Dr. Miller on Thursday. I need to tap someone here at work to be my second set of ears at that appointment. I need to choose carefully too now that things are getting so unhappy. Poor Kunkel was stressing about me all weekend after being my person at the biospy. I feel bad that I ruined one of her few non-busy weekends! :-(

In other news, my legs are almost back to normal. Still a little sore but it's easily ignorable. And rather than dissolving, the stitch in my tongue actually fell out the other night.

No new fun stuff to report. I've been spending as much time with my hot, hot man as I can. Last night was supposed to be a night with his daughter but he came over to eat dinner with me and play some cards before going to be with her. While we were playing cards, his wife sent him a text. Her shift at work was canceled so I got to keep him for the entire night. Woo hoo! Bonus night!