Be patient.......Time will tell.......

 Wednesday, November 20, 2013


A dear friend sent me this poem/statement...I remember it from 11 years ago and I still love it today....

Cancer is so limited...
It cannot cripple love.
It cannot shatter hope.
It cannot corrode faith.
It cannot eat away peace.
It cannot destroy confidence.
It cannot kill friendship.
It cannot shut out memories.
It cannot silence courage.
It cannot reduce eternal life.
It cannot quench the Spirit.

And I agree....cancer is limited and cancer cannot do all of those things....but one thing cancer can do is make you anxious.  I know before the surgery, when I got the head cold/allergies *(or whatever it was I had).....all I could imagine was that the cancer had spread and was in my throat and in my sinuses and my thoughts were just rampant....It took me going to a doctor the weekend before the surgery for them to tell me it was most probably just allergies....or a viral head cold, that would just take time to get over.  I still found my self thinking the worse. Now that I've had the surgery, I am a little calmer although I still find myself freaking out about one thing are another.  For instance my back is slightly burning and itching a bit......so I immediately think it is my shingles returning........but I'm taking my temperature and constantly looking in the mirror or getting John to look at my back to see if he can see any bumps or blisters.  More than likely it's just something off of a new T-shirt I wore that maybe was rubbing against my back and irritated it. But the cancer makes me think crazy things.  I am trying to keep my thoughts positive-- that they got it all and that the margins and lymph nodes are clean. 

They notified me yesterday afternoon that I have a follow-up appointment with the surgeon this coming Thursday (November 21st)....hopefully it's not just for him to check how well I am healing.  Hopefully the pathology tests will be back and I can find out where I stand....and can be assigned to an oncologist to discuss and weigh out the treatment plan(s).  I guess you'd think I wouldn't be so anxious to start treatment. but I am.  I'd have started treatment the day after surgery if they had let me.

If you know me well, you know that I don't often discuss religion or politics or get up on a soap box and voice my opinion....but I guess maybe cancer makes you do strange things..... because lately I am finding myself furious at waiting to see what my results from the surgery/tissue/lymph node dissections are. If we can spend billions and billions of dollars to go to war and bomb places.....and then billions and billions of dollars to rebuild the places we've bombed....then why can't we find a way that would allow a pathologist to look at the tissue or lymph nodes removed in a surgery, right there in the operating room and tell you when you wake up in recovery what they found....yeh, we got everything, you're good to go or you'll benefit from this or that treatment or we need to do some additional surgery or you need some more extensive treatments. It just seems so ridiculous to me -- like the bulk of the money from this country is being used in the wrong place.  But that's just my opinion because I and several thousand other cancer patients are sitting at home waiting to get their results. Maybe the tests take that long 5-10 business days (business days makes you seem just like a statistic... a number...the ordering of a gift.)  My life and what is going on in my body is not a business day matter. Every day (even weekends), every hour, every minute is important.  Tomorrow can not come soon enough....and hopefully it will bring  more information in this story of mine or in the story of someone else who like me is waiting  to find out if "they got it all", "if any additional treatment will be require....and if so what it is.  

I wrack my brain to remember from almost 12 years ago, how the procedure went.  I know the surgeon didn't tell me the treatment; an oncologist did......and I haven't even been assigned an oncologist yet.....so that may be another appointment for another day....and more waiting...........and I think you have to be about 2 weeks out of surgery before they begin any treatment....and tomorrow I'll be less than 1 weeks out......

So deep breath in......deep deep breath in....and deep full breath out....arms out, thumb and pointer fingers of each hand together think peaceful thoughts and let it go.....

How am I doing? Am I healing well? What did pathology find? What will my treatments be? When will they start? Who will my oncologist be?.....Right now, I don't know.....I guess, like it or not............  I have to wait patiently and time will tell