March 30, 2016

You're still here? I can see it every day in my co-workers' faces. It's like when you're pregnant, only nobody is going to playfully ask "hey, shouldn't you have had that cancer surgery by now?"
Wow, has it been a long while. We've been waiting for the genetic test results, and holy crap did they take a long time.
The surgeon was out of the office on Monday, and it turns out the oncologist is out all this week. Huh. That's nice, since the test results are going to be emailed to him! After a couple days of increasingly desperate and teary calls to the Cancer Center, they call the testing company and ask that the results be faxed over so I don't have to wait any longer.
They're negative! So it looks like my surgery will be a lumpectomy. I got the first available appointment with the surgeon (Friday morning, ugh!) and am hoping to get this show on the road next week.
I also called up to the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center in Madison and scheduled a second opinion. So Jeff and I will head up there Monday morning to meet with a badass-looking lady surgeon and possibly an oncologist.
I was really impressed with how fast the UW people "mobilized" (for lack of a better word) and got me in ASAP. I do like my FHN surgeon and oncologist, but let's be honest, here - they've let me dangle in the wind with no clear plan for what, almost 3 weeks now. And yes, if you look at the UW website, they have a whole patient navigator team, which isn't possible for a small place like FHN. But as much as I like FHN and its people, I kind of like having a person whose job it is to make sure I'm not dangling in the wind. So we're going up to Madison and we'll see what happens.
Not too long after all the appointments fell into place, Jeff got us tickets for the next installment of Rogepalooza - Mute Math at the Majestic Theatre in Madison on Saturday. I'm really looking forward to it. I feel like we have made some progress and are doing something about the cancer.
It's been a pretty crappy time lately, and I keep thinking that yeah, waiting is bad but wait until chemo or radiation or surgery ... I'll wish for the days when all I had to do was wait. I'm trying to be as calm as I can; it's just been difficult lately.