I'm kind of annoyed. So far the biopsy from Monday is inconclusive. Also, when I walked into the pulmonary clinic this morning the doc said he got a call from the lab today to let him know that my influenza finding from the broncosopy was a false positive. WTF? Also, the TB test they did was only for active TB, so the inconclusive thing in my lung could still be TB (there are millions of carriers who never convert to active). My last skin test for it was years ago when I was teaching, and I've done a lot of travel to places where I'd be more likely to pick it up since then (India, Russia, Morocco). Nobody's asked me to do a skin test yet, and I didn't think to ask for it today either. I may just do a walk in appointment with my GP and get that done.
On the plus side, everybody thinks my lungs are doing much better, and I get to step down to 15mg of prednisone tomorrow, then 10 next week, and then 5 after that. So I guess I can expect to be a smidge more tired again this weekend, although I think that might be balanced out now by the fact that I'm a month out of my last chemo and my lungs are better. Who knows? At this point I feel like I need to take every prediction with a grain of salt, even my own.
After that appointment, I ducked out and went to the office to attend the luncheon with a bunch of executives in our division for the five of us who won the "Marketing Excellence Award" this quarter. I'm glad I did, there were twelve of us in the room - a mix of the winners and a bunch of the senior executives in marketing. It was actually quite casual and the CMO happened to sit next to me, and we had a nice chat. Good stuff on the career front, even if I'm not actually working.
After lunch I went back down to Stanford for a pulmonary function test. The first thing they did was do an arterial blood draw from my wrist - that was a new one for me. She numbed me up a bit with lidocaine. It didn't quite kill the pain, but it was tolerable, and then she went into my right wrist with a longer needle than usual to draw blood - the idea being that this was the first stop after my lungs and they would test for blood gasses.
Then she had me do a series of tests where I breathed normally and then inhaled or exhaled faster/slower/more completely into a contraption while wearing a noseclip. The good news there is that all of my lung functions were completely normal, except (I think) total capacity. She said that was at 74% of what they would expect, but it could be explained by my weight which could be restricting expansion. But everything else was perfectly fine, which means I'm safe to exercise and undergo anesthesia and all that good stuff in the future.
I just sent a note off to Dr. W (oncologist at Alta Bates) to let her know and see if she wants to officially greenlight chemo on Wednesday. I should know tomorrow.
Nothing else going on until my ECG on Monday.
On the plus side, everybody thinks my lungs are doing much better, and I get to step down to 15mg of prednisone tomorrow, then 10 next week, and then 5 after that. So I guess I can expect to be a smidge more tired again this weekend, although I think that might be balanced out now by the fact that I'm a month out of my last chemo and my lungs are better. Who knows? At this point I feel like I need to take every prediction with a grain of salt, even my own.
After that appointment, I ducked out and went to the office to attend the luncheon with a bunch of executives in our division for the five of us who won the "Marketing Excellence Award" this quarter. I'm glad I did, there were twelve of us in the room - a mix of the winners and a bunch of the senior executives in marketing. It was actually quite casual and the CMO happened to sit next to me, and we had a nice chat. Good stuff on the career front, even if I'm not actually working.
After lunch I went back down to Stanford for a pulmonary function test. The first thing they did was do an arterial blood draw from my wrist - that was a new one for me. She numbed me up a bit with lidocaine. It didn't quite kill the pain, but it was tolerable, and then she went into my right wrist with a longer needle than usual to draw blood - the idea being that this was the first stop after my lungs and they would test for blood gasses.
Then she had me do a series of tests where I breathed normally and then inhaled or exhaled faster/slower/more completely into a contraption while wearing a noseclip. The good news there is that all of my lung functions were completely normal, except (I think) total capacity. She said that was at 74% of what they would expect, but it could be explained by my weight which could be restricting expansion. But everything else was perfectly fine, which means I'm safe to exercise and undergo anesthesia and all that good stuff in the future.
I just sent a note off to Dr. W (oncologist at Alta Bates) to let her know and see if she wants to officially greenlight chemo on Wednesday. I should know tomorrow.
Nothing else going on until my ECG on Monday.
That sound you hear is me grinding my teeth - I cannot BELIEVE you didn't get a PPD done the very first day they saw that stupid thing in your lung.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. I'd recommend a Quantiferon Gold blood test, actually, b/c PPD can be false negative if you are immunosuppressed from the prednisone.
ReplyDelete