Long evening at the hospital - my appointment was at 4:20 but we didn't actually get seen until 5:30, and weren't done until 7:15. Bob came with me and we rewarded ourselves with dinner at Umami Burger before heading home.
Everything is looking good. I feel like my lungs are almost back to normal, they cleared me to start doing a little bit of exercise, so I'm going to start slow in the morning. I haven't taken the dog for a walk in three weeks, so I'll take him out in the morning and set a timer when we walk out the door for five minutes, and see how far I get, then turn around and come home. I'll add time until I'm back up to a 30 minute total walk if I can do it. Realistically, the next round of chemo may make that goal impossible. I'm not going to kill myself to do it, but I think getting some kind of regular exercise again will help my body and my head a lot.
Dr. T. thinks I'm fine to do the biopsy on my lung this week, so we're scheduling it ASAP, and then as soon as that's booked we'll schedule my next batch of chemotherapy for one week after the biopsy. So I could be starting the AC as soon as next week, which is a huge relief.
I'm also clear to get my own flu shot this week, so I'll get that done tomorrow or Wednesday. Once that's done I don't need to be quite so paranoid about being out in public. I bought a heavier duty fabric version of those paper masks with an exhale valve that makes it comfortable to wear for longer periods of time. The lung people said I don't need to wear it all the time, but keep it around in case I get into a situation where people are sick around me.
Both the oncology people and the pulmonary people have said that they really doubt the thing in my lung is cancerous - if it was a a metastasis of my breast cancer it would have shrunk during chemo and it didn't, and it would be extremely rare for someone of my age to have two different cancers at once. They are concerned that it might be a dormant infection of some kind. It's definitely not TB, but it could be Valley Fever or some other random thing that I picked up in my travels. Or it could just be scar tissue from an old infection. They expect a 72 hour turnaround from both pathology and microbiology once they get a piece of it.
The biopsy itself doesn't scare me. They'll put me in a CT machine and go in between my ribs in my back. The nodule is right up at the top of my right lung so it should be pretty easy to access and they'll do it under a local. I'll take a valium or two like I do for the MRIs and it should be fine. The CT isn't nearly as claustrophobic, and this shouldn't take very long.
I am scared of the AC. No question there. It's probably going to be a lot harder on me physically than the taxol was, but I'm also eager to get started. The tumor doesn't seem to have grown at all in the last couple of weeks and I don't want to give it a chance to start now.
Everything is looking good. I feel like my lungs are almost back to normal, they cleared me to start doing a little bit of exercise, so I'm going to start slow in the morning. I haven't taken the dog for a walk in three weeks, so I'll take him out in the morning and set a timer when we walk out the door for five minutes, and see how far I get, then turn around and come home. I'll add time until I'm back up to a 30 minute total walk if I can do it. Realistically, the next round of chemo may make that goal impossible. I'm not going to kill myself to do it, but I think getting some kind of regular exercise again will help my body and my head a lot.
Dr. T. thinks I'm fine to do the biopsy on my lung this week, so we're scheduling it ASAP, and then as soon as that's booked we'll schedule my next batch of chemotherapy for one week after the biopsy. So I could be starting the AC as soon as next week, which is a huge relief.
I'm also clear to get my own flu shot this week, so I'll get that done tomorrow or Wednesday. Once that's done I don't need to be quite so paranoid about being out in public. I bought a heavier duty fabric version of those paper masks with an exhale valve that makes it comfortable to wear for longer periods of time. The lung people said I don't need to wear it all the time, but keep it around in case I get into a situation where people are sick around me.
Both the oncology people and the pulmonary people have said that they really doubt the thing in my lung is cancerous - if it was a a metastasis of my breast cancer it would have shrunk during chemo and it didn't, and it would be extremely rare for someone of my age to have two different cancers at once. They are concerned that it might be a dormant infection of some kind. It's definitely not TB, but it could be Valley Fever or some other random thing that I picked up in my travels. Or it could just be scar tissue from an old infection. They expect a 72 hour turnaround from both pathology and microbiology once they get a piece of it.
The biopsy itself doesn't scare me. They'll put me in a CT machine and go in between my ribs in my back. The nodule is right up at the top of my right lung so it should be pretty easy to access and they'll do it under a local. I'll take a valium or two like I do for the MRIs and it should be fine. The CT isn't nearly as claustrophobic, and this shouldn't take very long.
I am scared of the AC. No question there. It's probably going to be a lot harder on me physically than the taxol was, but I'm also eager to get started. The tumor doesn't seem to have grown at all in the last couple of weeks and I don't want to give it a chance to start now.
Weird to say, YAY you can get a biopsy and more chemo, but, um, Yay?
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I know. My priorities, fears, and happy milestones have changed a lot in the last six months. But definitely, YAY! I just came back from a (very slow) 10 minute walk and don't feel like I'm going to die. YAY!
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