LOL! I’d got myself tricked into thinking things were more or less under control again. Of course, things are never under control. But isn’t it nice when the hallucination that you’ve got a grip kicks in, no matter how temporarily?
Both of next fall’s classes are now prepped: the 26-page syllabi written, the calendars updated, the websites rebuilt with assignments posted, grade sheets constructed, and a semester’s worth of canned announcements (we call those “learning modules” 🙄 ) installed and set to go. If I drop dead, the damn things will go online and the students can plod through them.
More to the point, if I have surgery this summer, I should be able to handle the courses from bed or from a chair. If they were face-to-face sections, that would be out of the question. But since they’re online and the endlessly tedious prep work is done, really all I have to do is answer a few emails and get their papers read.
Was feeling pretty good about this — having done all the tedious course prep — until I dropped by the departmental admin’s desk to say hello this ayem and she remarked that the NEW chair must have these documents e-mailed direct to him (there’s a reason you couldn’t have forwarded it to him, my love?). Of course that sets off an alarum, since new guys almost ALWAYS want to define their own empires. I’m concerned that this guy is going to deliver some kind of critique and demand a lot of revisions.
Hope not. But if he does, I may just say g’bye. Enough unpaid labor has been devoted to that chore, and I’m most certainly NOT going to do any part of it over.
I now have an appointment with a Mayo surgeon to get a second opinion about what’s going on in my boob. That’s not until next week. I could go ahead and let St. Joe’s puncture my boob this Friday, or I could call and put it off. Don’t know which looks like more hassle. Since it’s almost certain the Mayo guy will want a biopsy, too (ever heard of a surgeon who didn’t?), I’m inclined to just go ahead and get it over with. Trouble is, I don’t want any procedures done to me unless I’m absolutely, positively sure it’s necessary. I think this probably is, but…that’s different from “positively.”
So. Wasn’t it nice, for those ten or twelve hours, to experience a fleeting sense of order? It’s gone now. But it was good while it lasted.
My question is …are their different types of biopsies? Different entries…methods of sampling….chances of complications or causing the mass to be affected? You have to be going crazy….
Yes. Apparently there’s at least two: a “fine-needle” and a “core” biopsy. Young Dr. Kildare thought that if they were doing a core biopsy they might be able to remove the two lumps in the process; then it would be Problem Over if the result is negative, and more surgery if it’s positive.
St. Joe’s is doing a fine-needle biopsy, which has as its advantages that it’s minimally invasive, it requires only local anaesthesia. Except for the fact that you’re laying on an operating table for two hours, one evidently recovers quickly, within a day or so.
YDK advised having St. Joe proceed with the biopsy on Friday (JUST how I want to spend my day off from that school…and of course, with my TA out of town I have to grade a set of papers that weekend!) and then having them send the results to the Mayo, where I’m supposed to see a surgeon on Monday — unless the Mayo had some reason they wanted to do the biopsy. So I called out there this afternoon, and they said they liked the idea of proceeding with the biopsy that’s already scheduled, since that would expedite things. They moved the surgeon’s appointment back a week, so as to give time for St. Joe’s to send the results out to the far side of Scottsdale.
YDK, when consulted this morning, was a LOT more jittery about this thing than my dear old Mayo doc, Dr. Daley.
Daley said it would be OK to delay this for a couple of weeks, though no longer than a couple of months. YDK thought a week or two would be OK but two months was too risky. He is made especially antsy by the fact that he had a med-school classmate who, in her late 20s, developed a lump. For some reason they decided it wasn’t urgent and took their time dealing with it…and she was dead in three months. And like the St. Joe’s radiologist, the blood supply flowing through these things stood his hair on end.
On the positive side, he said it would be really unusual for two malignancies to appear so close together in one boob. He did think there’s a chance it’s just the usual lumpiness that have characterized my boobs since I first had boobs.
Fingers crossed that it is nothing. We are dealing with a similar matter for Mr PoP’s aunt, but she’s at the point where she’s decided to start canceling follow-up appointments for further testing (another MRI, a biopsy?) after showing spots on her lung during a recent test. Her dad died of lung cancer (as a non smoker), so her sister (Mr PoP’s mom) is all aflutter wanting auntie to schedule 8 million tests, but auntie wants none of it. At least for a little while. Mr PoP’s mom is having trouble accepting that auntie is a grown-up and gets to make decisions like this on her own without being bossed around by her younger sister.
That doesn’t sound good, does it. But y’know… Cancer treatment is some kind of torture, and often it’s for naught. How old is auntie? Her thinking may be perfectly sane.
You reach a point in your life where you’re no longer frightened or bothered by the prospect of the inevitable end of life. You’ve done what you’d like to do, no one depends on you anymore, and you’ve come to terms with mortality in whatever way works best for you.
The prospect of unnecessary suffering is far more disturbing, and we do subject people to a great deal of unnecessary suffering in a pointless quest to extend life. Not everyone wants to live to be 101, nor should they.
My father had a heart attack late in his 79th year. They rushed him to the hospital, where a doctor handed me a form to sign agreeing to let them do triple-bypass surgery on him. I wheeled him out of there on his 80th birthday; he lived to be 84, fully rational to the end. On three different occasions he told me that if he’d had any idea how much he would suffer, he would never have called for help on the day he had that heart attack.
Lung cancer is going to kill you. What is the point of putting someone in her 70s or beyond through a lot of invasive testing and painful, debilitating treatment? To extend her life a few years? What kind of years?
I’m with YDK…he seems to be the voice of reason. I hope all this excitement is for naught and you are cancer free. Of course prepare yourself….it seems even if you are cancer free there is the chance of there being “pre-cancer” cells……cheeezzz. I wish you well…
Yes. Even though he’s just a DO from a proprietary trade school, he’s gifted with extraordinary common sense. That’s why I like him. That…and he’s very scenic.
…”scenic”….TOO FUNNY….It seems you may be “smitten”…. As I get older it seems I prefer the common sense Docs. Case in point…My Dear Dad was going thru chemo and one of the nurses made a comment that my Dad had a dark tan and wanted to know how he got it. He explained that it was from sitting in the sun…she freaked and explained that with the drugs he was on for the chemo could cause skin cancer. Sooo a meeting with his oncologist was scheduled. Same guy that had removed DD’s lung and suggested chemo upon the cancer’s return. When we explained why the meeting was scheduled….he laughed and said …”we’ve got more pressing issues to worry about then skin cancer”. He went on to explain that he felt with two bypasses, a lung removal and two rounds of chemo under his belt that Dad should certainly sit in the sun as long and as often as he wanted. Then Dad, recognizing an opportunity, lobbied for 3 dips of ice cream at night instead of the “cholesterol mandated” 2 dips. To which the Doc replied…”sure 3 dips…ice cream makes me happy…why not?”. Aaaand three dips it is…..