Day 175, Saturday, November 18, 2017
If you know me on a personal level, you will know that I am a planner…I love structure and routine…I still have an old fashioned paper planner in my purse, one on my desk at work and a few at home…I don’t care for using my phone to plan things or Google calender…I hate them…I need pen to paper and old-school counting on an actual paper calendar.
(Side note: if you ever want to see me geek out, bring me to Staples or any stationary store and I will show you the level of planner nerd that I am…)
The last month has been hard…I mean chemo alone is hard…this is a different hard. While its nice to have a much needed break from all the poking and prodding and nausea – it sort of sucks to be sitting around waiting and not knowing what is going to happen next. After my appointment in LA, Dr. Farol wanted me to get a PET scan and another biopsy. Right after we got done with that appointment, Tim took me out to lunch and being the planner I am, I took out my paper planner and started mapping out my treatment…
OK, so if the PET scan happens here..then the biopsy will happen the following Tuesday..
Results will come in a week after and worst-case I’ll start all the pre-op testing on this week..
Then I’ll start chemo on this week and I should be done with cycle one right before Thanksgiving…
So today is Saturday, November 18 and the biopsy just happened on Thursday….some of you will never quite understand how infuriating it is to not be on schedule and on track for a Type A…The PET scan happened on November 3rd and the biopsy was scheduled for the following Tuesday, the 7th…but on the day of the biopsy we showed up to Kaiser and ran into a…let’s call it a snag… Dr. Bosu, the radiologist at Kaiser Riverside said that the PET scan results had already come in…
-The mediastinal mass shows a decrease in volume however I am still seeing metabolic activity Mrs. Barron…the placement of the tumor poses a significant risk of puncture…
-English Doc…English…please….
-Oh, sorry, so it shrank…but its still alive…and its good that its shrinking but it makes it a lot harder to get a sample…your tumor is sitting right on your aorta and the space I have to go in is right between two ribs and next to two major arteries…
George has gotten smaller…*drumroll please*…we are officially down to 4cm from the original size of 11 cm…that’s fan-freaking-tastic, right?! I wish it was down to zero but George is a stubborn little sucker which means there’s a little bit to go…
So there I am sitting with Dr. Bosu and the nurse when from the corner of my eye I see Tim’s look of worry…
Tim: So if the PET scan is positive, why do we still have to do the biopsy?
Dr. Bosu: Well because…actually…why do we have to? That’s a good question…
Me: Um, I’m ready to go…so….
Dr. Bosu: Hold on…I’m going to call the LA doctor to confirm…
No biopsy on the 7th…Since Dr. Bosu couldn’t get a hold of Dr. Farol, we [insert sarcastic tone here] decided to postpone until we could hear back from Dr. Farol. Turns out we still needed to the biopsy since the City of Hope team wants to be absolutely sure that we are dealing with an active tumor before going forward with the stem cell procedure. PET scans can sometimes give a false positive especially after chemo since any inflammation can be read as positive activity.
Which means I should have done it on the 7th and not have been delayed…but I digress…
So the biopsy got pushed to the 16th which was last Thursday. Biopsies are no fun! Lung needle biopsies are really time consuming and scarier since you are awake for the entire procedure and get to watch while they stick a really large needle into your chest. They place you under a CT machine so they can use the images to guide the needle. I’ve never been stung by a bee, but I would assume that its similar to how it felt when they used the first numbing needle they used on me…it stung for 3-5 seconds and then slowly started to burn for 10-15 seconds…and then all I could feel is pressure…kind of like when you have really bad heartburn and the full feeling in your chest doesn’t go away. They took three samples for the biopsy and said that results should be back next week. Right now, my chest feels like I got kicked by a donkey and it hurts to take a deep breath in. No heavy lifting and no exercising for at least a week….which means no jui jitsu training….LAME SAUCE!!!
More waiting until we get the results from the biopsy….and since next week is Thanksgiving…those might not come in until the week after…
Its really annoying for me because I want to be able to plan things for the holidays but I know that in an instant those plans can change depending on where I am going to be in the treatment…
Cancer Limbo…that’s what Tim calls it…which is a pretty good name for it…
The weeks of waiting created an opportunity for the Enemy to mess with both of us….individually with our own insecurities and as a couple…we slipped into a funk…usually its just one that goes through it and the other one can help reign the other one back in…but what happens when both of you are down?
This whole experience isn’t just happening to me….Tim isn’t just here to take me to my appointments…this affects him too…not in the same way, but sometimes even more challenging for him than it is for me.
Tim is a fixer – he sees a problem and wants to fix it right away. Cancer is not something you can fix. When we went through Tim’s cancer battle, we had no kids, no careers, no other responsibilities except for taking care of each other in our little one-bedroom apartment in Alameda. 13 years later, we both have careers, three kids, a mortgage….life doesn’t get to stop because cancer showed up…its overwhelming…if we didn’t have family to support us (in all its forms: blood, church, jiu jitsu, work, etc.) we would be drowning.
Its so much harder to snap out of it…so God sent in His A-team.
On the Tuesday before my biopsy, we were blessed to have our church elders over to pray for us…One of our pastors recited this verse to us:
They didn’t just pray for me…they prayed over Tim too. God’s way of snapping us back into focus. We can’t lean on our own understanding because we have no idea what God has in store for either of us because of this cancer journey…its not for us to understand..its for us to trust and believe that He has moved, is moving, and is going to do something through this…and to obey..
A really close and dear friend to us, Ted, gave us this illustration: what’s the difference between a thermometer and a thermostat?
The thermometer reads the temperature and the thermostat controls the temperature. As parents, Tim and I set the temperature in our house figuratively speaking…the kids can feel if we are cold and depressed and they also feel when we are warm and loving…we have a choice to let our situation dictate how we are going to be…or we can take control and tell the Enemy to get out. Our kids will learn to handle their own adversity by seeing how we are handling ourselves through this.
Today I realized that Cancer Limbo is yet another lesson that He is giving me….
Are you going to worry in the waiting or find delight in the delays?
Worrying doesn’t fix anything…it tells God that we don’t believe that He is in control of every situation and that we don’t believe that He is big enough, strong enough, loving enough to handle what we are handing over…I’d much rather hand it to Him and find ways to delight in the delays…where I can be grateful that I have some down time and a little bit more energy to cook Saturday morning breakfast like I used to…to have time now to decorate the house for Christmas because I’m not laid out on the couch from treatment…I can choose to be bitter or I can choose to be better because of the situation…to sit back even just for a little bit even if the plan turns out that I need to have more treatment and just enjoy the “crazy” of the Christmas season that people take for granted…
“In the middle of my little mess
I forget how big I’m blessed…”
-Francesca Battistelli, “This is the Stuff”
Breathing Again... 
Keeping you in prayer every day!
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