Okay, I've just accepted the fact that I'm going to have to wait at least six months to see if the new tumor is growing or if there are more. I'm not a patient person so I'm finding this incredibly frustrating. Waiting for an elevator makes me crazy so you can imagine someone like me being told I have to wait six months to a year for another freaking scan. Agh............ But really I can do this. I will find my Zen and calmly accept this waiting period. Can't I?
The radiation has done a number on my spine so I started physical therapy today. This is another one of the medical sciences that I have always thought of as kind of bogus. This idea is regularly enforced by the engineers and doctors I work with that do medical research and development. One of the doctors explained to me that medicine is a "practice". They practice on their patients until they find something that works and even then it doesn't work all the time. Meaning that half the time they are making it up as they go along. This doesn't make me feel very secure even though I carefully picked my doctors for their specific expertise. Someone please talk me down from my cynicism and impatience.
Dear Stacey
ReplyDeleteHave you quit writing? Has the tumors gotten worse? I was attracted to your headline because I was accused yesterday on not trusting my doctor regarding my diagnosis of Wildtype GIST/paraganglioma. My local doctors called my GIST tumor benign. Since my father died of paraganglioma when I was 16 I knew benign was not benign and found an expert doctor who still doesn't know everything but does know GIST and parganlioma tumors. I took the time after my diagnosis to write a book about the positive in my life and in a year it was ready to be published (the first publisher I sent it to said yes. A week after sending "A Disney Childhood" to press I got my 6 month CT scan and they found a number of tumors in my liver. A month later they'd double in size and number and 2/3rds of my liver had to be removed (I earlier lost 1/3rd of my stomach). That is where I am. Every three month CT scans wondering what my fate will be next time. Cathy Sherman Freeman