A Day in the Life of Me at Mayo

Today was treatment day for me. You will be happy to know that I only have 9 more weeks left. A far cry from the 48 weeks when I started this new adventure. Anyway, it was an interesting day at Mayo for a few reasons. Where to start........

I was sitting in the waiting room, feeling quite fidgity for some unknown reason, literally walking around the whole room trying to find a magazine to peruse. I found one that was somewhat interesting, paged through about 5 pages and put it down. I then heard laughter coming from the area in the waiting room where there is a TV. Hmmm. Interesting. What could be on that is making these three people laugh so hard? I decided to meander over there and check it out. America's Funniest Home Videos? Nope. Three's Company? Uh-uh. I am still in awe as I type this when I think about what they were watching.....dramatic pause.......the nature channel. The nature channel. And not even funny moments with animals or something of that nature (Ha! I slid a little joke in there). It was a show documenting these guys underwater trying to get a DNA sample from a shark. It's a slow TV day when you find THAT funny.

When I finally went back I was lucky enough to get an end seat. There are six chairs to each room, three on each side. The middle chair sucks. All you have are the arm rests and it just is a crappy spot. So to the left of me was a newbie. He was there for his first treatment for pancreatic and liver cancer. He was in a pretty good mood, all things considered, but when I heard this little conversation between him and his wife, I got sad.

"Well, you certainly can't go until you complete your Honey Do list" (wife)

"I don't think I will live long enough to make it through the whole list." (husband)

Ugh. How sad. He was not being negative about the situation, he was being realistic. The reality of his type of cancer is a timeline of 6 months to a year. My co-worker's daughter made it 7 months.

The next chair over was occupied by a lifer. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992. She had a mastectomy and did three years of Tamoxifen (the same pill I am on). 11 years later she found a little lump in her neck, which turned out to be positive for cancer. Seeing as that it was in her nodes, it has spread, but the question was where was the parent tumor? It doesn't just start in your nodes, it has to get there from somewhere. So after scans, a tumor was found behind her reconstructed breast in her lung. Even though it was found in her lung, a test can prove (and did) that it is still breast cancer. 11 years. Some darn cancer cell was dormant for 11 years and something woke it up and got it growing again. Not an uplifting thought for the rest of us, but a reality of the disease. So she is now doing Herceptin (the treatment I am almost done with) for the rest of her life. She was also upbeat and strong. I will quote her too.....

"While you are alive, live."

How true is that? Some days it is easy to forget, but then we meet these people who remind us, and try to get us back on track. I know I was looking death in the face today. When I had my misdiagnosis and was given not so much time to live, all that went through my mind was "Dead man walkin. Dead man walkin." from that the movie of the same name. I felt like a shell, like my soul had already left. I remember getting on the computer one night to one of the online support chat rooms and typing,

"I can't do this! I can't do this!"

Little did I know that I could, and did. Granted the outcome was different after I got the second opinion, or my second chance as I like to call it, but I will never forget those feelings I had in those 2 and a half weeks I had to wait before I could get into Mayo for the second opinion. We were so convinced that the cancer had spread, that I thought the oncologist was nuts when he said he didn't think it was cancer (I have to put in here though that I LOVE my oncologist, he keeps me grounded, he takes me seriously, he makes me laugh, hell, he puts up with me and that in itself has earned him a star in his crown).

So I did my treatment with my port not working only about 3 times. Not too bad. I asked a nurse how long they suggest keeping a port in after treatment is done, and they said a year. A year?!? I guess that is better than the five years my surgeon wants to keep it in, but I am still going to fight to have it out earlier. Here was some of my conversation with my surgeon about this topic....

"A year."

"Good. I agree. It will stay in a year, just in case you need it."

"What would I need it for?"

"Well....."

"What would I need it for?"

And cut. So my point was this, for me, to keep the port in is not only uncomfortable, but I will feel like I am not done with all of this crap until that little demon comes out. How do I move on with that still in my body? I want to think about my future NOT as, "what if I need a port again?" but as, "Thank God that is over and I can move on." And I hate it. I just plain old fashioned hate it. That fight is not over yet, and the winner is to be determined. I'll keep you updated, but we're dealing with two people who don't like to lose. It shall be interesting, but don't mock me if I lose. That's not nice.