Thursday, November 13, 2014

In the waiting room

Is it weird that it’s been a good day?  It’s been raining like crazy here and on my way home from the oncologist, after a few minutes on the road, the sun broke through the clouds.   I could still see the rain in the distance wetting the West mountains but I-5 was clear as far as I could see.  The clouds had all these beautiful, multiple layers to them and the small sunny patches were that vibrant blue that speaks of summer when it’s only just spring.

The kids had been sick at my last post, the one about needing to head to the oncologist because my hip has been acting up more lately. Even if my hip was a benign something, most likely it has been caused by the chemo, bursitis is really common amongst former patients.   At the time I wrote I didn’t feel very well, a sore throat and a headache, dizzy and just generally feeling crummy.  Well, it hasn’t really let up and is in fact worse.

The good news is that at this point my oncologist is not very concerned about my hip because he is so very concerned about my brain. 

I have a brain MRI scheduled for tomorrow at 1:45pm and will hit the table about 2.  They’ll rush the reading because it’s not for some torn cartilage and we should know if my symptoms are from my cancer having had returned in my brain by 6 or 7pm.  Rush reading because I failed Dr. Cho’s nice walk in a straight line test (yes I actually still drove home, scary huh?) and other vertigo tests that
reveal my left eye/side is not processing very well.  Still could be a virus or the rocks having fallen out of my inner ear or some random thing we haven’t discovered yet.

Is it weird that it’s still been a good day?  It’s had its moments of hilarity, even in the oncologist’s office.  Josh and I were waiting my the nurse’s station while they called to get a rush MRI, to see if
they could even get me in tonight, and there was this great discussion about MRIs to the head and braces.  If you weren’t aware, I had braces put on in December; my teeth were straight but are now
fragile from the chemo.  I’ve been breaking some of my front teeth, my teeth are really close together and there is just no room for the Dentist to get in there and fix them.  It’s actually less expensive to get some more space with braces then to cap four teeth. So, in Magnetic Resonance Imaging, what happens to braces? (They will just make it harder for the radiologist to read my images.)  We had a great time laughing about braces pinging off the ceiling of the room or my head being stuck to the inside of the machine.

I love my kids.  Joy was singing, “I’m so hungry,” in the kitchen over and over after we got home and every time I would lean into Josh’s arms Kate would ask for “squishy hugs”.  They are in the back now laughing hilariously at something Kate is saying and tickling each other as they “make beds” and are really throwing blankets on the floor.  I got to see my sister, sold some things we are using in the garage for $75, and folded laundry.

In cancer circles, we call this time, “being in the waiting room.”  There’s not much you can do to
hurry things up, nothing changes for being worried so… you just practice waiting.

Tomorrow I will wake up and the first not muddled thought I will choose to think will be, “This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”  Join me?

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