After the surgery and chemotherapy, I am now to the "observation" phase of my treatment and I will be at that phase for a few years to come. So far I have had four doctor's appointments this month, and I have three left.
First, I have swimmers! Before you start chemo, they tell you that the chemo will probably make you sterile, which is obviously the part that the lawyers of the people who manufacture the chemotherapy make them say. The oncologist followed that up by saying he didn't know anyone who had that particular type of chemo that actually became sterile (for example, Lance Armstrong and I had the same chemo, and he has had two successful swimmers in the past two years). What was funny, is the nurse from the urologist's office acted like she had devastating news for me, saying that my count of swimmers was low. For me, having just cleared the time period when I should be able to start making swimmers again, and after being told I may never make swimmers again, I was ecstatic. All I need is one swimmer! Maybe two, my wife and I are still arguing that point. Personally I am hoping when my swimmers do make it to the finish line we get triplets.
My second doctor's appointment was with my G.I. doctor. The best news there was I am not due for another buttsporation for another four years! The colonoscopy itself isn't too bad, it's just the prep that has you wishing you hadn't ate all of that food over the past three years so you could get off of the toilet and move on with your life. I have an upper scope in July, but all you have to do for that one is not eat after midnight then go to sleep when they inject you with the good stuff. The only bad news I received from the G.I. doctor, wasn't from him at all. He had been wanting to do a CT scan on me for a while, but we couldn't really justify it. So, since we already had one done, I had sent the scans over to him. He got to see what he wanted to look at and said everything seemed good. In fact the only thing they marked on my scan was the two cyst type things in my kidneys. The only problem with hearing that, was I hadn't heard that before then. So now I have something new to worry about. I asked him if going through chemo would help my Barrett's Esophagus at all, and I was told it wouldn't because esophageal cancer doesn't respond to chemo. Not what I was really hoping to hear, but then he reiterated that is why it is so important to do the scopes when he says to. I guess I will see you in July, doc! Other than that, some of my G.I. issues are doing so well that I have been able to back off some of my meds!
Appointment three was a blood and pee test. The only bad thing about these tests, is you do them at the same time (well a few minutes apart), and they want you to not eat anything that morning, yet still be able to pee. So I was left chugging water on the whole way to the doctor's. The vampire was nice (she always is) and let me in on a little secret. I have veins that like to roll around when stuck, and most nurses are fine when I say that they usually need a "butterfly" to stick me, but every once in a while I get a cranky don't-tell-me-how-to-do-my-job one, who manages to stick me several times before grabbing the butterfly. This nurse said the main reason nurses are like that is that the butterfly needles cost considerably more than the regular ones. And some employers will actually ration the number of butterfly needles a nurse gets in a week. Yeah, that makes sense, stick a person nine times before you break out the more expensive needle (and I speak from experience).
Saturday, I had my regular doctor appointment. I had a year's worth of questions to ask him, which just about every answer was to quit worrying about it. I asked him about my kidney cyst looking thingys. He said just about everyone has those and he is sure that my oncologist is watching those if he is worried about them. He also said it looks like a stitch may be trying to push to the surface from my incision and to have the urologist look at it. I don't know what the heck I will do if I see a string poking out my belly? The kid in me will want to pull it, which has me running all sorts of scenarios in my mind, most of them involving me unraveling. The good news is since a CT scan is much better than getting poked in the butt, I was able to avoid having to get the dreaded prostate exam (or the finger wag as my dad calls it). I don't think either one of us has been looking forward to that. Since this is my no nonsense doctor, he spent most of the appointment telling me I was doing great after my cancer treatment, and now it was time to lose weight! Sometimes I don't feel like I am doing as well as I would like after my treatment, but I definitely agree with him on the losing weight part. I want to lose the weight as fast as possible, then think of a reason to go to him just to prove I could take off the weight. What am I talking about? I am sure I will probably manage to hurt myself sometime before next year's check up. I'll probably end up hurting myself while trying to lose weight.
So, four appointments down and three left this month. I don't know exactly what to expect from the urologist and oncologist. At least the X-ray will be another one of those laydown and don't do anything tests. I am good at those tests. Oh well, nothing I can do but show up to them and then blog about what happened...
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