Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Wednesday, January 30, 2008: Day 12 Post-diagnosis

I have the feeling that today’s entry should be a long one, but will end up being a short one. I met with Dr. Weiss today, and with a social worker as well. My parents came down to the meeting, and that helped out a lot. My impressions leaving the meeting:

1. Of course the person that is going to do my regular butt-radiation treatments is a young female doctor. That’s just comedy-gold.

2. The rough part about hearing 70-80% survival is that your mind is saying “You mean 20-30% NON-SURVIVAL!!!”

3. Chemo is going to be either by a continuous 6 week iv, or pick with a portable pump that will run 24/7or an oral tablet taken daily (which only costs $25,000 more).

4. T3 N1 MX – they won’t be able to tell me the M level (metastasis level) until they have done the chest CT, and looked at my liver – ain’t that great.

5. I look forward to meeting with a doctor for days, and yet every time I meet with them, I feel like I’ve just been kicked to the curb, the carefully constructed hope that I have built with few facts and boundless supposition gets tossed away immediately. I think that this is really the toughest part about the process so far – each step I try to construct a new reality – Ok, there is a bunch of blood, but the docs say it’s probably just hemorrhoids. Ok, it’s not – it’s a tumor, but it’s probably just benign. Ok, it’s not – but at least it was caught early on. Nope, wrong again. Oh and by the way, hope it’s not in your lymph nodes, your liver, or in multiple other places we haven’t found yet. Even once I realized I’d be doing chemo/radiation – I spoke with people about their chemo experience and started to figure out what mine would be like – probably every week or two, I’d come in for a few hours and get the IV treatment with a group of people that are going through roughly the same thing. Instead, no, I get the choice of carrying a pump with me 24/7 or taking a pill. One seems that it reminds me to damn often what I’m doing, and the other seems to lack the gravity of the situation – If that’s the same way I take a fucking asprin then how important can it really be. Ha. I love that I can be concerned about whether or not chemotherapy has sufficient gravity. I wonder what that says about my personality…

6. The post op chemo treatment will last a little longer than 5 weeks. Ok, about 19 weeks longer. I’ll be doing 6 months of it. I can’t say how depressing this is.

7. The doctors seem dubious about my ability to compete in the Wasatch Back Relay on June 20-21st. The doubt I’ll be able to run through the chemo, and then get back to running so soon after surgery. I say Fuck em. They don’t know how goddamn stubborn I am.

1 comment:

Ricky and Karen said...

Well, Dov I can certianly agree with your last statement. They don't know how stuborn you are. That of course translate into determination and guts.