Thursday, September 27, 2012

And Megan says......

She tells me that the team of doctors and radiologists are a little confused and think it would be best to complete another liver biopsy, but this time at MAYO. So, no question we are transferring everything up to MAYO and they are the chosen ones' to get to take care of me. Hope they are ready because by this time I have stopped feeling sorry for myself and was ready to take this on. I refused to let Cancer win or get the best of me. So, Megan got me scheduled for the 2nd biopsy the day after we return from our vacation. I had decided that I was going to spend the rest of my vacation days taking in all of the mountain beauty I took advantage of when I lived in New Mexico. Angie and I also got to spend some really quality time with some of my best friends down there. It truly was one of the best weeks and as usual, I didn't want to leave, but this time the reasoning was slightly different. I was normal there, breathing was great and I felt wonderful. I guess I didn't want to leave and go back to reality, I somewhat knew what lie ahead. But, time doesn't stop and planes don't wait!
I tried to convince Angie to lets just take this convertible and run, just drive far away, but that didn't work out for me.
Mom and my nephew Brady were patiently waiting at the airport at 10:00 pm when we flew in. See, my mom had spent quite a bit of time with us in the last few weeks and I think she really missed us. As for my nephew, he is taking this cancer thing very hard. He doesn't want me to be sick, he even told me that nothing could happen to me because he needs me to watch him play football and watch him hit his first home run. Broke my heart! Don't worry buddy, I don't plan on going anywhere no matter what I have to go through.
They both stayed at my house that night because we had to get up at 5 the next morning to trek back up to MAYO. So, in my sister's van we go again. On this trip up I was mentally preparing for this liver biopsy. The first one, I felt the entire thing and it was very unpleasant and I didn't really want to do this again. But, I wasn't quite tired of needles yet, so what the heck. We show up at the appointment and I get in this cute little gown, get an IV in, and sit out in the waiting room with my entourage. Let me tell you how uncomfortable this setting is: I have a hospital gown on in a waiting room where people can observe, my sister has some of her kids, Angie's boys were along, my mom, dad, Jacque. The kids are walking around probably annoying people who are sitting waiting for who knows what, but maybe waiting for something pretty serious. And than there is Angie! I walk out and I see her with a pair of swimming goggles on her face and she mimes swimming herself over to me! All I could do was apologize to the people around me and pray that the doctor or nurse would come get me NOW. But, they didn't, I sat and waited for awhile. Not too soon, a nurse came to find me and took me back to the room where they got me all hooked up to an ultra sound machine. The poor nurse spent 30-45 min searching my liver. Turns out, she went to go get the "expert" and neither one of them could find my spot on the liver. My kidney was blocking it, so there was no way they could do the liver biopsy via ultra sound. So great....now what? Well, they didn't do the procedure that day and the doc said he needed to confer with the radiologist to see where we go from there. I can't lie.....I was pissed! The doc says we will let you know what time you can come in a do the biopsy tomorrow via CT Scan. Great....so to the lovely lady at the desk I said, I don't know if you know this, but I am a pretty big deal and I need to get this procedure done asap! She was awesome and totally picked up on my awesomeness and had the appointment made. I was going back tomorrow for the procedure. Instead of staying one night this time, we ended up staying 3!!!! FYI, don't forget this lovely lady. Her name is Kerry.
I went in the next morning for the biopsy finally, again I had to mentally prepare to get another prick and IV and than sit very still in the scanner. O not to mention that the nurses don't put you out, a little sedative they do give you, but you can feel every flipping thing. This one was worse than the first. I remember grabbing onto the nurses arm and wanting to punch the doctor with the other. Every time he told me to take a deep breath in, I was like DUDE, there's a needle through my liver, makes it hard to breath! CRAP. Finally it was over and my parents and Angie came back to see me in tears and clearly in pain. A few drops of blood dropped on my diaphragm, which shot tremendous pain up my arm and shoulders. It was literally like someone stabbing me in my liver over and over and than the repercussions ended up in my upper arm. It was than they gave me a little pain reliever. None the less, we got through it. We had to stay at MAYO that night just in case my lung were to collapse, it didn't. The next day, we load up and go on home to guess what????? More waiting.......for results. Couple days latter I will get to see a liver surgeon to hear what she thinks is happening based on this biopsy.
  Somewhere during these days or weeks, we did meet with the lung surgeon. I remember him walking in sort of in awe of how many people were in the room. I also think he was in awe that I was the patient.  We charmed him although he was a tough audience. He was very coy and serious, after all he is the head surgeon of all the surgeons at MAYO. I guess I was in pretty good hands! Anyway, he gave me the once over and he goes on about standard operating procedure. The "standard operating procedure" in a lung cancer case such as mine would be to not remove or treat anything because it will not prolong anything. So...there's that stupid word again, PROLONG! I wanted to yell at him and say, I AM NOT STANDARD! I am 33 years old, I can be the miracle survivor, just try me, give me a chance, just help me please! But, I didn't yell at him, I just kept listening. Low and behold, he told us that I am not the typical case and we can do surgery on August 22 or August 28. Hallelujah!! Thank you sir and I choose the 28th.
I honestly don't know what happened between that meeting and the 28th, but I will tell you I went to work for the first 3 days of school. In my next blog, I will tell you the most heart warming story about my first day of school for the 2012-2013 year.

1 comment:

  1. Can't wait for you all to see Angie and her goggles! I'll post pics soon.

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