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Cancer Update
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| 5/7/2005 |
The pathology results finally arrived on Thursday just in time for my
appointment. Apparently I was a complicated case and they had a lot of
difficulty getting the results, because I didn't have just one kind of
tumor but a "mixed tumor" with several different kinds of cancer cells.
This is apparently not uncommon and doesn't affect my chances of
recovery, but it does change the next step.
Instead of radiation, they slice me open again - much more invasively, this time - and take out my lymph nodes.
Apparently based on my CAT and blood test results there's a 70% chance
that they won't find anything, in which case that's all that needs to
be done. The next most likely scenario is that they find a few nodes
with cancer, but not many, in which case they still don't have to do
anything else.
If they find a lot of cancer, though, then I probably need chemo.
I'm trying to see this as a good thing. Instead of definitely having radiation, and definitely
having to cope with feeling like crap for a couple of months and still
having to function normally, this way I get to recover from the surgery
for a couple of weeks without any other demands on me, and then
hopefully everything's over and done with.
The only cloud in this happy picture is the possibility that they'll
find a lot of cancer and it won't be over and done with at all.
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