Still Waiting...

Met with Dr. G (my urologist) to discuss my Kidney on Monday. Basically he wants to aspirate the Kidney, he says he can get the cells he needs to make sense of what's there. However, as we looked at my films and reviewed the PET scan results he had gotten by Fax from Dr. L he feels the mass has been there a looooooooong time. Possibly months or years. It appears to have started INSIDE the kidney and has since moved outside, but he did tell me, that it DID show up on the PET scan, just a little more subdued. It (the mass) appears to have "burned itself out" and may not be active or as alive as my Lymph nodes which appear all over my films as bright yellow spots or shapes in my chest and neck.

I failed to ask how cancer can "burn itself out"...maybe I'll ask Dr. L when I talk to her next.

So, he plans to aspirate my Kidney this week (at another Hospital) and IF it comes back as anything other than Lymphoma...he's taking it OUT. Laproscopically.

I don't even know or care if I spelled that right. Another minimally invasive procedure, but it's total kidney removal if necessary.

If I had come to his office with just the Kidney mass he would remove the kidney. Flat out, no questions asked. But since I have lymphoma, he needs to accomplish what Dr. L wanted to anyway, confirm or deny it's the same thing. She however felt the radiologists at Chilton may not get cells they can use...Dr. G says he will.

I also got the feeling, that the mass (which is rather large btw. I saw the films and saw the difference in the kidney size myself) is old and seems to imply that it would indeed be something other than what I am about to be diagnosed with. How could lymphoma get there and appear to be burning out already when the nodes in my neck and chest appear to newer and younger and didn't come back as Kidney cells when they were checked?

Which came first, the chicken or the lymphoma? Can't we just burn it all out and figure it out later?

I'm still in limbo on this and I'm 6 weeks out since I found the lump. I know we're getting there, but this seems like it's taking forever...I'm tired of getting poked, aspirated, scanned and radiated. I just want to move on this and get thru it already.

Hook me up to the poison and get it out of me.

I found myself driving behind a funeral procession on my way to work last week. And I thought, "Wow, what if"?

What if this gets away from me, what if it makes a move, or is more aggressive than we think? That could be me. Mortality never occurs to you when you're young, sure we all KNOW every thing dies, we're all gonna die, but when the word Cancer pops up the fact that we have no control of anything hits pretty damn hard. I took for granted that 40 was just 3 years away(before I discovered the lump). I never thought that I wouldn't get there...but what if?

Forty never looked so good.

1035 days until I turn 40.
_____days until I start chemo...?

Still waiting.