Livestrong

Yesterday was my second appointment with my radiation oncologist. What I was expecting is exactly what came to pass. The scans were inconclusive.

I was partly relieved and partly annoyed. If that sounds strange, just trust me when I say that there is a point where you just want to know, whatever the results may be.

At this point, the job of my radiation oncologist is over. He is strongly opposed to radiation until it is determined that I do indeed have cancer in my lymph nodes. However, even if I do have cancer there, he is still of the philosophy to remove them through surgery instead of by radiation in order to avoid the nasty side effects of radiation. In this case, then, he will defer to my Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) doctor. What happens next is some more waiting. My next appointment with my ENT is a week from tomorrow. At that time, I expect him to say that he is still unsure and to be sure will require surgery. Most likely, they will open me up, take out a few samples of lymph nodes, test them while I'm in the operating room, and if positive, remove them...if negative, stitch me back up and call it a day.

In case any of you are wondering, the prospect of this procedure does not scare me in the least.

In other news, a friend of mine from work gave me a yellow Livestrong bracelet today. I was excited to get it because I've been looking for one for quite some time.

Also, I never told you how I did in the National Race for the Cure. There were so many people that we ended up having to walk for virtually the entire first mile. The crowd would move a little bit, then stop, then move a little bit more, then stop. Even by the end of the race we were still dodging people. My final time was right around 30 minutes, which is decent considering my first mile was 12 minutes. My last mile was 8 minutes, so I felt good about that. But it still leaves a lot of room for improvement!

Completely unrelated, I'm sure that many of you have heard about the WA governor's race. But if not, you should know that it is most likely over and Mr. Rossi is not going to appeal to the WA Supreme Court. The whole situation is a pity as the superior court judge erroneously thought he would be able to get away with punting the case to the state supreme court. Oh well.

Finally, there is a compelling series of stories being written by a young lady who works for a San Francisco newspaper. Her name is Alicia and she is a copy editor for the SF Chronicle. Today she wrote the third of seven chapters about her fight with cancer. She is only 23 years old and is dealing with a lot--a ton more than I have. Her writing is absolutely gifted as well. If you want to hear an excellent first-hand story of a fight with cancer, I would strongly recommend visiting her site at http://www.sfgate.com/alicia/ She adds a chapter per day and tomorrow will be chapter 4. I'm also adding it to my list of links.

Okay everyone, I'll write more later just as soon as I can get the orange juice out of my laptop.