- How the HeadBlade razor changed my life
- Myrtle and whatever hijinks she's up to
- Kony 2012 (what's up with all the cynics, were they just not hugged enough?)
- Love Shark Tank despite Mark Cuban
- How Obama's personality coupled with Romney's smarts/knowledge and Ron Paul's integrity might make for a super hero president
- I would love the Anonymous YouTube guy to recite poetry or Ke$ha lyrics
I resisted any blogging because I wanted to take a mental break, and I associated blogging to my It's A Hip Tumor blog. I hoped a little time off would provide the distance needed to reflect on my family's past year. Time away has done what I hoped.
Two weeks ago my mom joined me for a CT Scan. I was looking forward to having time to visit with her while in the waiting room. But as luck would have it there was no wait - I was in and out of there in a jiff.
Last Friday I had a bone scan. Faith and Myrtle came, but once I was injected with the radioactive poison I had to stay away from Myrtle for 24 hrs. So I loitered at my parents until they invited me to tag along for their date night dinner reservations (I had the vegetarian lasagna, it was American sized and home cooked delicious).
Today was the results of those appointments. My appointment with Dr. Stone, my orthopaedic surgeon, was for 1:30pm at Vic Gen H.
His secretary said I would be waiting, little did I know for how long. Fortunately there was a lot of nosy old people to wait with and to ask me questions. One said "You look like you're from Victoria, I can always tell.", another spoke of her paraplegic husband (count our blessings - yikes). After two hours of waiting my fellow inmates literally clapped when my name was called.
Before my name was called I went for a walk and bumped into an old friend from my teen years who now works in medical imaging, it was nice to catch up and even better to hear her being so well rounded and doing well.
After I left the waiting room, I waited in another room with beds separated by curtains. I listened as a Filipino boy who broke his ankle got his cast cut off. He to translate to his parents what the doctor told him, how he needed to needed to take it easy, etc.. The doctor also pointed out about three times that now the cast was off it was time to shower again.
Then I watched as Dr. Stone looked at my scans and medical chart.
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| Notice how the clock is 3:30pm, just a two hour wait. |
After he brought himself up to date he came over and said that there was no bad news. The mass, whether it is a tumor, a dead tumor cell, or scar tissue hasn't grown.
For those just tuning in, I last year a tumor was found on my left hip, I was diagnosed with cancer and was treated with radiation and a "mass" was left there. Because of severe bone loss a biopsy was not done to see if the mass was a dead tumor cell, a tumor or just scar tissue, but blood work showed no active cancer.
Now to make sure I'm healing and nothing is growing I'll be getting CT Scans and Bone scans every 3 months.
So no growth in the tumor is good, but my bone growth isn't really happening either. Radiation stops the growth, both the bad and the good.
As I've been told before by Dr. Stone, I'm a candidate for a hip replacement, well that is except for my age. A hip replacement doesn't last that long. Put it this way - if your doctor says you're a prime candidate for a hip replacement s/he is also saying you'll be gone before the warranty runs out.
Much like your six month check up with the dentist, I have one too with my orthopaedic surgeon every 3 months and an oncologist every 6 months. And like how you hope for no new cavities, I just hope for no new tumors and that my bone loss (hey, I guess that is a cavity) is filled in with bone gain.
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| Left screen is my bone scan, right screen is my CT scan. |
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| If I was sliced in half on my pelvis, this is what you'd see. Notice how everything is symmetrical, all but the oval the size of a kiwi on near the centre "butterfly"? Well, that's where my tumor was/is or scar tissue. |
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| The two left skeletons is first my front, than my back from a year ago. The left two skeletons are from last week, also my front, than my back. The dark part on my left hip is the tumor or where the tumor was and hopefully it's just now scar tissue. |
Onward and upward!
