Giant Tumor Update and Rant of the Day

Today was another one of those days. You ever get blamed for something you didn't do, or were even aware of? It's exhausting. And maybe you start to think, "Hey, if I'm getting blamed, I might as well get some satisfaction by actually doing something." But then someone will see you had that thought and then preemptively  blame you for something that hasn't even occurred yet. (Oh, yes, I'm being blamed for things that will happen in the future, because I'm actually the first female Doctor and I've disguised my TARDIS as a desk chair.)  So I guess there is no winning. And you know what, I'm so freaking tired from working 14-hour days and dealing with anxiety attacks and dealing with the kids' anxiety attacks and having this giant freaking tumor that I don't have time for half the shenanigans someone would blame me for anyway. And so I say to all the special snowflakes out there: there are things in the universe that do not pertain to you and, in fact, have nothing to do with you, regardless of how earnestly you believe that everything revolves around your very, very special snowflakeness. YOU. ARE. JUST. NOT. THAT. IMPORTANT.         /end rant

Now that that's out of the way. I saw the oncologist today -- and I really, really like her. Both the tests for cancer markers (CA 125 and HEP4) came back within normal range, and although the tumor is a complex cyst, it's possible that the nodules are confined to the inside of the capsule since there's no outright evidence that the cancer has spread. She said that bigger means it's more likely to be benign or low-malignancy, because if it was a carcinoma this large there would likely be other areas of obvious cancer.  She also said that radiologists love to jump the gun and she would smack the radiologist who read my CT in the head if she every met him/her.

So tomorrow I'll set up surgery for some time next week, at which point they will scoop out anything I'm not using anymore. There's a chance they'll be able to do the surgery with endoscopy and a robot -- which would be really cool, and also not nearly as invasive, but it's a long shot. I'll probably still have to have a full laporotomy. So I've consented to both procedures and she'll decide once she does the endoscopy. They'll see if it's malignant during the surgery, and if so, stage the cancer and do biopsies on whatever organs and lymph nodes are handy. But there's fair chance it may be benign or an enclosed low-malignancy cancer that will be cured just by removal. So that's what I'll go in thinking.

And for all my writer friends -- I've stocked up on books for my hospital/bed rest: the Stephen King JFK time travel book (which is huge and I can't be bothered to remember the actual title right now), the new Jonathan Kellerman, two James Lee Burke Dave Robichaux novels that I somehow missed, and Neverwhere and American Gods by Neil Gaiman, which are books I was meaning to read anyway. So I shall be in fine company, even if I end up alone.

That's all the news that's fit to print and probably more than most people wanted to know about the bad Lifetime movie my life has become. And now I have to go back to work, because I still have 20 client projects unfinished that need to BE finished before I hit the hospital, and those 14-hour days don't work themselves.

Thanks again to everyone who has been so swell and supportive during the recent troubles. It means more than I can say.