My First Six-Month MRI Tomorrow

01/13/16 - I’ve got my first six-month post-surgery MRI of my thigh & hip tomorrow.  Fortunately, I haven’t experienced the scanxiety I had with my last batch of tests (x-ray & ultrasound).  I’ve been too busy coming to terms wit the death of David Bowie.  Reports are now saying he had liver cancer.  You’d think all this talk of cancer & death would increase my anxiety, but no… I’m just tired!  I’ve been keeping busy working on some material for another blog I have, so perhaps that’s got a lot to do with it.

As for the MRI, this first post-surgery one is to get a baseline image, so that they have something to compare future scans to.  Hopefully, all goes smoothly & there are no nasty surprises.  Here in Canada, our medical system is primarily public, so unlike the private system, I most likely won’t get the results until later next week.  I’ll be sure to post an update then.  I also asked to get a copy of my final pathology report, which they’re going to send along with my MRI results. I’m eager to learn my final round cell count, since the >25% I was originally given was from my pre-surgery biopsy, which only examined three small pieces of the tumour.  The final pathology will be on the entire thing, so it’ll be much more accurate.

Meanwhile, I've added a few Blogger gadgets on the menu to the left to make it easy for people to subscribe or share any posts of interest on Google+.  Besides helping other sarcoma patients & helping myself not go crazier than I already am, my new goal with this blog is to also help spread awareness about this forgotten cancer.  Speaking of awareness, I also added some helpful links, as well as I few sarcoma-related blogs I've come across over the past year.

Well, that’s it for now.  Gotta be up at stupid-o’clock tomorrow to be picked up to go to the hospital!  I swear, they saved me only to try & kill me!  Scans that early should be outlawed!!! Zzzzzzzz...

Pre-Surgery Consultation

07/06/15 - Quick update.  Please forgive my lack of finesse in writing today.  Got less than four hours sleep, as the anxiety of everything is starting to creep up on me, but here goes… Saw my oncologist today for my pre-surgery appointment.  Everything’s on track.  The bug bite from hell, though slowly healing (my foot’s still more swollen than usual), won’t have any impact on my surgery.  He’s also not worried about all those nodules that came up, because everyone has nodules throughout their body whether they have cancer or not, so they’ll watch them & if any get beyond a certain size, they’ll take further action.  Re: my concerns about the >25% round-cell component, he says that it does NOT change my current treatment plan, so he is not overly concerned about it at this point.

As for surgery itself, surprisingly, it’s only going to take two hours & he aims to remove my tumour (aka “the alien”) in one piece, which will reduce the chance of it spreading.  I’ll be in hospital for about a week, possibly even less - yes, LESS!  I juste hope they don’t try to push me out of there prematurely just to free up a bed.  They’ll also do toxicology reports at the time, which will take two weeks to come back, if memory serves right.

I will have some physio in hospital, but considering I’ll have stitches still healing, not sure how much that’ll entail, aside from wobbling & hobbling around very slowly!  Oh, and thank god, there’s no requirement for a skin graft, which is a relief. He’s expecting my recovery time to be about three months, so hopefully I’ll be done before my short-term disability runs out, cause otherwise I’ll be in for a substantial income drop if I have to go onto long-term disability.  So, that’s pretty much it.  I have a pre-surgery preparation appointment via phone tomorrow morning, as well, and on Thursday I have to call for my surgery time.  I, of course, forgot to ask my oncologist several other questions, despite writing numerous questions down!  But it doesn’t really help when you forget to write the question down in the first place!  :p  Damn it, I’m so tired right now, I forget the questions I forgot!  :p  Can’t even come up with a Placebo lyric to go along with this post!  :(  Zzzzzzz...