Wednesday, May 21, 2008

I love giving good news :)

I had another appointment with the oncologist on Monday. He confirmed that the PET scan results were negative. The chunk of scar tissue has shrunk slightly. Blood levels are all normal. Lymph node is just about gone. And I don't have to go back for two months :) Hooray!

Goodness goodness goodness all around :)

Friday, May 9, 2008

4 for 4!

I got a phone call from the oncologist's office this morning - my PET scan from last week is negative!

We're on a roll, baby!

And, while we're at it, the swollen node in my neck is almost imperceptible :-)

I love having good news to share!!!

Sunday, May 4, 2008

it's almost that time...

We are rapidly approaching the one-year anniversary of my entrance to the hospital (May 16). It actually is kind of making me nervous, like there's something inherent about May that is going to cause me to wake up one morning and not be able to breathe again.

I just sent an e-mail a few minutes ago, and in it, I was bitching a bit about having our district festival on Wednesday, and how that means I'm in teacher mode until 9:00 Wednesday night, after which, we get to clean up. I'm conducting the beginning band, so it's not like the afternoon when kids are rehearsing is putz time. (Actually, though, I'm looking forward to conducting a band that has more than 20 kids in it.)

Anyway, in the e-mail, I said that last year, the day of the district festival was the first day I was in the hospital, so I'm glad this year to be going to the festival instead. But even as I typed it, "hopefully" was somewhere in my head. As if to say, I won't believe that I will actually be there until I'm there.

I'm planning our spring concert and how to wind down the year with collecting instruments and such. I wasn't there for any of this last year. And there's a funky little something inside that makes me wonder if I'll be there for it this year.

Now, in real life, I have very little reason to believe that I wouldn't be there for it. (The only anything is the swollen lymph node.) I'm planning for it, and it all should be fine.

I was at the gym on Friday and today and did some decent cardio and felt fine. Breathing was fine, knees were fine, chest was fine - everything was fine. I think that once I get past some of these events that I missed last year, I will be fine. But for now, it's a funky kind of background paranoid, like when you see something out of the corner of your eye, but as soon as you turn to look at it, it disappears.

Only time will tell.

hair project

Two pics of the latest 'do. I might need to get it cleaned up a bit - it's driving me a bit mad. But for now...


Friday, May 2, 2008

PET

Had a PET scan this morning. I had the same tech as last time (by request) and it was a quick, easy, one-stick ordeal.

As I always say, if you're going to get injected with radiation, you shouldn't have to be stabbed more than once to do it.