My Consultation at Shands

Well, a lot of you knew I was having a consultation with the surgeon at Shands Hospital today.

In a nutshell, I go in for bloodwork on Thursday of this week, and he's doing the surgery on Thursday of next (Nov. 2). In order to just put me "under" once, he's going to have me come in 2 hours early so they can inject me with some dye or something that will go directly to the two lymph nodes that they're worried about. Then, he'll make an incision to remove the tumor, and another in my armpit and remove just those two nodes. This way, I won't have to have a biopsey, and come back another time for the rest of the surgery.

He says that right now I'm looking at radiation, but won't know for sure about Chemo or anything until after the surgery and pathology can check out the tumor and the nodes themselves. Then I'll find out more about what treatment I'll be looking at.

Oh, and Tim did just about burst a blood vessel when the dr. told him that the surgery wouldn't be until the 2nd of November. But, I asked how urgent this situation was and he claims that another week or two won't make much of a difference. Since I really don't know about this one, and I'm really not likely to get a sooner surgery date, I'll have to take his word on it. He says "every patient is different" which irritated Tim even more. Tim says that if every patient is different, then how does he know that I won't be affected by two more weeks? He's barely even looked over my reports! Well, I do agree with him on that, but I'm not really sure that anybody in the medical profession can please him right now unless I'm unconscious and they're holding a scalpel over my body... Oh well. At least I know he cares about me!

I was teasing him at lunch today and told him that I didn't really think that there was a world-wide conspiracy against him. He says "No, it's against YOU, and I'm the only one who sees it!" Well, lucky for me I have him to watch my back! lol. At least he hasn't lost his sense of humor.