What's Up With the Doc 52? - Onward and Upward

Well, I saw my oncologist yesterday and there wouldn't have been an argument, even if I'd been looking for it. Granted, I called him on Monday to catch him up on last week's goings on and get permission to change my appointment time to later in the day, so we'd already worked everything out. Yale Orthopedic Oncology had even contacted me and made an appointment for this Friday before my apointment. All my counts are fine so it's just the dregs of the last cisplatin/taxotere dose that are leaving me feeling as though someone hooked a giant vacuum cleaner up to me and sucked every bit of energy out. Hopefully that and the residual nausea will clear up over the next few days.

I spoke to the pathologist at my hospital (where the second biopsy was done) on Monday and he assured me that a) he'd already talked to Dana-Farber; b) they do, in fact, have the tissue samples and c) he kept a little in reserve just in case there was a SNAFU. Hopefully we'll be hearing something from Dana-Farber about the genetic testing of the tumor in the not too distant future.

I really don't know what to expect about my hip at this point. I'll see the orthopedic oncologist on Friday. He'll probably want an MRI. If he decides that hip arthroplasty (replacement) is the best treatment for this thing he'll have to talk to my oncologist to make sure that I have a long enough life expectancy to make undertaking the surgery worthwhile. Both the potential instability of the lesion and the need to have and recover from the surgery before any further treatment for the cancer can be undertaken argue for the quickest possible decision about what course to follow. If we go with the surgery I'm actually going to have to take some time off work.

So that's what's up with me and my cancer right now. My treatment hiatus officially started yesterday with end date to be determined based on potential surgery/recovery and the genetic testing at Dana-Farber.

NYTimes.com Health launched a new lung cancer feature today which you can find here:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/04/23/health/healthguide/TE_LUNGCANCER.html?ref=health

You can see and hear me, see Emma and one of our lazy cats. Oh, and five other lung cancer patients, as well.

Lisa