Round Two

This week, my wife and I visited all of my primary doctors to see what we can do about this new situation. Bottom line is that I will be having almost the same treatment I had the first time. My oncologist declared me perfectly healthy - except for that cancer part. Unfortunately, chemo will not do much to help, so he is going to wait until after the surgery to decide what he can do to help. There are new drugs on the market that can keep the tumor from getting bigger, but do not kill it off.

My radiologist was his same old kooky self. Visiting him was kind of interesting. He walked into the room with a big frown and said "This was NOT supposed to happen!" He then sat down and brought up the CAT and PET scan images on his computer. Boy, this technology is great! He showed us images from this round and five years ago and showed us exactly what we are dealing with. Ever looked at you own body in cross section top to bottom. It is interesting and weird all that the same time.

This tumor is right behind my cheek-bone in soft tissue below my left eye. That makes sense since I have been feeling like that area was swelled up for a while now. The tumor is not very big, about an inch across, but it has to go. What was good to hear is that the entire area where radiations was done the first time is cancer free. He did not treat the area where the new cancer popped up, but he had no reason to do so. Sigh! The really good news is that I can have radiation treatment in this new area. So, I will be going through another full round of 35 radiation treatments, and that is a good thing. It will be hard, but I got through it before, and I can do it again! I do have to get a new noodle strainer, so Cheryl and I plan on stomping the first one that is sitting in our garage! (I am not sure why I even kept it!)

As we left the radiologist's office, my wife asked him what we should do to get ready for all this. With a straight face he said "Do you drink? That is what I would do!" I am reasonably certain that was not what my wife expected to hear!. We all had a good laugh.

The visit to the surgeon was not so pleasant. I trust him to do everything he can to get rid of this evil, but the surgery will be hard since it is behind bone. His description of the process left me feeling like I want to do a Rip Van Winkle and sleep through the whole thing. Wait, I will sleep through the whole thing. Good thing, I would prefer not to think about the procedure, and focus on the final results.

It looks like we will do all this in about three weeks, after all the doctors get things set up. I will be in the hospital for about 10 days, and recovery might take a month. How we fit that into my teaching is going to be a problem, but I am working on ideas on how to handle this.

The worse part of this is that I will need plastic surgery to fix the damage that is going to happen to my face. We will be talking to these new additions to my team of doctors after I get back from a trip to California for Spring Break.

Wow, life sure has changed in the last three weeks!

Let's see, how does the Air Force song start?

Off we go, into the wild blue yonder....

I am going to PyCon 2013 in Santa Clara, CA, south of the bay in San Francisco. I have not spent time in that technology land for some time, so it will be good to get away and focus on non-medical stuff for a week. I plan on visiting our Niece and Nephew in Monterey while there, and that will be nice as well. After that the real adventure begins!