“After Thursday, We’ll Have More Answers...”

I feel like I've been saying that for weeks, even months at this point.

We'll know more after the appointment on Thursday.

After the appointment on Wednesday.

After the biopsy.

After we get to Boston.

After we meet with the cancer team.

After the blood tests.

After the genetic tests.

After the surgery.

After the next time I go into the hospital full of thousands of other people looking for answers and get a patient ID bracelet.

I keep trying to formulate a plan about what is happening and how long it's going to take and what I am going to be able to do in the mean time, but it all comes down to little bits of info in each conversation. Each appointment tells me a little more, and a little more, and a little more, and never complete the puzzle, but helps make the edges of the picture more clear.

Each doctor I see up here is a specialist in their own niche, which I absolutely respect and appreciate, but I haven't had the appointment yet where they start talking about the overall big picture. Up to now, each person focuses on their part of the next necessary procedure. The immediate goal was to get as much of the cancer out of my body as they could in the least amount of time, and now that that part is done, we move on to the big plan.

I think that might happen tomorrow.

And I don't know if I'm ready for it.

At 1:45 I have a meeting with my "team" at the cancer center, so I talk with the surgeon who did the lumpectomy, the radiation oncologist, and I think I meet my medical oncologist. I find out what stage the cancer was before they took it out of me. I find out the entire picture of how aggressive, how strange, how resilient and how unlikely the cells turned out to be, and if anything invaded the lymph tissue they removed. After tomorrow, I'll be able to complete the sentence that survivors tell in their success stories.

Stage __, Grade__, Something-something kind of ___-oma.

Also tomorrow, I find out if I have to have chemo.

And again, I don't know if I'm ready for it.

I'm eager to find out the results, even though with every appointment things get more and more real and I'm not entirely sure I emotionally understand everything yet. I don't feel like a cancer patient, although I'm loving the opportunities for all the cancer jokes. (If they make you squirm, know I secretly delight in that. Irreverence is important.)

So yeah, I know it logically but even last week, 12 hours out of the recovery room from surgery, I was up emailing about the renovation, and the sanitation fee on my water bill, and the St. Roch drainage project, and taking care of business back home like I was done-zo and headed back to NOLA to keep on keepin' on. I think emotionally what got me through the fear of the surgery was the same thing that gets me through every step of this: thinking "okay, just get through this and we'll know more and be able to make a plan."

But tomorrow is it, I think.

It's the starting point to living as a person in cancer treatment, whatever that may be. Right now all signs are pointing to me avoiding chemo, but having 4-6 weeks of intensive daily radiation in Boston this April/May, and then being on some anti-cancer medications for five years that could wreak havoc on my body and cause some truly heartbreaking effects that I can't even bring myself to address yet, but will eventually write about. But...five years of medication. Radiation. This is my future right now. Maybe not chemo, right?

But avoiding chemo is not definite, and just a couple of hours ago, I thought to myself "Oh god. What if I have to have chemo?" What if? I'm not prepared for that, not one bit. I'd be floored. I've been creating this mental picture of my next few months and chemo is not in that picture. I'm not ready. But tomorrow I find out.

Tomorrow I put on the cancer patient hat and seek out appointments with doctors and social workers who work with cancer but also address things on the back end. I find out who I talk to in order to find a place I can stay in Boston during treatment, and how I'm going to work that with my pup. I find someone with whom I can discuss this overriding feeling of dread and weight and responsibility and uncertainty. Who can hopefully help me sleep more than 3 hours at a time. Who can tell me what to do so I stop getting sick from everyone around me and how long I can go back to New Orleans to get my life together. I find a cardiologist to make sure that the waves of rushing heartbeats I've been feeling since I first showed the doctor the lump I found are from the stress of going through this ordeal, and not a heart thing I have to worry about even more. I find someone to teach me how to eat for cancer recovery and how to remain as healthy as possible to give myself the best chance of coming out okay. Someone to tell me what I'm in for. Hopefully someone to tell me how it'll all turn out.

So I'm sorry this one wasn't funnier, wittier. I think tonight I'm just scared--nervous to find what I've been seeking since Dec 21st. Nervous to become someone living in cancer treatment.

But yeah, after Thursday, I've have more answers.