Tag: light at the end of the tunnel

straight talk from the dr – and its good

departure for portland is creeping up fast! i’m going to portland at the end of the month and staying through mid august. after friday, i only have six more weeks of injections. my drs are all v positive. they seem really genuinely happy when my scans come back negative – as if they really thought there could be something on them. my oncologist doesn’t want to talk numbers, and always gives me the crazy ranges like 5 to 35 percent. i asked my derm to give it to me in plain language, and pull no punches, and he basically said that if i was going to relapse, it would have already happened. he says that he has two kinds of melanoma patients: the 60 year olds, who usually relapse w’in the first year, and the 30 year olds, who all survive w/o relapsing.

He told me the story of a guy who came in 5 years earlier w/ a massive melanoma on the back of his head — so close to his major lymph nodes. Apparently it had been bleeding for 6 months, and he finally came in to the dr. It was advanced stage III – in lots of lymph nodes. He had surgery and did the interferon, and 5 years later, is perfectly fine.

an update

almost down to 8 weeks.

i’m falling apart, but the end is so totally in sight. then i will come back together

my mouth is so raw that i can’t eat much of anything. even sucking on the straw of a smoothie hurts my tongue from the pressure. i’ve def lost a lot of weight. there is some symmetry, as i started the whole thing lying in bed eating trail mix and put on 15, so it makes sense that i would end the cycle dropping those 15 off.

i had to buy some fat pants this winter. size 35 and 36. right before i got sick i bough a whole new set of pants that were 31 and 32 (and still have their tags on them), as I had just shrunk enough that my regular 33-34s were falling off me. So i just tried on my 33s and 34s, and they are kinda baggy. but the 32s are still just a little too tight. a month ago, i couldn’t button the 32s – the gap was like a full inch from button to eyelet. now they button, but tightly. a little bit too much panty line from behind (LOL)

i’ve been riding my bike a bit. and O just formally moved in this month. she got a tenure track job, which is a *major* deal considering it is only 1hr outside of NYC, and the market this year was horrendous. Half the searches were canceled b/c of the Great Recession.

i’m taking 4 months off from the studio. and i’ll tack those four months on Oct-Jan. i need to rest

i’m going to portland july1-aug15 to do my last month of treatment, and then recouperate for a few weeks. last day of injections is july 23rd.