Grand River Region Cancer Centre is a beautiful modern building with oodles of light. They didn't stop thinking about how surroundings can have a positive effect on people once you're out of the main lobby like at the Juravinski cancer centre. But you're probably not here for a hospital architecture and design comparison lecture and I'm kind of putting off talking about today.
See those kiosks that look like ATM machines? They're actually where you enter how you are feeling that day - the Juravinski equivalent of what you do with a pen and clip board. Cool. Another point for Balsillie vs Juravinski in the hospitals named after tycoons comparison. Juravinski wins for sheer volume though, 14 million to 5. Avoiding again.
It was a good appointment, the highlight of which was being sought out by two wonderful friends who are nurses there. Made me feel at home. So grateful for that.
The doctor herself is not a warm fuzzy person but I don't need her to be my friend and she believes that radiation is absolutely necessary and is likely a little more aggressive re treatment than last doctor and I'm glad about that.
She's going to refer me to a medical oncologist there to see what his opinion on chemo for me is.
Other than that nothing will happen for 2 weeks to give the wound time to close. They thought that the ebbing and flowing pain on the lymph site area is probably still some occasional fluid blockage that will hopefully resolve itself. They did swab it again just to be sure.
The doctor went on at what seemed to me to be at great length about how difficult radiation therapy will be. It will be 5-6 weeks 5 days a week. Because of the area she said it will be much more painful and unpleasant than radiation for breast cancer. There was a LOT of talk about constipation and diarrhea. There will be no swimming. If the cancer comes back it will be very serious. Radiation should prevent that. The tumour was quite large and aggressive. There was no smiling ever in the whole appointment so I looked at the nurse behind her a lot who was radiating some welcome light. I love nurses including the sister one by my side all day.
I know this is serious and I need to know what's going to happen. But I had read most all of the spiel in the info packet the night before and now I have another thicker info packet about radiation and a 45 minute DVD to watch about it and I feel a bit over loaded in the information department. I can't quite imagine the depths of paperwork I will get if I need chemo too. I DO appreciate being told it will hurt a lot because that's the one thing I would have liked to know before the vulvectomy. "This will hurt like fire for over 2 months, far far worse than the knee surgery ever did" would have been a short and sweet info packet, so I'm glad she was blunt. But....
You know what? I don't care how awful it will be. It has to be done. And I'm not going to feel sorry for myself. I'm going to get it done. Come on along for the ride it'll be worth it.
Speaking of worth it, we went to the farm to buy corn today! And saw this.
It was a good appointment, the highlight of which was being sought out by two wonderful friends who are nurses there. Made me feel at home. So grateful for that.
The doctor herself is not a warm fuzzy person but I don't need her to be my friend and she believes that radiation is absolutely necessary and is likely a little more aggressive re treatment than last doctor and I'm glad about that.
She's going to refer me to a medical oncologist there to see what his opinion on chemo for me is.
Other than that nothing will happen for 2 weeks to give the wound time to close. They thought that the ebbing and flowing pain on the lymph site area is probably still some occasional fluid blockage that will hopefully resolve itself. They did swab it again just to be sure.
The doctor went on at what seemed to me to be at great length about how difficult radiation therapy will be. It will be 5-6 weeks 5 days a week. Because of the area she said it will be much more painful and unpleasant than radiation for breast cancer. There was a LOT of talk about constipation and diarrhea. There will be no swimming. If the cancer comes back it will be very serious. Radiation should prevent that. The tumour was quite large and aggressive. There was no smiling ever in the whole appointment so I looked at the nurse behind her a lot who was radiating some welcome light. I love nurses including the sister one by my side all day.
I know this is serious and I need to know what's going to happen. But I had read most all of the spiel in the info packet the night before and now I have another thicker info packet about radiation and a 45 minute DVD to watch about it and I feel a bit over loaded in the information department. I can't quite imagine the depths of paperwork I will get if I need chemo too. I DO appreciate being told it will hurt a lot because that's the one thing I would have liked to know before the vulvectomy. "This will hurt like fire for over 2 months, far far worse than the knee surgery ever did" would have been a short and sweet info packet, so I'm glad she was blunt. But....
You know what? I don't care how awful it will be. It has to be done. And I'm not going to feel sorry for myself. I'm going to get it done. Come on along for the ride it'll be worth it.
Speaking of worth it, we went to the farm to buy corn today! And saw this.
Then we went to Mom's and I saw this.
(Head was on backwards too, bonnets are very forgiving)
You can't see this kind of stuff if you give up without shoveling through the shit.
Words to live by!
ReplyDeleteOh, and don't worry if the shit hits the fan :-)
ReplyDelete