Heading to Seattle

T and I have made arrangements to head up to Seattle this evening in order to make my appointment Tuesday morning. Maybe we can made a day of it in Seattle...

Spoke with Surgeon

He will have his secretary make copies of the operating and pathology reports that I can pick up. We also talked a bit about the situation.

He feels strongly that it was not a lymph node based on the fact that Sarcomas do not affect Lymphatic tissue, they affect connective tissue; if it was the lymph node was completely obliterated. As far as stages he indicated that Sarcoma is agressive so this would be a high stage, but he was more insistant that it be referred to in "grade," thus a high grade tumor. He stated that the Seattle cancer care will want to do further surgery and remove a large margin of tissue surrounding the area,; he stated Sarcoma surgeons are very aggressive in that regard. He didn't know if it would be followed up with chemo/radio or any combination of the two, but he suspected radiology. He stated this is not the largest one he's ever seen and I'm lucky I'm a less massive individual since a smaller mass is more obvious, sooner.

Good check from Radiology

I saw the Radiologist yesterday. Teresa and Lauren joined me at the hospital. The Radiologist was a really mellow guy, friend of Lauren's. We all waited in the lobby of the hospital and he came out to find us, then took us back to his office. In his office he had set up about 6 flat panel monitors in a half moon on his desk. He only used 3 of those while he was showing us the scans. He brought up the scans and worked through them in what seemed maybe a bit quickly, but he also said he didn't see much other than what was around the area I've already had surgery. He said he looked over everything closely; looked at the bones, looked at my organs, etc etc. Everything looked pretty normal he said. He said there was thickening of the area around where the surgery performed and that was probably more, but overall he didn't see anything further. He was impressed that I was pretty fit and my scans showed more muscle tissue than what he sees on so many other people's scans.

Overall a good visit, with good news. Following that I called my surgeons office and left a message requesting more information and reports. Should get those soon.

I'm doing well just now.

ok, so as you know; the biopsy came back with bad news. I'm looking at it as if the piece of me removed was sick and now it's out of me, so now it's just follow up/clean up.

I've told most of the people close to me, sparing mother of course, and a couple others, namely; Mark, Rod, Jodi,... I told work about it today, they are making arrangements for short term to be available to me on a moments notice to save my vac/holiday time. Everyone's been very supportive and positive and I'm glad for that, Thank you!

Friday, you know, I had a CAT scan, it was kind of disappointing; I thought it would be more exciting, but I just got to lay there and the bed just moves in and out of this ring that spins around you, scanning away... I have the pictures, but they are packaged in a special viewer application, so I'll try to make you guys a copy if you're interested. I'm speaking with the radiologist about it tomorrow. To my untrained eye it looked fine...

After I got the bad news I was pretty pissed/upset and just went home from work early. I told a few people who were following the whole thing closely and that included Lauren(for those of you who know the history between she and I, don't worry about it) who came and sat and talked with me for a while. She's insistent on joining me for many of the procedures... I'm not arguing much. She took me to the CAT scan and hung with me the rest of the day, took me to her families and fed me dinner.

Saturday I went to Boise State Vs U of O in Eugene; my buddy is an alumni and goes to every game. It's basically the only excuse he and I have to get together since he lives in TN. We got to visit and see a decent game, Boise won. I drove back that night and Sunday I just lazed around, watched movies, chatted with more people.

Overall I don't really feel like I have a whole lot of information to provide, but I'll do my best to keep you posted.

Whats this one about.

OK, here's another blog, this one's up here to keep my friends and family posted on whats going on with my, suddenly, crazy life.