Stage IV

A friend of mine wrote a comment on my last post, and in reading it, I looked at the date and realized it had been a while since I wrote anything about what’s going on. To be honest with you, I guess you could say when it comes to that, picture my face like this:

Enough already.

It’s been almost three weeks since the surgery which went as expected. No surprises. Wedge resection was done, wore a chest tube for about a day, and was quite (very) happy sitting propped up in my hospital bed, with a morphine pump and other opiods dripping into the IV. It was like a trip back to the 70’s, all psychedelic and woo woo.

The nurses asked, “What’s your pain level, zero to ten?”

“Zzzzzeeeerrrrooooo,” said I, with a loopy grin.

I checked out the next day, and since then have been at home, recovering. Actually to say recovering is a stretch because the overall effects of the actual surgery weren’t too bad. The worst came the first two days after as the general anesthesia wore off. I drifted about the house feeling zoned, out of it, really. Then, for the following week I prayed I wouldn’t need to sneeze, or cough.  Beyond some oddball annoying muscle spasm that created a sharp pain when I breathed in too deep, and what I’ve called the mad itch from adhesives on the dressing, I have felt pretty good.

I saw the surgeon October 9th and got the stitches out. That was when I heard about the pathology of what they removed. A bunch of staining was done to try and identify cells, some squamous, some with basaloid features, but as seems to be the case with the metastases I get, a hodge-podge of crap that is poorly differentiated, and morphing into unknown . . .  cancerous stuff.

Ick.

Here’s what I’ve learned. When you have cancer, you tend to listen very carefully for the positive news while analyzing every word coming out of a doctor’s mouth.

So, while I heard about all those nasty cells, I also heard him say something about Stage I.

I said, “So this is Stage I.”

I think he misunderstood my question. I was trying to understand if my lung cancer was Stage I while I realized my original cancer was Stage IIIB.

He said, “Oh no. You’re Stage IV because of the metastasis to the lung.”

Then he followed up with a couple of comments that sounded encouraging. One was it was better for me to come in with this now versus having had it when the original, primary cancer showed up. The second thing he asked was how long it had been since I was diagnosed.

I said, “Fourteen months.”

He said, “Well this may be it. The longer you go without anything else showing up, the better.”

I got to thinking about those other little spots, and we discussed them too. He showed me they are in both lungs. (refer again to that girl pictured above).

He said, “I would get another PET in three, no longer than four months. And we can always go back in and remove that left lobe, if they’ve changed.”

“What about the right lung?”

“Well, you have enough lung function we could remove some of it, or it could be treated systemically with more chemo. But I’d not recommend that for a few weeks, until you recover fully from your lung surgery, and that’s really Dr. Smith’s call.”

I went home and got to thinking about the doggone spots. For some reason, I thought he was the first person to bring them up, but then I recalled I’d started off with “nodules” already on my lungs (and liver) when I was first diagnosed last year. That’s why I was sent to an oncologist, pronto, and with everything going on, I had not thought to look back at my previous scans.

I went into the Duke portal and checked. Sure enough, all the way back to the original PET scan from August 2017 there is a mention of nodules in both right and left lungs. This is good news! (strangely) Why? Because I’ve had these spots he’s pointing out all along, and I’ve had a total of three more PET scans, and the spots haven’t changed. The one they took out was new as of the June 2018 scan, hence his comment, “This may be it.”

Let’s hope and pray it is!

In other news – remember my title on the last post?  (Running with Lung Cancer)

Weeellll, I won’t be able to do that anytime soon. I suppose that’s what I get for thumbing my nose at the Universe.

Getting radiation to the hip/pelvic area can cause weakened bones. This was a risk, but I suppose it’s hard to really know you’re at risk without going through yet another scan for bone density. So, I was out on a run and immediately felt pain and in hindsight, I should’ve stopped right then. I didn’t. My thinking was I could run through it because over the course of the years I’ve been doing this, I know that weird pains show up at the beginning of a run, and most go away within half a mile or so.  So, I kept on. It stayed with me the entire time, which should’ve been a big red flag. Once I finally did stop, I knew I’d made a mistake. So, I’m sidelined with a pelvic fracture, the type that needs nothing but time. It’s going on six weeks this coming Tuesday, and while there is still pain, it’s much better.

But – I’m not done YET. (!!!)

Let’s add some icing to the “what else could go wrong” cake.

A week ago today, I went to a dermatologist for a possible  . . .  skin cancer. We’ve all heard the saying “it comes in threes,” right? Is “it” karma? IDK, but whatever “it” is, mine apparently comes in fours.

I’ve had a “funny” area on my lower right leg since chemo ended last year. Actually, I thought this tiny wound was some odd thing my skin was doing because of the chemo since it showed up right after I was done with that treatment. It’s been there changing, doing it’s thing, bleeding now and then. Since my Dad had skin cancer, and I inherited his olive complexion, I thought, the way my luck is going  . . .

I went to see a dermatologist a week ago. They took a biopsy, and the pathology on it will be back in about two weeks, so that was a Charlie Brown moment, as in good grief!

Let’s see, what else . . . kidding! Because, yeah, that’s enough, already, isn’t it?

Despite all this, you wanna know exactly how I feel? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Running With Lung Cancer

How’s that for a title?

Those of you who live in my neighborhood, yes, that certainly has been me you’ve seen jogging along the streets recently. You might have thought, but, wait. Didn’t I hear she now has . . . lung cancer? 

That would be right too.

I asked my oncologist about running weeks ago, and his answer was “Yes, you can run!”  That made me really happy. So, that’s what I’ve been doing. I figure if I’m in as good a shape as I can be – considering – I will recover faster after surgery.

Which is what I’m here to talk about, recovering from the surgery I mentioned in my last post. I went to see a thoracic surgeon yesterday.

By the way, in case you missed that Instagram post I did on Monday, here’s the picture I sent out.

Talk about timing. These two pieces of mail arrived together. This actually made me giggle but maybe I have a weird sense of humor.  (French Sojourn, you can see I took your advice – thank you)

Back to the surgery visit. It was really enlightening and what I hoped and prayed for will happen. The doctor is David White, and while I was having a pulmonary test, the nurse said, “If I had to have any sort of surgery on my lungs, Dr. White is who I would want. He’s the best and I’ve worked all over the place.”

I love it when nurses volunteer tidbits like that. Either way, even after meeting him I was still curious so I Googled his name. Here’s a short video taken about three years ago where he introduces himself:

I really like him. Like my oncologist, he was thoughtful and caring.  It showed in how he talked, explained things, and the time he and his PA took.

We started off by comparing our fitness watches. Ha! We had very similar looking running watches – same color – black/lime green.  Then we looked at the PET scans I’ve had. He can’t be 100% sure of what type of cancer it is until they biopsy it. At this time however, because of the characteristics (round), he believes it’s actually a recurrent cancer and that the original cancer metastasized to the lung. My oncologist has said this would be a highly “unusual pattern.” (I’ve always joked how I can’t ever just have a common cold. If you knew my entire medical history, you’d understand what I mean.)

Dr. White said, “I bet when we look at the PET from January, we’ll see it.”

He flipped to that scan and scrolled through, but, we didn’t see anything.

He said, “Huh, that’s interesting.”

At any rate given the placement, back of the lower left lobe, (he placed his hand on my back midway to indicate about where it is, whereas all along I’ve been thinking it’s up front) he still thinks it’s recurrent. He also talked about the shape – round – and said other lung cancers tend to not be that shape, meaning the shape points to recurrent.

He scrolled through the scan and showed me other “spots.” I’d not heard about other “spots.” I honestly can’t recall how many there were, but I’d say 2-3. His PA said, “these are so small we wouldn’t be able to find them (during surgery), but we need to watch them, and see if they grow.” The watching will come from PET scans.

For the surgery it will be laparoscopic (so relieved), and he will do a “wedge resection.”  This will mean cutting out the nodule, and some of the good tissue. He said they literally cut it like a wedge. I like pictures, so I went out and found one. Like this, but in that lower part of the lung.

There will be a tube in my chest for about a day – and that will be removed before I leave. This is the best surgery for maintaining most of the lung tissue. Regardless, your body has to adjust to less lung capacity, but this is the optimum for keeping the most of the lung.

He said I shouldn’t have to stay more than a night, maybe two depending on how things go with the chest tube and its removal. At home, recovery beyond that is about ten to fourteen days. He said one of the hardest things is getting over the anesthesia, and the pain. Still, all this was right in line with what I’d been hoping for – minimal hospital stay, and a pretty quick recovery.

He then said, “Once I’m in there, if I find out it’s actually a primary cancer, that will mean a larger incision (still laparoscopic) and a lobectomy, where we would remove the lower lobe entirely.” It means a longer hospital stay – maybe an extra day, and a few more days tacked onto recovery.

So, that’s the deal. The surgery is September 24th. This was the date I was hoping for because of the SIBA Tradeshow in Florida, and the Stanly County Library Annual Friends of the Library meeting where they’ve sent out 250 invitations.

Not having it ASAP doesn’t mean increased risks. It was sort of funny because when I asked about that, and I was prepared to start emailing people to say, “I’m real sorry, but I won’t be able to make it,” he said, “No. It doesn’t make a difference. If it grows, it will only make it easier to find.”

It still sounds encouraging and hopeful despite hearing about the other spots. We’ll just have to keep the faith they won’t grow, and hope from this point on I’ll get clean scans.

As always, I find myself listening to certain songs, and the lyrics to Seals and Crofts’ We May Never Pass This Way Again, are fitting.

“Cast away our fears, and all the years, will come and go, and take us up, always up. . .”

 

Peace and love,

Donna