Interim update

Tuesday has been the only day this week that I didn't go to the med center. If I start the car at the top of Pleasant St. and fall asleep, I'm sure that fifteen minutes later I can wake up to find myself heading into the Dartmouth-Hitchcock parking lot. It's automatic.

Anyhow, Wednesday and Thursday were the big days, both involving lots of needle sticks. On Wednesday I was supposed to get blood drawn to prepare for Thursday's biopsy, and they couldn't take it from the port, which meant needles in the arm. My veins don't like being punched, so they slither away and develop hard edges so the needle can't penetrate. A nurse can only try twice before handing the job over to someone else.

It took six attempts, punctuated (so to speak) by my visit to Orthopedics, where they gave me a cortisone shot for my shoulder. Back to Oncology, where they finally got blood from me.

Visit in the afternoon to the GI doctor, who fortunately was unarmed, and who basically agreed with the oncologist that the pain I've felt under my ribs doesn't seem to be anything to be concerned about. Maybe a pulled muscle, maybe the cancer or scar tissue rubbing against a nerve, but definitely not anything showing up on the CAT scan.

Thursday was the biopsy. I went in and out of the CAT scanner while they figured out just where to take the samples from. Luckily the lump is right on the abdominal wall, very easy to get at. The person taking the samples said, "Now, don't worry. This needle is no bigger than the ones we use to take blood," and couldn't understand why I almost leaped off the gurney to run screaming through the halls.

However, the procedure itself was fairly easy (love that Lidocaine, even though it involved several injections).

Initial results: the pathologist couldn't find any evidence of cancer in the first draw. The second, according to the person taking the samples, showed pretty conclusively that the lump isn't a hemotoma, because they're sort of squishy, and this was so hard he said he had trouble getting the needle in (so that's what I was feeling) and that it seemed more like scar tissue than anything else. I find that very hopeful, though I'm not sure how I'd get a scar in my abdomen.

We wait for final results, next week. As I count back, I figure that this week I've had at least fifteen needles shoved into me. No wonder I have no interest in getting a tattoo, and even acupuncture doesn't sound attractive.

One other note: Jerry was with me for the first of the blood draws, and when the nurse said, "I have to go get the pink sticker," (which goes on the tube of blood to tell the lab just what to look for), he got a look of sheer horror on his face and asked me, "Did she say she was going to get the pig sticker?" A bit of hearing loss can add real interest to life.