The Suspense!

Tomorrow is the day I go in to talk to Dr. Gore about the results of my CT scan and to find out if I will need more chemotherapy or not. I’m really nervous but I have a good feeling about it. I’ve tried to stay busy the entire week to keep my mind off of that and other frustrations. One night I had dinner with my mom, the next night with my friends Jessica and Allison, the next night with my dad, and the night after that with a new guy. Wednesday during the day I spent five hours at my university trying to get things sorted out so that I can do a study abroad. Right now I prefer to study in at Lund U in Sweden but that is partly because I did not know much about the programs at TU Dortmund. I talked the international coordinator at my university and she gave me more information about TU Dortmund and about study abroad in general. I’m going to ask my oncologist tomorrow if he thinks I will be healthy enough to go to Sweden in January, and if he says no, I will have to let that dream go for now and hopefully I can go to Germany in April or May.  

My first passport ever came in the mail yesterday!

So exciting! It makes me want to travel right now!

Today I am starting the “paleo diet,” which was recommended to me by my sweet friend Linnéa. I’ve mentioned that chemo caused me to gain a bit of weight instead of lose it, which is apparently common. This diet meant to help not just with weight loss, but to improve a person’s health. I will update with any progress on that front. 

And now I am going to try to make the most out of this Sunday.

And now we wait.

Yesterday morning I had my CT scan but there really isn’t anything to report yet. I have an appointment with my oncologist, Dr. Gore, Monday at 2:15 and I will find out then what he thinks we should do next. If he does see that fluids are building back up in my abdomen again, I’m going to ask him if there are any alternatives to getting more chemotherapy. I just feel like there can’t possibly be much cancer left at this point so maybe there is a less awful option than chemotherapy. I’ll just have to wait and see but I promise that I will update after I find something out.

In desperate need of good news.

I’m sorry about yesterday’s tantrum post. I was really upset when I wrote it. The first half of this week has been very trying for multiple reasons. 

The biggest reason: I have been chatting with someone online for about 7 months now. We talked every day and I had even gotten to the point that I considered him one of my best friends. I started talking to him on the dating site that I’m a member of, where his profile said he was single. In my mind he was single and it never occurred to me that he might not be. I may have even posted that not long ago he and I switched profiles on the dating site and he had me looking for women for him. Sunday I discovered that he is married. I don’t know how much of what he has been telling me all this time was just a lie, but I am crushed to find out that he is not the person I thought he was and he had so little respect for me. I talked to him more than anymore else and I find out I can’t believe anything he has said to me. Needless to say, I have been reevaluating these online friendships. 

A lot of other smaller issues contributed to me having a meltdown yesterday. It’s hard enough waiting to find out if my oncologist will add more treatments or not without having to deal with liars and jerks. My CT scan is tomorrow morning, but I won’t talk to Dr. Gore about the results until next week. Please let it be good news…

/End.

I don't feel like posting here anymore. I'm not getting anything out of it and I think maybe a handful of people give a shit at this point.

We will assume that my CT scan Thursday comes with a happy ending and I am declared to be in remission.

Sorry if I have let anyone down.

Liar, Liar - Pants on Fire

I have a friend that I haven't been talking to quite so much lately because he is so brutally honest that he tends to hurt my feelings. No sugar coating anything. The cold, hard truth laid out raw - as is. Difficult to swallow. However, after discovering another friend has quite the opposite issue, I've come to see the value in that brutal honesty. Lies hurt ten times more.

Given the option, I would choose a friend who wounds me with the slap-in-the-face truth to a "friend" who kills me slowly with lie on top of lie on top of lie.

You have tortured and killed my trust in you.

Sweden or Germany

FINALS: Fuck, I never actually learned shit. 

I guess since my grades were As, it would seem like I did learn “shit,” but I could feel all the information draining from my ears as soon as I finished my final exams. So don’t look to me for answer answers about the economy or computer hardware/software. 

Now summer classes are over and I have a break until fall classes start on the 27^th. I’m started to feel better so I might get more enjoyment from the break, depending on what I find out after my CT scan. I simply can’t stand the possibility that I will have to get more chemo. It seems much worse to slowly get back a bit of energy and then have it taken away again than to have just gotten it on the schedule I had expected. 

Also, if I am not healthy enough, it could wreak my dream of studying abroad in Sweden or Germany for the spring semester. I’ve sending out tons of emails and making phone calls about financial aid and scholarships that would make this possible (along with looking up all sorts of other information about it). I think I’ll be crushed if it doesn’t work out. :-(

Please oh please work out!

Nightmare

It’s been just a little over a month since my 7^th round of chemotherapy. I’ve been thinking like I’m in remission even though I won’t find that out until I get the results of my CT scan. The scan is August 9th but I wouldn’t find out right away about the verdict. I want to do more than I’m capable of because I’ve been doing so little for so long. I even tried to work out yesterday. I managed about 15 minutes and felt like I was dying afterwards. I had to take a long bath and a really long nap after that. I want to go back to feeling the way I felt before now, not slowly over time. Actually, I want to feel healthier, stronger, and more energetic. Hell, I want to fly. 

Last night I had a dream (nightmare) that I was at the cancer center and Dr. Gore was going over the results of my CT scan with me. Actually, it’s hard to remember the dream clearly but I don’t think he talked about the scan at all. He just told me I would be getting loads more chemo and he was switching me to harsher chemo drugs. I then started sobbing in the way only a hysterical child can while simultaneous uttering every imaginable combination of curse words. For some reason I ran out into the apocalypse going on outside and that was the end of the dream. 

I think I am down to just one medical bill for $350 for the surgery to remove my tumor (not including all the thousands of dollars in medical bills of the past that have gone to collection agencies because I could not pay them). I called the number on the bill and explained that I had a medical bill that I couldn’t afford to pay because I haven’t been able to work in a long time. The woman I talked to was extremely nice and said that there were charity programs that could help. She told me she would find out more and call me back. She did call me back a couple of hours later to tell me that my bill was too small for them to help! I told her that $350 might not seem big to a hospital as far as medical bills go, but to someone who currently has no income, it’s a lot of money. She couldn’t understand why I couldn’t just pay it and I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t be helped because my bill was “too small.” She said she would talk to her supervisor and call me back. That was over a week ago. I’ll take some preemptive ibuprofen and try calling again today. 

Final exams for both Summer II classes are on Friday, so now it’s back to telling myself I’m about to study while watching random videos on Youtube.