Today I'm thankful for...
Getting to know my wife better in good times and bad
A little time alone with Lulu
My health
Great thoughtful relatives
Thank you and all our wonderful friends for the prayers and the warm thoughts the last 10 months. It's comforting knowing that there are people so caring out there that we consider a part of our family. Lulu and I are blessed to have each other and four beautiful, healthy kids. Everyday we thank the wonderful doctors involved in Lulu's treatment and and God for helping us both get through this difficult time together.
We just returned from UCSF for three days of medical appointments and consultations. Lulu has decided due to her special circumstances that she will receive her radiation treatments in SF at the UCSF treatment facility. This means will we have to work out the details of 5 to 6 weeks of daily radiation treatments in the city by the bay. But this, we both feel, will be the best treatment for her, and give her the best chance at staying cancer free.
We left on Monday morning for the UCSF clinic and hopefully get some of Lulu's questions answered, and be enlighten on her future? The traffic was light on our 4 hour journey to San Francisco, and we arrived just in time for the first of many appointments she was to have in the next three days. We met with Debbie (part nurse practitioner, part psychologist) to discuss Lulu state of being and what she has gone through so far, and what she might expect in the future? She is the wonderful health care provider that has been assigned to follow Lulu through the chemotherapy, the pre-op surgery, and with Lulu's post-op needs. A large portion of this is for the emotional/mental support. Debbie has been instrumental in helping both Lulu and I understand the expectations of this disease and how to mentally manage the feelings that go along with the treatment. I know that one of my biggest struggles during this whole experience has been how to best support my wife? I think through all the stresses of what's next, how is the healing going to go, and will she even be past thinking daily of the cancer that has inflicted her body, I struggle with what to say to her?
We spent 1.5 hours in therapy with Debbie, and I could tell from the tone and the body language my wife was giving off, that this was a part of the treatment that we were missing. As it turns out Lulu has been keeping many thoughts and feelings bottled up, and some of these were brought out during this time. The nurse wanted to see Lulu again the next day, and had presented some questions that she wanted Lulu to answer before tomorrow. I know that I felt a little scared at the end of this hour. Were we doing the right stuff emotionally during this battle, could we have been asking different questions, and why were we both so unsure about the future? These were just some of the issues that Lulu and I needed help on coping with, and right then we knew that we needed help from a outside source. By 3:30 PM we were done for the day both schedule wise, but also emotionally. Lulu and I checked into the hotel and went to do Union Square to drowned our emotions in shopping at Macys (though I was the only one to buy anything during the experience; Lulu told me that she wanted to brag that for the first time J. was the shopper and Lulu came home empty). After having a enjoyable; even intimate dinner together we turned in early as tomorrow's appointments were bound to wear us down?
Tuesdays first appointment was with the oncologist early at 8:30 AM. I was to make sure that I recorded the whole conversation on my iphone. Lulu had come prepared with questions she needed answered. Lulu also had requested and gotten her pathology report from the surgery, so she could review the findings, and possibly formulate a few questions about her circumstances? In the car from Reno Lulu had been reading the pathology report (I think that it's about 6 or 7 pages long). In the report were the post report on the cancerous lesions removed from her right breast. The doctors had told Lulu that the chemotherapy was successful in reducing the size of the three tumors (from 3 to 4 cm to a final 2 cm or so) in the right breast, but the report suggested differently. The surgeon during the procedure recorded that she had removed a tumorous lesion that measured approximately 6 cm. What??? We were confused by the words she had read in the report. How could the chemotherapy be working so well, but the tumor had increased in size? Also, there was a sentence following the size and type of cancer that said, "the course of chemotherapy given to patient was partially successful." We were stunned by this text. Were the doctors just trying to keep our spirits up, or were we just reading between the lines. Lulu added this to the top of her questions to ask the doctors. The oncologist and a Physicians assistant spent between them almost two hours doing a post op check, discussions of the next steps to treatment, and answering our questions. I could tell from the demeanor of the oncologist that we hadn't been getting the whole truth about the severity of Lulu's cancer. The oncologist explained that the next steps for Lulu's treatment would be a 5 to 6 week daily radiation treatment, then starting hormone oral therapy for 5 to 10 years, in which Lulu would be in put into menopause (and for those of you that have gone through this you know the side effects of this), oral chemotherapy for a year, and also due to the "fact that you are at high risk for re-occurrence" you should participate in a trial drug study that in early use has been shown to decrease the occurrence of these types of cancers. Her directness presenting this information was scaring me. I was hoping that Lulu wasn't feeling the same way as I, but I glanced at her to see her reaction, and I could see that she was taking this worse then me? I knew that the future for Lulu had just become more complicated. I just closed down after this part of the consultation, and it seemed the rest of this appointment dragged on forever? Finally, we all said our New Years pleasantries, and we were most eager to get out of there.
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