Day 3 – 10/12/09 Monday

Waiting.

I made all the phone calls I could make this morning – to my primary care doctor to review my pathology report so I can start my plan of action, to the lab so I can pick up my report and slides tomorrow, to other pathology labs to get second opinions, back and forth to the ENT specialist and primary care doctor to make sure faxes of my ever elusive report has gotten in to the hands of my primary care doctor….

Everyone I spoke to on the phone was so nice and considerate, yet no pity in their voices. It was the perfect pitch of being sympathetic yet helpful.

And now I wait.

I’ve looked up living will and power of attorney forms, called for cost estimates to review my biopsy slides, and reviewed my health insurance plan to see what’s covered for treatment.
I should clean up the apartment a little, but I’m sleepy. I’m worried about the random aches I have, wondering if that signifies a more advanced stage than I should be. I’m dying to ask my doctor and lawyer friends for help but can’t do so without tipping them off too early.

The bf made me lunch today. A first. I keep telling him I feel ok right now. I’m gonna need this later. But I think he feels so helpless that he needs to try in some way to take care of me now.

7pm
Still waiting for the doctor to call me back. This is really pissing me off. The longer I wait for my staging, the more I’m freaking out about what stage I could be.

Been trying to figure out how to tell my family. It’ll have to be over one of our family dinner nights and I want the bf to be there. Except that I’m afraid they’ll think it’s because we have some happy announcement like we want to get married. So I suggested that maybe the bf could also ask them for permission to marry me, you know, to kinda soften the blow before the bad news? But he nixed the idea because he doesn’t want them to always associate our marriage with bad news. Good point. Plus he said nothing will really soften the blow. All they’ll be able to focus on is the bad news and we’ll just have to rip it off like a band-aid and let them absorb the shock of it for a couple days.

The bf suggested that once I start chemo, we should just shave my head instead of losing chunks of it slowly. Ugh.