Houston, again

I'm headed to Houston tomorrow.  I have an appointment with the radiation oncologist Friday morning.  The plan is that I will be able to fly home that afternoon, meet with a radiation oncologist in Boulder early next week and start treatments here then.

First, I have to admit that my psychological response to adding radiation treatment to the plan has thrown me for a bit of a loop.  Funny how something surprises you.  Somehow, surgery, especially on an "extremity" like my arm, seems totally typical, especially in our family, where my beloved husband is a walking orthopedic adventure and my son broke his foot in June.  Surgery, therefore, for anything, even cancer, is ... normal.  Radiation, on the other hand, is not.  It's abnormal.  It's dangerous, even as it buys people time.  It bought my dad another almost two years of life, most of which were high quality, and it didn't hurt or make him sick.  Lots of people with cancer embrace radiation therapy:  it doesn't make you sick like chemo, it can kill the bad cells; and it extends life.

But, still, it's a treatment for CANCER, which is what I have, a sickness, in a different category from bone breaks and ligament or tendon tears.  These latter can be crippling, but cancer is life threatening.  As a result one can need radiation, which kills perfectly healthy cells along with the malevolent malignant ones; we do radiation to eliminate cancer from the body, because otherwise, the cancer can come back and kill you.  At any rate, the radiation treatment recommendation is making me confront the mortality aspect of this disease in a way I was conveniently ignoring so long as the next step was "only" surgery.

None of which, I concede, changes the fact that this cancer is still one they are classifying as low grade.  And, that is still excellent news.  None-the-less, one of the many questions I'll have Friday is why, if it's just a different kind of low-grade sarcoma, is radiation now warranted?  That's along with the other questions, gleaned from reading and trying to figure out what's different.  These include:

• Pre-surgery radiation increases post-surgery loss of function in the extremity, as well as post-operative wound complications.  The good news is that several of the articles describing these consequences were written by the radiology oncologist I'm going to be seeing Friday morning.  Still, what's the strategy to deal with these significant, adverse side effects?
• What are the logistics?  How long do I have to recover after radiation before surgery?  [The literature says at least 4-8 weeks.  Sadly, this makes my call not to buy a ski pass last weekend look correct.  Which I hate!]  What are they recommending about diet, exercise and other non-Western medicine treatments and preparations, because I know in my heart that this is important.  Plus, doing these kind of things, over which I have control, will be good for my psyche when I'm accepting treatment over which I have no control.  Except, as noted earlier in this blog, that whole part about no sugar ...

Also, as noted in a previous post, the radiation treatment will have me pinned, i.e., no travel during those weeks because I need to be at the treatment center at the same time every weekday.  Bill is already Jonesing for adjustments to the schedule.  I'm less sanguine that these may be part of the program.  Regardless, I cancelled my reservation for Santa Fe in two weeks to go to the Colorado River Symposium.  Let the dislocation begin.  Obviously, I will get at least some responses to questions Friday.  Bill is wondering if dealing with uncertainty can change a Meyer-Briggs J like me into a P.  I doubt it, and I'm not even sure I want that.  But, all this uncertainty is pretty hard for me!

Meanwhile, once again, I need to thank my awesome friends.  Lee Harris Potter Rogers (ne and now of North Carolina, for four shining years at Dartmouth) grew up next to a woman who now lives 10 blocks from the Houston hospital zone.  Because Lee is my friend and reached out to her, she is putting me up tomorrow night, sight unseen, character untested. !!! I owe you all more gratitude than I know how to express.

And, as I said on my FB page earlier today, for those of you who are MOT, L'Shana Tovah -- Happy New Year.  May we -- my family, friends and colleagues, MOT and non -- all be inscribed in the book of life for another year of happiness, health and the chance to repair the world.  Lord knows, if I get the chance, I promise to do twice my share of the latter going forward.