just a little pinch!

oh the fun i had in the three week span from the first doctors visit to when i landed at dana farber to begin treatment. i could get to milton hospital with my eyes closed at this point we were there so much. i still believe i am the youngest patient that hospital has seen by at least 30 years. and for every test and procedure i had to get done, it somehow involved getting blood drawn or getting an IV. and they must teach nurses this in school to say "just a pinch!" when the needle goes in. i really would like them to switch up the sayings, because it make me expect it even more. i became a human pin cushion for a minute there and i have the bruises to prove it.

the first test was the CT Scan. this test requires prep! those are always the most fun. prep just means anything from not eating or drinking, to drinking some special solutions, to god knows what else. for this scan i had to drink two large containers of barium liquid. this is so the machine can see my insides better when i'm in there. let me describe the taste for you. hmmmm....imagine like a watered down strawberry smoothie, but thick. i tried my best to imagine it as some sort of cocktail, perhaps i nice glass of chardonnay, but that crap tastes...well, like crap. and i had to drink TWO OF THEM. and yes i made Chris try it.

then after not eating or drinking other than the evil drink, i go in for the test, they inject you with a contrast that gives you the distinct sensation that you are peeing yourself. and its not like they dont warn you, they tell you like 3 or 4 times, but every time i have to ask out loud "am i peeing myself?" i wasnt. but those were the first images of lumps the doctors saw. TWO on my neck and evidence of some swelling in my chest.

off to the needle biopsy!!! this was in a surgeon's office. also this was after my doctor's office called and said "you need to go to milton hospital and get this biopsied...NOW" awesome. so you can imagine my calm and comfort. so, without any numbing, or prep at all the doctor placed a needle in my neck, which chris later claimed i "took like a champ" and removed some cells from the lump. oh and instead of 'just a pinch' i got "this is going to feel like a mosquito bite...a big mosquito" thank you dr. k.

when the results of that biopsy came in, they were 99% sure of what it was, but needed that extra 1% to take action. "so looks like we are going to have to do a little day surgery, go in and get a piece of it" super! when can i do this? tomorrow? great, cant wait. so they put me under general anesthesia and made a small (even though it still looks rather large and unattractive) incision in my neck.

the surgeon called the next day and confirmed the results he had already prepared me for. nodular sclerosis hodgkin's lymphoma. time to meet with the oncologist...

so i met with dr. sarah may in her quincy office. filled out A LOT of paper work and had an interesting time with the family history (it can be pretty frightening to see it all on paper like that) she went over the disease and treatment options and made recommendations for oncologists at dana farber. also at this appointment it was recommended to move forward with finishing 'staging' this included more blood work (yay!) and a couple of tests at the hospital.

so first up was a PET scan which, that's to my handy dandy lymphoma book, i learned is:

Positron emission tomography (PET) is a nuclear medicine imaging technique which produces a three-dimensional image or picture of functional processes in the body. The system detects pairs of gamma rays emitted indirectly by a positron-emitting radionuclide (tracer), which is introduced into the body on a biologically active molecule. Images of tracer concentration in 3-dimensional or 4-dimensional space (the 4th dimension being time) within the body are then reconstructed by computer analysis. In modern scanners, this reconstruction is often accomplished with the aid of a CT X-ray scan performed on the patient during the same session, in the same machine.

basically this was a crazy situation. like they had to administer the contrast with a steel drum and i couldn't be around children or pregnant people for at least a day because i would be radioactive. WHAT!? no, seriously they gave me a little piece of paper that said as much (see below). marc, my friendly, rather large russian fella, was there as my radiology tech, chris had a funny line: "i feel like i'm on an episode of 24 right now" marc really tried to hold in his laughter, but i mean this was comedy gold. oh and i had to drink another two bottles of that liquid barium crap, i only drank one though, marc said it was ok.



then i had to get a MUGA scan:

A MUGA scan (Multi Gated Acquisition Scan) is a time proven nuclear medicine test designed to evaluate the function of the right and left Ventricles of the Heart. It is also called Radionuclide Angiography, as well as Gated Blood Pool Imaging. This modality uniquely provides a Cine Image of the beating heart, and allows the interpreter to mathematically determine the efficiency of the individual chambers of the heart. MUGA scanning may be a valuable adjunct to the Echocardiogram.

another test that i couldnt be around children or preggos. i asked why it was ok for me to have it, and they said something about the immune system and developmental blahblah...doesnt seem 100% safe to me, but who the hell am i?

then to finish up, i had a pulmonary test just to test my lung functions. i passed with flying colors, because let's face it i'm an athletic specimen. but seriously i questioned this after feeling like i was going to pass out after the short breath test. i cant imagine how really out of shape people or the elderly do this.

so after all of this, i met with my new oncologist at the dana farber cancer center, Dr. Lacasce, who is really smart and down to earth and really knows her stuff. my course of treatment will be 6 months of chemotherapy, which i will get once every other week at dana farber in boston, starting on may 6th. it should take a few hours every time, so i will be getting a lot of reading done, as well as some prime people watching, a favorite pastime of mine.