And the Results Are In!

Monday was scan and blood work day, and Thursday was the follow up appointment with the doc to get the results. And, amazingly enough, it was actually pretty good news...for once. And since I don't want to keep you waiting any longer:

Clean scans!

Blood work was NORMAL!

Spots on the liver, lung, and kidney were all determined to be cysts that the doctor feels do NOT warrant further concern.

The doctor is happy, so I guess that means I should be happy too. And I am, honest. But...well, it's a little weird. I told almost no one the news all day long. Because it did not feel real; like maybe I was jinxing some cosmic force by saying it out loud and getting just a little excited about it.

But, by late afternoon, I was starting to get the texts and emails of concern as people who knew that I had this appointment were in a small panic when I hadn't been disseminating any news whatsoever. So I had to start texting people...and posting it on Facebook...and now, finally, putting it here. Good news for now.

Next round of scans will be April. I'm not sure I'll know what to do with myself.

Oh, yes I do...we're going to Hawaii, which will feel like such a nice reward.

Christmas came just a little early this year in the Yusko household. As one friend put it: Best. Christmas. Present. Ever.

Now, before you worry that I won't have anything to keep me occupied, please note that there's still a lot of things that I have to deal with in the New Year which will definitely keep me busy in January!

The secret (as in, I wasn't telling anyone about it because I thought it signified that the cancer had come back) pain I've been having turns out to be lymphedema. This will require physical therapy. I'm actually hoping that maybe I can get one appointment in before we leave for vacation to start to manage the pain. Which is remarkably annoying, and now that there's an better than average chance I can do something to mitigate it, I'd kind of like to get that started.

Doc also did a big "I told you so" when I told her that my New Year's resolution is to get my PTSD under control. So that maybe I can go back to work someday without wanting to kill people. (Seriously, one of the options on the doctor's "how do you feel?" questionnaire each time is "thoughts of violence towards others." Keith will never let me circle it!) I love that the doc just smiles at me with her "I'm pretty sure I told you that you were a crazy person and not ready to go back to work and needed to get a major handle on your craziness before trying to re-integrate into society" look. So, now she's taking charge of getting me help on that front with one of the amazing doctors at SCCA who specializes in my kind of crazy. This is priority number one in January, honest! Especially because I think the symptoms are actually getting worse and almost caused me to bring down the plane to Vegas with a panic attack. Good times. Especially if you were the couple sitting next to me on the plane who were not related to me.

Until then, I now have some great new meds to keep me sane...which also have the side effect of MAYBE getting the menopause craziness under control (or at least making the symptoms liveable). Yes, chemo induced me into menopause (like a ton of bricks). Yes, tamoxifen makes sure I stay there. Yes, I took my ovaries out and compounded the problem. Holy crap, did that ever compound the problem. It's like living in a sauna here 24/7. I've given up sleeping through the hot flashes because it's just easier to deal with them while awake and watching TV (and playing on the computer). I've been going to bed around 3:30-4:00am every night and getting up at 6:15am. Then maybe going back to sleep from 7:30-9:30am. I'm sure this lack of sleep has nothing to do with exacerbating the PTSD symptoms AT ALL, right?!

As I type this I realize that exactly one year ago today, I was headed to my first round of chemo. So I guess it's only fitting that I got some good news to mark this "anniversary." WOW. What a difference one year can make. I can't even begin to do a coherent post on how I feel about everything that's happened in the last year (and then some). I'll save that for another day...maybe as I'm relaxing on the beach.

Instead, I thought I'd put this montage together of my journey. Now, it took all of 2 minutes to make this using a fun new app I was playing with on my phone (which appears to have cropped the bottoms off of every picture, but I'll figure out how to fix that on the next montage I make). And I was just quickly scrolling through the pics on my phone. But they are in order from start to finish, so it's interesting to watch. Enjoy the ride with me!

And might I just say...WHEW! HALLELUJAH! THANK YOU! AMEN!