"O time! thou must untangle this, not I; / It is too hard a knot for me to untie!" --Viola, Twelfth Night
The radio silence on Gayle's treatment plan comes from a number of shifting components that are only slightly settled enough for me to feel a new post is warranted. This has been one of the more difficult "hurry up and wait" moments of my life. When Gayle and I last were confronted with hospital news, we had time to process: Our oldest was still in utero when we learned about his heart problem, and there were months between when we started down the path and when we finally had to face the chaos of newborn surgery. While I don't recommend that way of becoming a parent, there was, at least, a bit of breathing space and time to process what we were about to go through. The timeline between Gayle's diagnosis and her first surgery was originally only about three weeks. That may be enough time for some people to come to grips with their new reality, but in our case, it has been draining. Tests, doctor visits, plans, and reschedules are all swirling about us. In some ways, that has been a blessing. We found out about Gayle's diagnosis on 20 October, sixteen years and one week exactly from when we got married. We met with OBGYN to learn precious little else, save that we received a referral to our surgeon, Dr. Tittensor. Our appointment day was actually supposed to be today--a day to remember, remember, this fifth of November--when we would learn what the surgeon was hoping to do. Faithful readers know that we were rescheduled to 27 October to meet with the surgeon, bumping up our timetable significantly. This was definitely a relief. Learning that it was a slow-growing cancer that might not even require a mastectomy was a load off of our minds. However, there were caveats to the prognosis, so we held off on holding hope too tightly. Before we left Dr. Tittensor's office, we had a surgery planned for 13 November. Our speed outpaced our knowledge, however: Gayle had her blood drawn only yesterday--the same day as our first visit with our oncologist--and was told that it could take as long as twelve days to get results back on this test. The reason this matters is because, though we are almost positive we won't need to move into chemotherapy to beat this (it's a slowly-growing cancer, so chemo would probably do very little against it), we are less certain about whether or not a lumpectomy is sufficient. That test will show us whether or not Gayle is genetically predisposed toward cancer, which would dictate the need of a mastectomy--or even a double. If you're looking at the calendar, you may have noticed that twelve days from yesterday puts us past the 13th surgery date. While it's certainly possible that we will get results sooner, we're running a chance that the information won't arrive by the time of the surgery. So we decided that we'd move back the surgery. "Well, Steve, why don't you just go forward with the earlier date and cancel if the results don't show up in time?" Well, random questioner, the reason's a matter of logistics: If we wait until the 13th and do have to reschedule, the earliest opening will be sometime in December. The chance that the test will come back negative is real, but it seems like an unnecessary risk. Better to reschedule by a week (our current surgery date is now 20 November) than to ignore Treebeard's advice by being too hasty and run into harder decisions down the road. Better to choose with the most amount of information possible than step down a dimmer path. Of course, it can be difficult to wait on important news (remember, I'm writing this two days after the 2020 election and, despite one candidate having over 3 million more votes, we don't know who the winner is yet), but waiting through the entire month of November for the surgery is a very large strain on our mental health. To say that 2020 is a hellacious year is an insulting understatement. Everyone is suffering from the general malaise of the pandemic and the poisons in the body politic. In our case, however, the dizzying whiplash of societal adulation for our hard work in the spring to the furious, demeaning demands that we put our lives at risk for our livelihoods really took a toll. When it became clear that the citizenry should expect no statewide economic assistance would be forthcoming, so the babysitting aspect of teachers became our sole benefit to society, neither one of us took it very well. Add to that the stress of being a high-risk family in a state that continues to believe, despite burying over 500 Utahns who started the year with us in January, that COVID-19 is a hoax, mask-wearing a capitulation of freedoms, and that science is as mercurial and subjective as opinions--well, it puts another strain on our emotional stamina. Mix together all of these different components (not forgetting her sister's thyroid cancer diagnosis, our niece's need for a throat biopsy to check for the same, and the burial of her grandfather, all of which happened in the past week) and it might make sense why we're feeling a tug to take care of whatever we can as soon as we can. But it also might help explain why we're feeling a touch risk-averse, too. So that's the current situation: Gayle is still running through the gauntlet of tests (she had an MRI scan today, in fact), awaiting results while juggling her responsibilities to her students, her school, and her family. Crossed fingers, vibed goodness, and prayed petitions all point toward getting a negative on the pending test. If that goes well, then the next stop is the scalpel. We're really hoping that turns out to be the case. Comments are closed.
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