Monday, June 25, 2012

Upcoming Duke appointment

Tomorrow we will travel to Duke for our appointments on Wednesday for blood work, MRI & meeting with our new oncologist there (the one we had been assigned to recently retired however we had never actually met him- long story for another time.) To say we are nervous right now would be an understatement. I feel like there is so much riding on this appointment- the Duke people said last time we wouldn't have to come back if the MRI was clear again (Dear God PLEASE let it be clear) but at the same time I'm not 100% confident in our local oncologist due to the decision to start chemo last time when Rion's white blood cells were so low. I'm not sure I want to give up our 2 month follow up with Duke when I feel like they are way better qualified to manage our case. That, along with many, many other things, will be brought up this week when we're there. Some of these things I'm not sure if I want to know the answer to but not knowing is starting to wear me out and make me imagine worse case scenario type stuff.

I have so much anxiety right now i feel like I am literally crawling out of my skin. I just want to get there & get it over with and be on our way home with good news and all of our questions answered. I can't imagine living the rest of our lives like this but I assume it will get easier over time. This is still a relatively new life style for us- last Thursday was exactly 7 months since Rion's seizure- but at the same time I feel like we're been dealing with this forever.  I would dare to say we are in a transition period now where the newness of the diagnosis is wearing off and we're slowing starting to shift our focus & energy from cancer back to the "normal" every day things that we deal with. For instance, I am working on trying to refinance our house, something I've been wanting to do since B.M (before Morton) but I always felt too overwhelmed to do. Not to say that things have calmed down by any mean I just think I am learning some coping skills that are helping me prioritize and let the little things go (such as that nagging $14,000 hospital bill from last November that it will take us years to pay off!)

So please pray for us these next few days. Tomorrow will be a long day being in the car and being anxious and then Wednesday is just going to be a plain old long day since we have to be at the hospital at 6:45 AM for our 1st appointment and then drive home after our last appointment at 9:30 AM.

Please God give us good news, I'm so scared to even think what it will do to our spirits if we get bad news.

Emily

2 comments:

  1. Praying for good news and for truth and no errors. God bless you both

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  2. Re: The giant hospital bill, check to see if the hospital has 'charity care.' It's not for 'poor people' like it sounds. It's for people who are overwhelmed with large hospital bills and don't necessarily have the money to pay it off. ALL HOSPITALS will negotiate a bill (you may have already learned this...just passing along the info that I know for sure).

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