Next step

I don't know if anyone is reading this anymore, but I've decided that instead of sending out lots of emails I'm going to post my news and feelings and whatever here. I guess I'll have to at least send out one email to let everyone know to come here and look.

So, I saw the gyn oncologist yesterday and he showed me the PET scan and said that the hot spot was highly probable and highly suspicious to be cancer. He also checked with a few surgical oncologists about surgically removing it (he said there was no way that he would touch it) and they all said no way also, it's too dangerous because of the location (a para-aortic lymph node in the back near the renal arteries and kidney). So the next step is a ct-scan guided biopsy which I will have next Friday morning to confirm it. Then the step after that is radiation and there is also the possibility of chemo. He said the radiation should help with my back/leg/hip pain, so that is good, but I know from others who have had radiation to this area of the body that it's a pretty tough course (lots of nausea being so close to the abdomen).

We haven't told Z. yet, we are planning to wait till I get closer to treatment. That will be a very hard conversation for us.

I have this weird thing happen every day now, I wake up in the morning and my first conscious thought (after damn, do I really have to get up now??) is "I'm going to die". But it's this really emotionless thought, just like a statement of fact about some character in a book, not me. Then I just get up and do my morning routines. It's kind of how I've been feeling so far, mostly like it's an out of body experience, happening to me yes, but a distant me, not the me inside. So hard to explain, but I think it's self protection, trying to emotionally process all of this.