Med Onc opinion

Today A. and I went to see the med onc at Fox Chase. I guess he's my med onc now since my med onc at Jefferson left for Tennessee a while back. We got in and out of there pretty quickly as there was hardly anyone there today. So he thinks the Megace (hormonal therapy) might be a good way to go for now, but wants me to pursue some other radiation opinions and get the results from the ct-scan before deciding for sure. He recommended I see the rad onc at FCCC that does stereotactic radiotherapy to see if that would be a possibility. He referred me to him but I have to wait for his office to call me with an appt. He also talked about seeing someone at Penn who does gamma knife but from what I have read gamma knife is only for brain/head tumors but in researching this there is a rad onc at Pennsy who looks like might be a good md for another opinion. Anyway, the med onc was saying that if this tumor has increased in activity it's probably a good time to do something rather than continuing the wait and see approach. However he wants to balance toxicity and quality of life with how effective a treatment may be. Hormones are less toxic than chemo but are not benign either. He also seems concerned with using therapies now that I might need later on, he talked about that the last time I saw him in February too. So, the plan for now is to see if there's some kind of radiation therapy that could get this bit of tumor out, and then go back to see him on 1/23 and decided what to do next (assuming I can get the rad opinions before then). Also, he gave me a script for an MRI of my lower back to see what is going on with my back pain. He said maybe there is something going on that has nothing to do with the cancer that can be treated by another type of dr. (like an orthopaedist for example). So, gotta fit that in somewhere too.

He told me that I had the littlest bit of cancer that one could have and still have cancer. I thought that was a good way to explain it to Z. We hadn't said anything specific to her about all this yet since there wasn't anything definitive to tell her. So this evening I talked to her about it. I told her that a little bit of cancer was still there and what the drs. said above, and that I'd be having various drs. appts. and tests to find out what we might want to do about it. This afternoon she had a playdate with her friend R. while we were at the drs. so when I told her about the appts. and tests she said "does that mean I get to have more playdates with R.?" and also told me that they really wanted to have a sleepover. Her play therapist (we recently began taking her for play therapy to help her deal with all the stuff going on in her life) has been very concerned with my not having told her about all this yet, but I'd been trying to explain to her that our family lives with this stuff all the time, it's not like now is something so different than normal. We really just get on with our lives after a couple of days of digestion. Z.'s reaction was not unexpected, she's lived with my health issues for so long that she really doesn't get shocked or upset about the various specifics. It's more like it's a general effect that she has all the time because of it.

So A.'s taking the next couple of days of work and we'd like to do some fun things together, not sure what yet. Maybe the art museum, the movies (although Z. wants to see the Chipmunk movie and A. and I don't think we can bear to sit through it!), or maybe we can actually set up the Wii we got as a family present this year for Xmas!