Monday, March 19, 2012

Just Do It


We met with my doctor this morning. The appointment had been put off as he had come down with pneumonia last week. Ironic. Life's funny that way.

It was all pretty good news for me today - the x-ray showed that I am healing well, the deflated lung is nearly back to normal and my scar and chest bones are also healing nicely. The pathology report looked good with most everything being negative and a few items being sort of indeterminable, but of little concern (as they seemed to be part of dead tumor cells.) Additionally, there has been no build up of fluid in the chest area.

So far, so good.

He cut the meds I have been taking down to vitamins, the heart-rate stabilizing medication (for a couple more weeks) and sleeping pills (as needed). All good.

Short term prognosis: a few more weeks of healing and gaining strength followed by some chemo-therapy. My diaphragm has not started working yet, which, it turns out, is one of the main causes of the shortness of breath. It might take up to 6 months to kick back in so that's not a thrill, but it is what it is.

Long-term prognosis is five years of monitoring with CAT and PET scans. This type of tumor has a 50% recurrence rate so they will be keeping an eye on that. Any recurrence is usually very localized and treatable.

My next challenge will be to kick-up the activity level in spite of the breathing issues. A lunch out today was an exhausting first step in that direction and there are visions of lots of walks in the neighborhood in my future!

(Turns out in the recovery and medication paperwork, Page 2...which I didn't read until today...mentioned standing every 30 minutes so as not to develop clotting issues. Oops.)

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