"Happy" Birthday to Me.

I received a call on Monday stating that my lung doctor wanted to see me to discuss surgery options and that he could "squeeze" me in on Wednesday at 10:45am. If I decided on surgery, I would not need to meet with my Oncologist but if I decided against it, I would then meet with her to go over whatever other options I had. Because I already knew those other "options" were to either A.) do nothing or B.) get hormonal treatment, I figured my only real option was surgery.

I was finally seen around 12:30pm. My life now seems to revolve around the amount of time I waste waiting for appointments.

When my lung doctor walked in I (jokingly) told him that I never wanted to see him again...especially not this soon after my surgery. He smiled and began to go over what was happening. What I like about him is that he shows me my scans so I can see what he's actually talking about.

He showed me my most recent scans of my right lung, along with the scans of my left lung when they found the tumor the last time. It's without question that the one in my left lung was legit like 90% larger then the ones in my right lung. And actually, there's only one real tumor right now - the second one is questionable. From looking at the scans I could see how the real one grew and how the other one was still a bit hazy and unclear. He said that when I was in surgery he would remove the second one if he felt that it needed to be removed.

There are a few good things and a few bad things. The first good piece of news is that I apparently always had these small masses - so they are not new metastises. That is actually great, not good, news. Because I already had them, it means that new Cancer has not appeared. The bad news is the location of the first tumor. It is located right near a vein and will be difficult to remove. Of course! Because not only do I have to live with Cancer...but I have to live with difficult Cancer. It's always in spots that are not desirable.

He said that the surgery could go one of two ways:

1.) He will first attempt to go in laparoscopically with a camera and remove the masses. This is obviously the more desirable type of surgery. The recovery time would probably only be a few weeks, I would have a CRAZY significant amount LESS scaring on my body and would most likely only be in the hospital for one night. Not to mention that my ribs would never be touched causing basically no pain for months and months afterwards - like I still have from my surgery in June.

2.) He won't be able to cut out the tumor around the vein and will need to perform the same surgery as last time - only with a slightly smaller incision.

Obviously I will be totally devastated if it's the latter. I know I'm strong and can handle quite a bit but I really don't know if I could go through that torture AGAIN. It'll be basically 6 months to the day (give or take a few days) since they operated on my left lung and now I'll have to go through the same fucking bullshit but on my right side?! I'll never be able to wear a bra again!

I'm already in pain every day (granted it's tolerable but it's still extremely uncomfortable) on my left side. I couldn't even imagine having BOTH sides of my body totally sore, numb, uncomfortable, etc. Just the thought of it makes me so angry. I can't believe this is happening again.

Naturally I told him that if he really wanted to give me a good birthday present, he would do everything in his power to remove this shit laparoscopically...and save my tattoo as much as he could. That's right. He will have to go in right where my tattoo is on my right side. Great. I'm glad I suffered through a huge rib piece for hours only to have it mutilated by unwanted surgery. Note where the arrow is:

Yeah. Not a happy lady over here.

After I signed all the consent forms, cried, gave my doctor one last pleading effort to do everything he could to make me not have to go through what I went through the last time...I was on my way out of the office and onto do all the pre-surgery crap. Again.

The last time I had to do the Pulmonary testing the idiot girl who was doing it was legit poking around trying to find my artery for 5 minutes before I cursed her out and told her if she stabbed me one more time I was going to flip out on her. Lucky for me, this time I had someone who knew what they were doing. And she was quick to inform me that the girl who did it the last time was no longer employed at Sloan. Great! Glad I could be the pin cushion.

Since I've been basically getting exposure treatment while being in the Trial with all the needles I had to endure, I'm much more confident that I won't pass out with blood work. This was totally different. Because they have to extract blood from the artery and not the vein, they need to go in super deep. Ew. I'm about to puke while typing this. All I'm going to say is that I almost passed out. The blood drained from my face and things were getting foggy. Two cups of orange juice and 10 minutes of rest and I was ok to blow into the lung machine thing. My mom said she was watching the screen as I did my tests and my lungs were so strong the cursor practically shot off the screen. Ha. All I can say is that my wrist hurts today and it looks like I got bit by a spider.

After the Pulmonary Tests I waited again until they took me to do all the pre-surgery vitals and EKG and whatnot. More blood work was involved but I was fine. The only thing that kept running through my mind was that I could not believe I was going through this again...such a short time after my last surgery. It just really fucking sucks.

My surgery is scheduled for January 3rd, 2012. I guess I wanted to be able to semi enjoy my birthday, Christmas and New Years without being in pain. The shitty thing is that I really can't enjoy my New Years as much as I'd like to since I can't drink or even take freakin' vitamins a week before my surgery. I guess I'll be ringing in the New Year sober...not like that's a major issue. But being around drunk people when you're not drunk isn't exactly the most fun you'll ever have. Oh well.

The only other thing that really blows is the fact that I'll be 27 in two days and it's like I'm not even excited for it. The only thing I keep thinking about is the impending doom I'm going to have to face in a few weeks. Not to mention the fact that once again I won't know what's happening until I wake up from surgery. I won't know if I'll be shacked up in my house for a few weeks or a few months. I won't know if I'll be in crazy pain with tubes coming out every which way and in the hospital for 5 days. I won't know if I'll be facing a miserable healing process or if it'll be a piece of cake. It sucks - not to know. That, I think, is the worst part.