I called my dad, ran into the bathroom, washed my face, brushed my teeth, put my contact lenses in and jumped on my motorcycle. Rode there as fast as I could safely, so I kept it below 130mph.
Once I arrived, both my mom and dad were sitting in the waiting room. I hadn't seen those two together in the same place in quite a while. Sort of surreal.
So, Dr. Fischetti basically told me that what the other doctor told me as far as the stage my cancer was in was a premature prognosis of the situation. He said that it was correct for what little testing they had done so far, but that he would not speculate on the stage; he would make that decision once they had done all the testing.
He mentioned the fact that it is highly likely that the cancer has spread to my bone marrow, and that would throw me into stage 4 cancer. He also mentioned the fact that he was very concerned about the "large mass" that showed up on my x-ray inside of my chest cavity near my lung.
So he set my appointment for another biopsy this Monday at 4PM; if I recall correctly, it's going to be an open biopsy. I just can't remember if it's the bone marrow biopsy or not.
He also prescribed me medication to help me avoid kidney complications once they start me on chemotherapy. As it stands right now, that's all he plans on for treatment, which they will start as soon as possible, but they may choose to add radiation treatments depending on what they find with my bone marrow biopsy and my CAT scan.
I mentioned to him that it's becoming more difficult each day for me to breathe -- I noticed that this morning, actually. It's harder to breathe today than it was yesterday.
He pointed out that the growths in my neck are so severe that they are actually pushing my throat to the right of my neck; he pointed out that my adam's apple is clearly being repositioned by the tumors.
He also told me that I did the right thing as far as how quickly I went to the doctor's office for this stuff. I waited a month before going in and just watched the swollen glands to see if there was any significant change. That made me feel a bit better; then he told me that most likely these tumors had been growing for a year inside of me, and it was only a month ago that they grew big enough or numerous enough for it to become noticeable.
That kind of surprised me.
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