Tuesday was Oncologist day. When you go to the cancer clinic, you check in on the 2nd floor. They give you a hospital-style wrist band, ask for your date of birth (you are asked this at least 8 times every visit) and your cell phone number. Then they give you an iPad with 30 or more questions about your symptoms.

“On a scale of 1-10, how big a problem have night sweats been?”
“Are you experiencing pain?”
“Do you have any new rashes?”
“Have you had a loss of apetite?”
“How many times have you fallen since your last appointment?”

It takes most people 15-20 minutes to complete the questionnaire. I can do it in under 4 minutes!

After you turn in your iPad, they text you to go to the lab, where they ask you your date of birth and assign you a booth. There are a dozen booths, and they are usually pretty full. A medical assistant comes to prep you for infussions and to draw blood. I don’t have a “port”, so they have to run an IV in my arm or hand, and then take several vials of blood. I joke with my “vampires”, or at least engage them in some personal conversation. That is how I cope. I hate needles and I have poor veins, so unless Josh is my designated “vampire”, I get poked 2-4 times before they find a good vein. Josh has the magic touch, and has always found a vein on the first stick. But he is usually everyone else’s backup after they missed 2 or 3 times.

My goal is to get through lab with a good attitude, and to not cry or make the MAs feel bad.

Then it is off to the waiting room. You wait. Eventually they text you to proceed to whichever door you are supposed to enter. The door depends on which pod your doctor is working in that day. Sometimes the wait is an hour or two. Tuesday, there was no wait at all. I got my text before I left the lab, and walked straight in.

A week ago I felt good enough to spend a day catching brown trout on the S. Holston river.

My oncology team includes my doctor, his nurse practitioner, and an “oncology fellow”. A fellow is a doctor who finished residency, but is doing an extra year or two of focused, supervised training. Most days I see all three. But Tuesday the doctor and the fellow were at another clinic, so I only saw my nurse practitioner. I like my NP. We have had some personal conversations, and I know pieces of her story. She is a Jesus-lover, and wants to learn more about how to integrate her medical work and faith better. :-) Generally, nurses are more personable than physicians. Their approach to patients is different than that of most doctors. I like my doctor, too. The fellow has a long way to go, but he is still in training. I am blessed to have a good oncology team.

Tuesday, I was still riding high from my previous two visits. When my nurse practitioner came in, she commented that I didn’t look like I was dressed for an infusion. I wasn’t. I fully expected an exam, and more good news. Good news would be “You are doing great. We won’t be giving you more treatments until we see that you need them!” But that is not what I heard on Tuesday. Instead, it was a discussion about when I would start taking treatments again. The decision was to not give me a treatment this week, but I would start up again in 3 more weeks.

That really bummed me out. I felt totally deflated. Technically, there was no bad news. Nothing indicates that my cancer is not shinking. My side effects are slowly getting better. But they want to start treatments again just to be sure, which means that I have to start ordering my plans around that. Around cancer and treatments and doctor’s appointments. It means that while I feel like a well person, I have to live like a sick person. The absence of good news – as I define good news – was like getting bad news.

I have been pouting around the office and the house for the past two days like a spoiled teenager.

It bugs me that they cannot give me another CT scan to track my progress until mid December, because the insurance company won’t pay for one within 90 days of the last one. But the insurance company will pay for an infusion. Infusions cost $12K-$20K, depending on whether I am taking one or two drugs. The cost of a CT scan is about $350. If a CT scan were to show that my cancer is receding at a rapid rate, then I might not need an infusion. How ridiculous is that! So because the doctor doesn’t know for sure that my cancer is still receding, he feels that I need to get back on immunotherapy protocol.

I am starting to feel normal again, though most days I still have some pain from the auto-immune reactions to the treatments. But that tends to only last an hour or so at a time. While that slows me down a little bit, it allows me to do what I love to do – work. I love my work. But going back on immunotherapy means that I have to schedule my life around more frequent infusions and appointments. I don’t know whether there will be reactions to the treatments, so I have to block out several days after each infusion. In August, the reactions hit hardest on day 5, and stayed bad for more than 30 days. This means that I have to curtail travel, which is a big part of my job.

I am bummed. (I even sound like a teenager.)

This is the point in my blog where I usually share some deep spiritual insight that redeems the situation. Well, I am not seeing one. Sorry to disappoint.

My son-in-law and I drove/hiked in the Smokey Mountains last week. I haven’t had that much energy in almost 9 months.

Should I be “bummed”?

God is healing me from cancer. There is no suggestion that my healing process has slowed or changed. Physicially, I feel better than I have in 6 months. I love my family. I love the people I work with. I enjoy being with them. Cancelling travel means more time with them. God is still with me. I am still grateful. That is rational thinking.

But I miss the time where cancer/treatment was not the ruling priority in my life. I feel normal and I want to live normally. I want to get back to work – to being with leaders and clinicians where the real work is happening. I had begun planning trips to Philadelphia/Baltimore/DC, to Chicago, and trip out west. Now those are on hold indefinitely. That is how I would describe how I feel about my life: on hold indefinitely.

I will get over it. But I promised to be honest, and this is where I am this week.

Please keep me in your prayers. I am genuinely grateful for your prayers, and for the way our Father is answering them.