Bad Blood = Weekend of Waiting

It's really been going down a lot, the cancer number. But we hit a snag on Wednesday. The beta hCG number increased from 9.9 to 20.9. Considering it WAS 64,000 this number pales in comparison. The question now is why?

There are several possible answers.
1) I didn't have chemo for three weeks around the time of the last hospitalization. That could account for the increase, but we did have a decrease since the hospitalization - weird.

B) The cancer is no longer responding to the chemotherapy and could be growing rather than shrinking.

4) The Super Moon last night has thrown everything out of whack - like a hospital full of crazies on a full moon ... but a Super Moon!

I'm pretty sure it's Reason 4) using the deductive reasoning of my journalism degree.

So without knowing for sure, it gives an insecure patient who has kind of had the shits of this already, plenty of time for conjecture and non-scientific guess work. The doctor in Lancaster called the doctor in Boston who ordered a CATScan of the chest and an MRI of the uterus. He used the words "possibly drug resistant," "surgical resection" and "might have to take the uterus" as POSSIBILITIES in the conversation with Lancaster doctor. She passed it along to me and all I heard was "take the uterus" and then I pretty much checked out.

Well, that defeats the purpose of being cancer-free and hoping to get pregnant. I can't very well let the embryo piggy back on my kidneys for nine months. That phrase "take the uterus" hurt like a ton of bricks. But as everyone keeps saying "Don't worry. It will be alright. Everything will work out. I just know it will be fine. Hang in there." (Should I keep going? There are like 75 other phrases in the same genre.) I try to take each of those sentences in and digest the words and feel their meaning and make it part of me and part of my mission to move forward with a brave face.

But it's really hard.

I'd really like to keep my uterus.

I can see now it would be nothing short of a blessing to be pregnant and carry our child.

It might work out like that. It might not. I have a lot of emotional work to do either way.

On Wednesday we'll draw the beta hCG again. That will tell a lot. Is it Wednesday yet?

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Not to be a total Debbie Downer ("Waa Waa!" as Holland would say), I had a great night on the town for Ronda's 40th Birthday Celebration. A Civil War Murder Mystery at Bube's Brewery! I rocked the red head!

Ronda, Joe, Julie, Michael, Me and Beth
BTW: The butler did it.