My First Visit To the Cancer Center

Friday 2-26-2010
Up early, coffee, painful pee and a pill to start the day. Green Tea, some cranberry juice, gathers the papers and gets properly coiffed. Must have slept over half the day yesterday, and slept over 3 hours last night in one stretch. Certainly am getting better over time. Pee equals pain, but it is better to pee well and pain some. I will have drivers today, a pleasant consequence of the disease.
Met with the Indy MD today with my Girls. My first steps through the doors of a cancer center. Simon Cancer Center is part of the IU Medical facility in Indy, part of Clarian and thankfully included in my insurance. Dread crept in as we walked to the entrance. Welcoming and helpful staff. This was a big time body shop for sure. After check in and close to appointment time the 4 of us were ushered into a small exam room. The Doctor came in with a smile, we shook hands and introductions were made. He was now my fourth Ologist. With a marker and white board and after a quick study of the report he got on fax from Dr. El he laid out the options. Enthralled, Jennifer I think was ready to pack this debonair guy up and take him home. Jocelyn focused questions she had comparing his dissertation to Dr. El’s. Wonderful to have someone on the team with a photographic memory.
His story was somewhat different and in some ways more encouraging, although he pointed out his colleagues all have differing opinions on best approach. The story though was fundamentally the same; you will be gutted like a fish, and then reconstructed so you can go on with your life. Now we must decide if risking chemo before surgery is something we should do, or risking surgery without chemo first is something we should do. Jennifer wishes we had more guidance, but it is not forthcoming. Simply not enough is known about the disease. On line articles back to 2001 show the trend to chemo first for my stage of the disease. We have the weekend to ponder and an app Monday with a chemo MD. Family all together tonight, looking forward to it. Dan stopped by enroute back home from a service call. Telling me of his work, his company and co workers and the many issues they have as they go through changes mandated upon them. How well he adapts viewing events from a perspective that demonstrates how ludicrous tired management clichés have become. He can now accept it, having seen it so many times over the decades with humor and usually patience.