warning: lady troubles discussed below.

Monday after a holiday weekend. Many people are out of the office and things are moving S.L.O.W.L.Y.

And I have to say I don’t mind a bit. It’s given me a chance to clean out my purse, sort and save my expense receipts, email back and forth with Mr. Hockey a little bit and generally catch up on all my reading here blogoland.

The rest of the week won’t go so smoothly, I’m sure. But while I type this list of coming attractions, I can rest assured that, like the folks over at Crazy Aunt Purl’s, my loud typing is masquerading as productiveness. Please don’t tell on me.

Tomorrow morning, my organist friend AB goes in for a biopsy on newly discovered breast cancer. Her MRI last week did not result in good news. In fact, the appointment tomorrow was supposed to be to remove the cancer but the MRI showed that it has probably invaded the muscle of her chest and so the surgeon and the oncologist recommend a round of chemo-therapy first to try to shrink the tumor before trying to remove it surgically. I’m not sure what the biopsy is going to do that the MRI didn’t, but they’re doing it anyway. Then on Wednesday, a bone scan to see if the cancer is in her bones.

She feels fine. And that is what feels like such a betrayal. How can you feel fine and be told that you have breast cancer that needs to be treated RIGHT NOW with chemo-therapy and surgery?

And it is that kind of unpredictability that worries me about my little tests tomorrow. Because aside from horrible cramps and excessive flow (and probably a nice dip in hemoglobin for a couple of weeks every month) I feel fine too. If you can’t rely on “feeling fine” as a barometer of health, what can you rely on?

But as soon as I had described what was going on and what my doctor suggested to JW, she volunteered that she “had the same thing and it turned out to be endometrial cancer.” Now, who knows if it was indeed the same thing. But I guess if AB is any example then feeling fine generally is no indicator about the seriousness of what could be going on.

So I wait. I wait with my friend for some good news on her condition. Anything really. I wait and try not to think that last Sunday might have been the last time I ever hear her play. Because we don’t know how she’s going to feel once chemo starts. And we don’t know once chemo starts if it will stop long enough for her to feel good enough to play again.

She’s being fitted today for a wig. Because she doesn’t want to be caught unprepared for when her hair falls out.

Her grown children live out of town. Her “boyfriend” (I think that is such a weird word for people older than 23!) tends to be self-absorbed. I don’t know him well enough to know if he can really be relied on to care for her through this. She’s going to sleep at his place Tuesday, because they won’t keep her at the hospital between the two procedures. But is he really going to step up and be there for her once chemo starts? Who will?

And I’m trying not to let the thoughts creep into my head. Thoughts like “I should get the name of the wig shop from her.”
— — —
A year ago (or longer) on This Journey…

Thanksgiving 2009
Sitting at the Kid’s Table 2008
Birthday Socks 2007
Endorphins 2006

November 26th, 2007 | Category: friends | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL