No small talk, please....

So, I ask myself, which do I want to write first, the good news or the bad news? How about the good news, since there is no... bad news, HA!

I slept good last night, but woke up not feeling too good, and sort of having a light case of dread... knowing I had to go see my oncologist today. Since last Thursday when my radiologist told me that he was pretty sure that my oncologist was going to start me on chemotherapy as the follow up to the radiation treatments, I was preparing myself to hear that bit of news today, and then starting chemo treatments possibly this week even.

My oncologist is a very down to business kind of doctor. Not a lot of small talk if any, and he's just very straight forward and to the point. My mom didn't like him from the first time she met him almost ten years ago. Me, I liked him. A lot. He seemed like a good doctor to me. Mom likes to chat with her doctors and wants them to be very friendly and warm. This guy wasn't. At all. Mom didn't like how he broke the news to me that I had stage 3 cancer. While I wouldn't have minded if he was super friendly and personable, it didn't bother me that he wasn't. I'm not exactly a chatty person either. I'm a realist. Then later, when we asked our GP what he thought of him, he agreed that he didn't have a terrific bedside manner, but that he was one of the best cancer doctors in the city. That was all I needed to hear, because I already liked his personality.

I think I appreciated the way he would look you straight in the eyes when talking to you and didn't talk down to you, and I think he's maybe a little shy like myself. And sometimes he surprises me... In the Fall of '08 I had an appointment on election day, and when he came in the room, I was expecting him to be his usual get down to business right away, no platitudes other than "How are you doing?", but he took me off guard and asked me if I had voted yet. I think it was the first time he ever had broken out any kind of small talk with me. I told him that I had voted absentee, and he said that was the way to do it. I guess he must have had to stand in line a while to wait to vote.

If I didn't like him before, I really like him after today.

I don't know why but I allowed mom to stay in the room for my exam this time. Normally I would have her wait and then come in after to hear what the doctor has to say, but I didn't want to have to bother with retrieving her.

The doctor came in with a young woman who was carrying a notepad or something. I assumed she was in training, but he never introduced her to me or told me the reason she was following him into the room. He asked how I was doing and asked when I finished with the radiation treatments and asked if I had a CT scan, etc. Mom told him that I'd also had a PET scan. Then he did something he always does... takes both my hands, holds them out in front of me, then feels my neck, collar etc. Then taps my back, asks if there is any pain. Also asks how my arms feel... he had informed me last time that this kind of cancer I had could make my arm hurt.

The young woman observed his examination (the dreaded pap smear, etc) and then they left to return after I dressed. I was sure I wasn't going to have to have a pap smear again since I'd just had one a couple months ago when I was last there. Again I was wrong. They always do it. I need to get used to that certainty.

He went over my scan and PET results and said that the lump had shrunk and said that I probably noticed that, and I agreed that I couldn't even feel any of it now. He asked what my radiologist had planned now, and I told him that he hadn't said and we were suppose to find out from him. I hadn't expected that question. Hm. Anyway, then he said that since the CT scans and the PET scans had only shown the neck area incidents of cancer (my words), and since the lump was shrinking we would be okay to just let it go for now, and that it wouldn't be necessary to treat it with chemo since there wasn't really anything to treat and why put my body through chemo when there wasn't any other signs of cancer anywhere else. He said that I would know if the cancer shows up again - it would make itself known to me, but that it might not come back. We will just have to wait and see. So, I go back in four months... then he will schedule a new CT scan before I see him the time after then. No chemo. At least not now.

Unbelievable. I am so happy, and I have the best oncologist in the universe :)

Oh yea, on the way out we got some small talk. He asked if we were going to the state fair. Mom said, "No thank you!" And I said I had enough of the fair when I was younger. He laughed.