My first oncology appointment was back down at Piper at 8:45. Unsure about traffic, I left at 8 am and got there 10 minutes early, which is sort of odd for me. Again, the helpful volunteers offered up coffee and tea in China cups. The novelty should have worn off by now, but it still makes me smile. The nurse took my vitals by 9:10, but the doctor didn't come in until about 9:30. I know, I am hyper-aware of my wait times, but we all have our thing, right?
The doc was very friendly and actually sat down and asked my history. Not my medical history, the history of my life. That was a nice touch. So then I of course asked for his history and found out he initially had try to make a go of it in acting and comedy, but decided to go to med school when a) he realized he wasn't going to make a living in his current field, and b) his dad developed cancer. He was funny, but he tried too hard. So of course I mentioned that it was a good thing he left comedy, so he asked if his jokes made me uncomfortable. God no! Don't you get sarcasm? You're a comedian for crying out loud!
Anyway, the appointment. He showed me some studies and gave me some statistics and told me that I had a pretty low chance of getting invasive cancer even without tamoxifen, but the risk drops even more with it. The main side effects are hot flashes and vaginal discharge. More serious, but even less comon side effects are increased risk of uterine cancer and stroke, but these are more likely in post-menopausal women. So there are not a lot of downsides to at least trying the medication. He also told me that, unlike the surgeon and pathologist, he didn't think that DCIS was really cancer. So I may or may not have DCIS, and that may or may not even be considered cancer. Isn't medicine fun? He performed a pretty complete exam, told me I looked a little anemic, and sent me across the street to the oncology building for labwork.
Wow, what a change from the quiet serenity of the Piper Breast Center! Oncology is scary! The waiting room was packed full of people, again all of them older than me (cancer definitely prefers older people), and some of them wearing scarves over their bald chemo heads. I felt bad, being a non-cancer patient only there for labwork. My only cross to bear was that I spent the entire morning down there. Yeah, people are dying and I'm crying about the inconvenience this is to me.
The lab techs were calling people in one after another - they were certainly kept on their toes. There were rooms for chemotherapy infusions. A bunch of the patients had ports for access to their veins. This is the true battlefield in the war against cancer, that's for sure.
So, I will start tamoxifen in a couple of weeks. I want to wait until after my elbow surgery, which is in 9 days. I follow up with a mammogram and exam by the oncologist in 3 months, then an MRI and exam with the surgeon 6 months after that, and so on until menopause.
I'm sort of over this whole cancer thing (thank God), especially as I am coming to realize that what I have or had is pretty minor. Time has also helped. I have learned a lot on this journey, and my personality has changed a little as well. I'll keep you posted on the tamoxifen and follow ups. And I still have a few things to say about breast cancer and cancer in general, but as my year of being 40 comes to a close (I turn 41 in 3 days!), I can start to put this behind me as well.
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