CSTAR

I must apologize for not keeping up with my writing. Things have been happening, and the more behind I have gotten, the more formidable the task of catching up became. Bottom Line: A Lot Has Happened.

Let’s just focus on the pressing issues, and fill in back story as necessary:

I’m having surgery today.

I’ve been up all night, because I hate going to sleep before surgery. I know that I am going to be unconscious most of tomorrow (today), and I just want to do all the stuff I won’t be able to do for the next couple of days.

Why am I having surgery (again) you may ask? Because one of my lymph nodes is growing, and Dr. Pelzer thinks it is easier to just take it out rather than attempt to divine its nature through further imaging and diagnosis. Cut first, ask questions later.

My growing lymph node could be a sign of metastatic spread to my lymph system, which would be the first step in distant metasteses. Every doctor has told us that metastatic spread is highly unlikely with the type of cancer I have, but we continue to defy accurate prediction.

Dr. Pelzer will remove the lymph node and send it to pathology to determine whether it is growing from cancer or as a result of damage from the proton radiation therapy.

It is not lost on me that when I attempt to write about this, I find myself choosing phrases that I’ve used in previous entries. “Under the Knife Again” is how I feel, but I’ve already used that phrase, furthermore, that particular word sequence itself indicates a recurring phenomena. The bottom line is, I am frustrated to be going to the hospital again, to have surgery again, to recover again.

Of course, things could be far worse.

The reason we are jumping straight to surgery with very little imaging is that this procedure should be very simple, and it is far more accurate to biopsy than to use an MRI and attempt to infer what is going on in an area of my body that has seen such serious trauma. There is radiated tissue, scar tissue, artificial bone, titanium, iridium, and weapons-grade plutonium (allegedly) in that region, so it is best to cut first and ask questions later. Measure twice, of course.