Two meetings this week. One with Dr. X, the oncologist, and Dr. Y, the radiology guy. Yeah, they are pretty sure there is nearby lymph node involvement but, again, they won't be absolutely sure until the surgery. The surgery is still on schedule for November 19. I'm heading out there on the 17th. My sister says she will be out of the hospital on the 24th or 25th, so she'll be back at her place for Thanksgiving. She hopes she can eat turkey.
The plan now is to "wait and see", which means we'll get a better picture from the surgery, and then we'll see about how to proceed from there, but there is no plan at this point to send my sister back into chemo and/or radiation as soon as possible after she has recovered from surgery.
My sister is nearly ecstatic about this. She wanted a break desperately which I certainly understand. Me, I'm nervous. I want to be as aggressive as possible but Dr. X says there is no data to support any approach but a "wait and see" strategy at the moment. Well, I purport to be a science guy so this information does, in fact, put my mind a bit more at ease. I understand it is only my primitive reptilian brain that wants to keep battering my sister's poor body. If the science says "wait and see", then I am willing to "wait and see".
Questions persist, though. For example, the fact that there is no data to support anything other than "wait and see"... does that mean we've had it and doing anything now won't make any difference anyway, or does it mean we have data from both approaches, "wait and see" and aggressive, and the outcome seems to be the same in both? In which case, I nervously ask, what are those outcomes? Good? Bad? If in between (which must be the case), what are the percentages?
But overall, since my sister needs a break and the doctor thinks that's the best approach, then that's what I think too. I just decided to think that and so now that's what I'm going to think.
A bunch of us are starting to put together a fund-raising project to help my sister with living expenses which are becoming a problem because she is unable to do her regular work. If it works and we make some real progress with it, this would be a great relief.
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