reflections

Last night Cruz woke up around 1am saying his leg was hurting. He’s having a lot of “growing pains” lately and it feels good when he needs me. I comforted him and massaged his leg until he fell asleep. This also reminds me of when I was little. I used to have a lot of growing pains too and my sister Silvia would always massage my legs until I fell asleep. Sometimes I wish I could start all over. I don’t think I would change much but maybe I could find the cancer sooner. It’s not like my doctors were negligent or anything. I had just had a full physical including a breast exam about a year before my diagnosis. My cancer is a grade 3 cancer which means it grows really fast. I guess I was just too stupid. I didn’t check myself. A simple self-breast exam could’ve helped me. So, my lesson to all of you is to check your breasts or have your spouse/partner do it for you. It could save your life.

Last week I had my 7 th PET-CT scan. To prepare for it you have to eat a low carb/low sugar diet the day before and you can’t have anything to eat or drink except water for 6 hours before the procedure. When you get to the office they check your blood sugar and inject you with a radioactive glucose tracer and make you wait an hour before they scan you so the tracer can circulate throughout your body.   That’s a lot of radiation that has already been injected into my body and there’s no end in sight.   I will continue to get them every 3 months or so for the rest of my life. Since November of last year my scans have been good. NED. Those are the magic words that every Stage IV cancer patient wants to hear. But this time it seems my results are somewhat inconclusive. The radiologist says NED but my neck lymph nodes are showing some low level metabolic activity that needs to be monitored. My oncologist isn’t worried at the moment. She says it could be due to infection but with my luck I