Getting opinion from MGH oncologists

So, me me me. It's all about me. Even I'm getting a bit tired of the topic!

I had an oncology consultation today at MGH. Dr. A was awesome. Love love love her. But, you work alot with the resident. He's okay -- smart, but not whip smart, and doesn't quite get where I am coming from with my questions. So that is a trade-off.

The news from Dana Farber was good -- curable disease, straightforward treatment.

The news from MGH is not bad but more cautious.

The cautious part -- last week, in the ER, I had a CT scan that showed spots on my liver. My first thought was, wow, this only gets better and better. To be fair, it might be normal stuff. Given the oddities of the past month, it's hard to bank on that.

Anyway, MGH wants to do and MRI to definitively say what those things are. Frankly, that is scary. But, it is what it is, I guess, and I just need to get the MRI done. They will schedule it, and reserve judgement until then.

More cautious part: Until they see the pathology slides themselves (I was unable to get those to them in time), they can't say whether the cancer is in the lymph nodes (not great) or fatty tissue (worse). The BI report is ambiguous (ugh), the Dana Farber seems to feel it is lymph, but it is questionable enough that MGH wants to look themselves.

Finally, the MGH docs called the surgeon, who, despite his operative note saying this is colon, now deems it to be rectal. The difference (to me) is in the chemo treatment you get, and, with rectal, you get the added bonus of radiation. Ugh. Oh, and the fact that "rectal" sounds even less attractive than "colon".

Where is the good news? Well, I love that they are thorough and called the surgeon themselves, want to see the slides, set up the MRI, etc.

Dana Farber offers a whip-smart resident, though.

It's so hard to know who to go with, though maybe the path is getting clearer.

On top of all this, my four-year-old has been having a sore leg. He never complains, but he did about this, so we were watching out. He started walking with a limp, and we took him to the pediatrician, who had us take him to Children's Hospital. So, there we were, juggling hospital doctor appointments. He's on watch and wait, and seems to be a little better tonight. It was horrible to not be able to be there for him.

I sometimes wonder if some black cloud passed over our house one night and I forgot to get us all out of the way.

I'll end with a funny story. One of my allergies is Thimerisal, a preservative used in some eyedrops and in some vaccines. While I was in the ER, I heard one nurse telling another nurse that I was allergic to Tiramisu. How funny is that!

Love, Marie