4 is the number of the day

I arrived home from Nashville at about 4 am this morning.

My friend and I left last evening just before 6 pm and drove straight through. We took turns for the first 4.5 hours (yes, I shared...this statement is aimed at one particular person...you know who you are). Then we dropped my friend off at her car that she left at an Amtrak station and we headed back out for the last legs individually.

She had a little more than two more hours drive to get back home to Indianapolis and I had nearly five more hours to get back to Madison. I talked on the phone with Geoff and my mom (thanks mom for staying up to the wee hours of the morning chatting away with me). I talked with my friend for a few minutes too. For the last few hours I was on my own. I felt bad for keeping my mom up so late and I need a little me time.

Part of it was I really didn't have me time for the past week, and part of it was I needed time to process how much I missed my Nash Vegas life and friends. I felt like I did when I was a little kid coming home from summer camp...so happy to go home to my family, my zoo, my bed, my home, but so incredibly sad that my days are no longer going to include 13 amazing women telling some of the funniest stories I have ever heard, or making our own even funnier stories. They are my new family and it was hard to leave them.

I did it though, I got home. I was so relieved and then I was so crabby. I don't know if it all hit at once or what, but I just needed to go to sleep immediately. I took a quick shower, set my alarm and realized I only had a whopping 1.75 hours to sleep before I had to be back up for chemo round 4.

I couldn't do it. Geoff wasn't ready to go so I waited until he was almost ready before I stopped snoozing my alarm and finally dragged myself out of my bed to get dressed.

I apologized at the hospital because we were over an hour late, but I was told not to worry about it numerous times. I did my usual labs (they were good), I had an IV inserted at the same time (it was a little more painful than usual but it worked great and it's still in so it was worth the pain), and then we headed for our clinic appointment.

Today we asked for the PA. We really like her and are comfortable with her, but as usual there was a delay and someone else came in. This new person introduced herself and asked if we wanted to see her or wait for PA. I recognized her name as my NP's self proclaimed twin and office mate and decided immediately that we needed to meet this person.

She was amazing too. Very sweet. She asked me the usual questions and we talked a little about the Nashville trip, then Geoff and it asked her about the final results from my recent scans. She pulled them up. The PET results were the same, but the CT scans had some discrepancies.

The most notable discrepancy was the CT scan did show a new tumor in my renal vein that was 6 mm. I was heartbroken. It also showed that some of the pelvic nodes hadn't shrunk as we thought. We just looked at each other and I thought to myself "of course, here we go again." It feels like good news is always followed by some sort of gut wrenching news. Always.

Most of the thoughts going through my head were things like "I laughed about my ability to kill cancer all this week, or I thought it was all going to be ok." When we had a few moments to ourselves, Geoff turned to me asked "were we getting to cocky? Did we need to be taken down a notch?" We agreed we hadn't thought it was the case and that we will never get used to this rollarcoaster ride.

A few minutes later the NP brought in our favorite MD to discuss the significance of the scan discrepancies. The MD told us that she felt it was all really good. She said the kind of cancer I have tends to have high levels of metabolic activity, aka it is very PET scan reactive. She felt that if this new node didn't show up on the PET scan (it didn't) then that was good thing and it wasn't something to be overly concerned about. Also she felt that if the PET scan showed less metabolic activity in all the nodes that was more significant than the CT showing the some of the pelvic nodes having no difference in size.

I won't lie, I'm still a little crushed. I heard the words she said, but I feel like I've lied to all my friends, family, and even to myself. What's important is that everything shows the distant nodes (the ones in my neck) are shrinking and going into remission. If the pelvic nodes are proving to be more difficult but it's contained to the pelvic then there are other options. Really though, I want this chemo to work so bad. I want remission so bad. Hell, I just want to live so bad.

I have to remind myself that going into this scan the original idea was that even if there was no change from my last scans that was considered very good bc it is still early for the chemo to have dramatic effects. According to the PET scan I did have dramatic results, so this is good. I have 3 rounds left and a lot more cancer killing to do. I can do this. I might be a little discouraged, but tomorrow is new day and I'll be ready to keep fighting.