I thought there wasn't supposed to be a limbo land here, but I'm in it. The results of my spine biopsy returned "irregular" cells, but so far nothing more conclusive than that. Nothing obviously tumorish. There is one more test to be done, a cytokeratin staining, and we're supposed to have those results tomorrow. Positive cytokeratin staining means it's a tumor, and no cytokeratin staining means it's not a tumor. Obviously we're hoping for no staining, but then the result of the biopsy remains irregular and inconclusive. The plan for the future would be to keep an eye on it. Obviously this "answer" would be less than satisfactory, but much much much much better than the alternative.
Stress has been high, so I took a nap this afternoon. During said nap I dreamt about my possible T9 vertebral tumor. In my dream I realized that I never had a tumor, not even in my breast. I questioned what metastatic INFLAMMATORY breast cancer would look like--possibly irregular cells that lack ordinary tumor markers? I will pursue this line of questioning with Dr. Oncologist when I next see her, possibly tomorrow.
Intriguingly, Dr. O is more concerned about my platelet magic than T9. She thinks my platelets should be higher by now (they were 87 today, possibly in part due to the transfusion). She is worried that it might mean that I have bad bone marrow, and is thinking about sampling my bone marrow (which would be a nice control for the T9 sample, anyway). I told her that I'd like to wait on this bone marrow sampling business. I told her that today is the day I usually would have received the hard chemo, and that I have a cold, and let's just give my bone marrow time to recoup. You all have seen the graphs of my amazing blood cell recovery rates. I think that in the case of the platelets, we proceeded with hard chemo despite the fact that the platelets were lower than the cut-off, and now it's just going to take a bit longer for me to catch them up. Viruses can sometimes cause decreased platelets, too, and I have been fighting a cold for several days now. So I am all over the wait and see course of action when it comes to my platelets. Also, we're still waiting for the results of various platelet tests; why would we put me through another bone marrow sampling before we see those results? That's right, we shouldn't.
I'll take limbo land over tumor land any day.
Time to do something fun with the ladies.
Did you know that "limbo" as a concept is also derived from medieval Catholic belief (much like your friend St Peregrine)? It is where babies went when they died if they hadn't been baptized. Because, without baptism, they clearly couldn't go to heaven (having been conceived and born with original sin), but even the most dogmatic Mother Angelica/Mel Gibson type would admit that there is no need for a baby to go to hell - or that said baby would lack any venial or mortal sins needing to be worked off in purgatory, for that matter. Thus, limbo. I guess it was like a nice but sort of anodyne playland. (For the record I'm not sure any Catholics actually think this anymore. We have more important worries than hypothetical unbaptized dead babies.)
ReplyDeleteThere is of course no parallel between any of the above and your situation, except the part about playing. Hope you and the ladies have fun!
The waiting game sucks. Lets play hungry, hungry hippos!
ReplyDeleteGet yourself a limbo girl...
ReplyDeleteGive that chick a limbo twirl...
There's a limbo moon above...
They will fall in limbo love...