The Final Diagnosis

Just a medical exam room. Not the one I was in, ours was much smaller.

I was finished with all the testing. I needed to go in to see my oncologist to be staged in my disease and discuss treatment options.

Dr. Sapra was a very nice man, and from what I read later, he thought I was a nice lady, too. His office was in a building that was next to the hospital, four stories tall, and looked like it was made of windows. He was on the fourth floor, and waiting for the elevator sometimes felt like forever.

My parents went with me to this appointment. Mom, with a two page list of questions, and dad with a tape recorder. We sat in the waiting room for a long time. I had come straight from work, and mom and dad had come together from home. Dad had finally had enough (he wasn't much on patience) and after we had been there for about 45 minutes, he went out for a smoke. Of course, that's when they decided to call us in. Luckily, dad came back just in time.

We all shuffled into the tiny exam room and tried to find comfortable spots to sit. Dad ended up standing by the door, Dr. Sapra took the chair by the sink, I sat up on the exam table and mom had a chair by the window. Dr. Sapra took out my charts and looked through them, writing here and there. Finally, he talked to us.

According to all those tests, the cancer had not spread to my bones or blood (good!), but I did have a mass in my chest, as well as the tumor in my neck. Because of the location and symptoms I had had, I was a stage IIA/B. Both my tumor and the mass in my chest were on the left side. For some reason that made a difference. (Stage II A/B)

Sr. Sapra had not had a lot of instances of my particular disease come through his office at that point in time, and told us that he had consulted the oncology council for advice on how to treat it. He said that I could one of three things: Have chemo only, and hope that the disease would go away through that; do radiation only; or have both. At this point, he said chemo would probably do the job, but there would be tests as time goes on, to see what was going on in my body. He said it looked like the best formula for me would be a concoction called ABVD. Adriamycin/Bleomycin/Vinblastine/Dacarbazine. (ABVD) He thought that would most likely do the job for me.

I was to have chemo once every two weeks, and it would last for several hours. There were several side effects, like hair loss, weight loss/gain, vomiting, nausea, dizziness, shortness of breath, headaches, dry mouth, yeast infections in my mouth, chills, low blood counts, dry/painful skin, mouth sores, the list just goes on and on. I didn't have all of this stuff happen to me, but I had other things... We'll get to that more later. I was to report to his office for my chemo, and I would be sitting in the little room next to this exam office with a bunch of people. From what I saw, it looked like I would be fighting for seating. Great fun. Dad even asked if I was allowed to drink. Nope.

The doctor wanted to start me on chemo the following week. We made an appointment for the following Tuesday. I wasn't going to take the day off from work, but my boss told me it was for the best. She was sure that I wouldn't want to come to work afterward. Mom and I discussed my hair and we made an appointment to have my hair cut after the chemo. I was going to cut it short, and since my hair was really long, I had decided I wanted to either donate what was left or use it for a wig for myself. Dr. Sapra had said it was ok for me to continue working at this point and I let my boss know that I was ok to do so.

So that was that. Now, I just had to make it through chemotherapy.

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