I'm OK to go!

So, on Friday I headed over to San Francisco for my radiation simulation. They put my mask on, locked me in, the techs left the room and shut the crazy heavy door that protects them from what I'm getting (?!?), and they took a CT scan of my head. All this is to make extra sure they laid everything out just right and nothing is going to get radiated that shouldn't get radiated. After the CT, my radiation oncologist took a look and says everything looks excellent. Now I'm good to go ahead. I will be starting my radiation treatments on Monday at 3:30. So everyday for 2 weeks I'll head over to UCSF for a quick dose of cancer killing radiation.

In the midst of all this I went to see my medical oncologist on Tuesday and it looks like the cancer in my breast is growing back. She suggested I go back on Herceptin for now and see if it does any good. Normally they don't want you taking anything while you're on radiation, but Herceptin is so benign I got the go ahead. The great thing about my doctor is that she has a plan- We'll keep an eye on things after radiation and if Herceptin isn't keeping things in check, we'll add Tykerb back (at the normal dose so I won't be so sick). If those two aren't doing what we want she has a clinical trial she'd suggest I try. I love having a plan (although we all know the plan is subject to change at any moment).

For a second here I'm just going to complain: Sometimes dealing with cancer itself is easier than dealing with all the stupid crap surrounding treatment of said cancer. I went to work on Friday, ran out of my last class and jumped into a waiting car (driven by Keith) to head for my radiation simulation. I didn't have any options for my appointment time (urgh!!) so I had to be there on Friday at 1:30. The nice part is that traffic was favorable on the trip over and I was out of there by 2:00pm or so, not bad! I had my appointment for Herceptin across town at 3:30, so we headed over there to see if they could get me in earlier but no dice! No problem, we grabbed a bite to eat and headed back around 3:00. At 3:30 I got pulled in for my infusion only to be told that they don't have an order for the infusion, ugh! So, they call and try to get this sorted out, and Keith and I spend (are you ready...) 3.5 hours in the infusion room. Now, 90 minutes of that is the actual infusion part, but still!?!? Ugh. I hate shit like that. Oh, and to make matters worse, while I'm sitting there waiting I got a call from the woman who helped me schedule an ultrasound (to get a baseline of what is going on in my breast). She says I can't just get an ultrasound; I need a mammogram too. Mammograms are unpleasant to say the least and I've had 3 in the last year, why do I need another when I can point to the problem area!?!? Oh, and this process takes for fucking ever! I never get in and out of the mammogram/ultrasound office in under 2 hours (tests only take 30-40 minutes). So now that I need two tests, I can't get it done before my radiation appointment unless I take time off from work (which I am loath to do with my sick day count dwindling away). Needless to say I was one cranky person, I don't know how Keith put up with me!

Just in case all this wasn't interesting enough, Red has been keeping things interesting... Last week Red had to have a tooth pulled (after an accident during a game of fetch). While he is recuperating he can't play with tennis balls (a big deal for a ball obsessed dog) so Keith was playing with him with a balled up bandana. Seems safe enough, but Red ate the bandana...So another trip to the vet and Red was sent home with orders to monitor him closely. Everyone is hoping the bandana will come out the other end, but there is a chance it will block things up and then he'll need surgery!!! Ugh. We're watching him carefully and so far there's no sign of the bandana, but he isn't showing any signs of sickness either, so no surgery yet.