Setbacks.  Ah, joys. I have experienced several recently.  First, the LTR (laryngotracheal reflux) I have been suffering from since last fall has recurred and stayed with me since chemo (it had disappeared after my initial surgery) and my new insurance refuses to cover the one and only med that actually works.  So lately I’ve been in agonizing pain all day, every day.  Trying to be semi-normal toward and amongst others has been tough going at times.

Second, I met with my new oncologist here in NC and she has prescribed a bunch of tests (bone density, ultrasound, blood work, and more) to check various states of my being, and she also believes I ought to have radiation, given the amount of tumor I had and the “impressively high” odds I have of recurrence.  This was not what I wanted to hear.  What I wanted to hear was that she had a cure for my chemo brain, which doesn’t seem to be improving.  But she just said that will take patience.  Sometimes it takes years.

While I feel very well taken care of, and was overall impressed with the facility, which seems to offer one-stop shopping for the cancer patient (they even drew my blood right then and there–about 103 tubes of it), the last thing I wanted to hear was that 1) even though I’m on hormone blockers I might still be producing estrogen, which is what feeds my type of cancer, 2) that I might have to endure more treatment via radiation, 3) that the hormone blockers might be causing osteoporosis.  I appreciate her thoroughness, but would have been happier had she just said I am a-ok and ready to move on with my life.

No such luck.

I did get a referral to a plastic surgeon to consult about what I hope to be the final phase of my reconstruction.  I need to find another word for it, though; I can’t ever hear that word without thinking of it with a capital R, and no self-respecting southerner could hear that word without conjuring up images of carpetbaggers and the general misery that followed the Late Unpleasantness (you may know it as the Civil War or, as my Virginia relatives used to say, “the Wawah of Nawthun AggRESHun”).