Are We Living or Dying, Right NOW continued

 

 

            Ya know when you pick up the energy of someone else’s fear (which is really your own since they are just a hologram) it really comes on strong. I felt a little like I was in shock.  Shock is just a wall we put up to not feel any intense feeling (which is usually fear).  I hung up the phone and went back to my email. 

As the evening progressed I decided to not say anything to anyone I spoke to until I knew more.  When I felt inside I could not find any feelings that felt like cancer or impending death.  Rafael (my husband) couldn’t either.

We waited about an hour before the doctor saw us.  When he finally entered the room he pulled out the CT scan and went over each picture.  He is really good at explaining things.  He showed us the occlusion on the whole right side of my face.  This tumor was big and taking up my entire ethmoid sinus and some of the sphenoid sinus, as well. (These are the honey comb structures along the side and in back of your nose.)   It also had grown through one side of my nose and was pushing my septum (the cartilage that divides your nose into two sides) all the way over to the far side instead of being in the center.

The report said it could be sarcoma (cancer) or an inverted papilloma or something unknown.

Dr. S was pretty cool. He questioned me about my symptoms again.  I could tell he was trying to understand how this could have happened and no one having known about it.

He said I needed to see a specialist asap.  He immediately called a friend of his while we were sitting there.  He told her (she was an ENT, ear, nose, throat specialist) what the report said and ask if she could see us soon. She said, “How about 2:00 PM  (it was noon when he called).  Tell her to bring the CT films.  We shuffled ourselves out of the office, over to the Imagining for a copy of the films, out to a quick lunch and were waiting in her office at 1:50.

The rooms were tiny as this was her satellite office.  As she bounced in the room I immediately liked her.  Her first words were, “OK I bet Thomas has you scared to death about dying and cancer.   Well, if you were Cantonese and male I would suggest you be scared, but you are not.  So relax. This tumor does not act like cancer.  It is too neat and tidy.”  She held up the CT films and showed us how clean the borders of the growth were.  Cancer is usually erratic and grows everywhere and out of control.  This is almost like a controlled growth (I am sure the control part had nothing to do with my personalityJ)

And I have to say that if it is an inverted papilloma it has about a 15-16% chance of being malignant.  We won’t know until we remove it.  That is our next step.”

Rafael and I had reservations for Maui that had been scheduled for almost a year.  We were to leave June 7^th.  She advised us that I could not fly for a month after the surgery. 

There I was no question for me, Maui or no Maui this was being removed as soon as she could do it.  Her schedule was packed and the next time available was late June.  I looked and at her and she looked at me and she said, I will do the surgery a week from the next Sat (about 11 days from the day I was seeing her.)  It seemed like a life-time to me but I agreed and a lot better than late June.

She explained that she was treating this as if it were cancer.  She would be excising everything she could inside the right side of my face with a new technology that she herself had brought into Oregon.  It was some kind of robotic device that used 3D CT technology which was downloaded into some computer type machine.  It was called Landmark. She would do the surgery while watching a TV screen and following the outline of a special 3D CT scan I was to go get done a week before the surgery.  She has taught about 30% if the ENT specialists in Oregon this new technique.

I felt blessed that I had such an expert to work on me.  She was bright, funny, loving and kind.  I was truly being taken care of.

We left her office feeling more relaxed and still that was a small underlying realization that everything in my Life was about to change. I wasn’t sure what it was but I could feel it.

The next morning I called her scheduling person to confirm my surgery time and she informed me that Dr. Susan C-Z as not able to do the surgery as she had hoped on that Saturday.  She had a conflict she had forgotten about. My heart sank. 

I took a breath and continued to listen as she said, “Instead, she will come in on her day off this next Wednesday.”  Tears welled within as I felt this whole event was in God’s hands.  That was only 6 days away which barely gave me time to get the next 3D scan, blood work etc etc. done.  I also had to get insurance approval.  Perfect.  Thank you, God.

To Be continued