Day 15. Bone marrow biopsy.

I finally met with an oncologist on Monday. My plan going into it was to see her now since she could get my in, then go see one at SCCA later on.  Plans have changed!  Dr. Blau is amazing.  I liked her immediately.  I was afraid that she wouldn't be familiar enough with my cancer since breast cancer is kind of her specialty, but it turns out she's worked with lymphoma patients a lot and is close friends with one of the top lymphoma specialists in the country.  She said that whenever she has a lymphoma patient, she runs everything by him.  Sold!

When I went to see Dr. Blau, my diagnosis was still not 100% confirmed.  We hadn't heard back from the pathology specialist in Washington DC.  Dr. Blau made a couple calls and got my diagnosis confirmed just a few minutes into the appointment.  I officially have nodular lymphocyte-predominant Hodgkin's lymphoma.

After that, the craziness began.  Dr. Blau really got the ball rolling on everything.  She had me talk to the office's financial advisor about options for freezing my eggs.  (Turns out there's a clinic in Seattle that offers a humongous discount for cancer patients - like, thousands of dollars off the normal cost.  Score!)  She decided that we should do the bone marrow biopsy that morning in her office, so she had a team of about 3 different people come in and prep me, and did my biopsy in between patients.

Ohhhh, the bone marrow biopsy.  It was horrible.  Not as bad as I thought it would be, but horrible nonetheless.  A nurse came in and put an IV in my arm, and hooked me up to some fluids before drawing some blood for testing.  They couldn't do full-on sedation in Dr. Blau's office (which would have been much preferred), but they offered to give me conscious sedation.  I eagerly accepted.

Conscious sedation is like happy juice.  It made me feel drunk, and although I could still feel the pain (oh man, did I feel it), it made me care less that I was hurting.  Hey, it was a lot better than being totally awake.

For the biopsy, Dr. Blau had me lay face down on the table, and she poked and prodded until she found just the right spot.  It's a certain part of the hip that has to be biopsied, and it's basically at the top part of your ass.  She used a bit of novocain to numb the area near the surface, then went deeper and numbed the area around my hip bone.  Honestly, the second part of the novocain was one of the worst parts of the whole experience.  It hurt like hell.

After everything was numb (sort of), she made a small incision and stuck a huge needle into my bone.  You really have to work to stick a needle through bone.  There was a lot of pushing and twisting, and it was the weirdest sensation ever.  I don't even know how to describe it.  The first needle was used for the aspiration - bone marrow tissue is taken out in liquid form in a tube and used to put on slides.  Dr. Blau made the comment that I might be anemic based on the color of my blood, and that worries me - anemia is a sign that the cancer could have spread to the bone marrow.  But I'll cross that bridge if I come to it.

After she'd gotten enough liquid tissue out, Dr. Blau removed that needle and then pushed an even larger, hollow needle into a different part of my hip bone.  Bigger needle = hurts wayyyy worse.  I'm proud of myself - I didn't cry.  I really wanted to, but I didn't.  I definitely groaned and shoved my face in the pillow, though.  Once the bigger needle was in place, she took a smaller needle and ran it through the bigger one.  I guess a cap or something is then placed on it to create suction.  You know how when you have a straw in soda and you put your thumb over the top and pull the straw out, the soda stays inside?  This kind of worked the same way.

Except you can't just stick the needle in and then pull it out and call it good.  No, apparently bone marrow is a stubborn little jerk, and you have to twist the needle around to free it from the rest of the marrow.  And my marrow is extra stubborn, and not enough came out in the needle.  SO IT HAD TO BE DONE ALL OVER AGAIN.  It sucked, no pun intended.

After that, I was totally done.  I sort of remember the ride home.  I ended up just sleeping the whole rest of the day.   I was really sore the rest of the night, and still a little sore yesterday.  Based on what people online have said about their experiences, I expected to be out of commission for a couple days, but it really wasn't that bad.

I have a PET scan scheduled for Friday morning.  I'll have to get injected with this radioactive material (how freaky does that sound?), let it absorb into my body for about an hour, then go in a giant body scanner and see if anything lights up on the scans.  This will determine if the cancer has spread to any other lymph nodes or organs, and will tell what stage my cancer is.

I have a long work week this week - it's my 4-day week, plus I work overtime on Sunday to make it 5 days.  With my PET scan eating up a lot of my sleeping time on Friday, it's going to seem even longer.  I'm trying to work the same amount of overtime that I've been working most of the year - at least one day a weekend - but I don't know how much longer I can keep it up.  I'm getting more and more exhausted, and I don't know if that's the cancer fatigue itself, or if it's the stress on top of the cancer.  I'm totally willing to give up the overtime shifts.  I'm just hoping I'm still able to work my normal 12-hour nights while I'm going through treatment.

Well, I'm going to fix up a salad for dinner (yes, dinner at 4am - the life of a night shifter, haha) and catch up on Nashville before I go to bed.  Ciao!