Medical News, Perhaps TMI

I give everyone permission to skip this one, as it is likely to be more detailed than interests most, but this blog doubles as a journal sometimes because I like to get things recorded while they are fresh in my mind.  The summary:  I met with a Western medicine doctor and an Eastern medicine doctor today.  They focused on completely different things but nothing that they said was in conflict with the other. It was a super interesting day.

By chance, I had scheduled consultations with both the radiology oncologist and an acupuncturist today.  The first one was specifically referred by my surgeon and the second was highly recommended by two friends who do not know each other and whose paths will probably never cross (it took me no time to understand the power of a recommendation from two such wildly different people).

This morning I was supposed to be at the radiologist's office at 8:45.  Ordinarily this would be no problem except that I was having a vicious relapse of a gastrointestinal condition that has tormented me on and off this week. I think it is related to post-surgical stuff because it is so weird -- all symptoms clear up by noon, usually, and do not resume until early the next morning.  I didn't know what to do since I couldn't figure out how to cancel the appointment, so I just decided I was going to make it happen, I gritted my teeth and got in the car.  Somehow it all worked. It was a gamble, but I got through the appointment without disaster and in fact all symptoms subsided by the time I was headed home.

What I learned from the radiologist:  I will need five sessions of radiation, targeted very precisely at the cuff  at the top of my vagina.  (this is when you should stop reading if this is TMI).  The nurse told me the method of getting the radiation to the spot is by inserting a cylinder and then the doctor threads a very thin wire down the center of this cylinder and then the radiation is delivered by gamma rays, for about five minutes. The first session will be very long because they need to get everything all set up, I will need a CT scan while this lovely cylinder is in place. Ugh. I asked the nurse just how big this cylinder is, just so I can imagine it. She said, for want of a better comparison, it's about like a penis.  Later, the doctor blithely told me it is about the size of a tampon.  That sounded much better but I wondered why those two descriptions were so different.  So when the nurse and I were working on the scheduling, I asked her what she thought of the doctor's assessment -- she rolled her eyes and said both of the doctors always minimize what is going to happen, thinking no one will notice the difference. She says they tell the men who are being treated for prostate cancer that the probe is about the size of their finger, but she says, "Only if you are King Kong."  She went and got me a probe so I could see it. Okay, I am prepared.

The very good reason for these five uncomfortable sessions is that the probability (?) of cancer cells getting a new foothold decreases drastically, from about 12% to less than 1%. And then we will be done. There are side effects but they won't last forever. I will need to be attentive to scar tissue sealing the sides of everything together in there (ew) after things get radiated, but they will tell me what to do.

But here's the inevitable funny part.  We are chatting, the doctor and I, and he is telling me about the resources available to me at the hospital, as a cancer patient.  I said, "actually, I have been inside the doors of the Cancer Resource Center many times -- I used to deliver CSA bags there."  His eyebrows flew up. "That was you?!  What happened, why don't we do that anymore?"  I told him that it often happens in organizations and offices that interest dwindles when people realize they have to eat vegetables every single week. It is just more than they can manage, so they don't sign up the next time.  He jumped up, picked up the phone, got in touch with somebody and said he had a farmer here in his office, being treated for endometrial cancer, will be here for five sessions, somebody needs to make an appointment with her and get this CSA program going again.  (I had never actually said I wanted to deliver to the hospital anymore, it was kind of a pain going through all those doors and walking down the hall to the conference room, and I always felt like a grubby fish out of water.) I said, "Dr. Hong! What are you doing?" He said, "I am going to get people to eat better. I will prescribe vegetables."

It is always so funny when my worlds intersect unexpectedly. I do not expect the CSA program to resume there, but we shall see.

I had about an hour at home to get some spading done (hooray! first time this year) and then I headed off to the acupuncturist.  This was a first-time meeting so I had been warned that it would take a long time. I had filled out a ten page questionnaire, telling all.

We sat down in his office and he got right to talking about my medical history. There was zero discussion about acupuncture or how it works or why you would do it. I was there, and we were on a mission.  He said that my recent surgery, while uncomplicated and relatively non-invasive, was a major event, traumatic to my body, and I should not underestimate how it affects me. I should take it seriously. He was direct, attentive, wasted no words. 

Then we went into the room with the table (like a massage table, with a place for your face when you are on your belly, and with enough pillows to keep your back from hurting when you are on your back).  He told me to undress down to my underwear, lie down on the bed face up, covered with a paper blanket. Then he came back in with some kind of a diagnostic tool and banged gently on various special points, first on the left, then on the right. The machine beeped. Then he told me to flip over, face down and cover myself with the paper blanket. That's not so easy, but I managed it.  He came back in the room and put needles in my back and various other relevant spots. Then he said to stay there and rest until he came back. It seemed like he was gone for hours. I lay perfectly still with my face in the donut hole thing and thought and maybe napped. When he came back, I asked how long that had been. 25 minutes, did you sleep? Yes maybe.  Then the same routine, face up.

In his office afterwards he said, now we talk.  He showed me a bar graph of the twelve meridians in my body. He said I am operating at about 60% on average which does not surprise him, given the recent surgery. He said that's okay for now.  But there are four meridians that are out of wack, not in balance on left and right. In almost all cases, the left side is lagging and the right side is much more energetic.  He tracks much of this to my knee, which is wrecking the whole system. He said a lot more than that, but I can't remember it all. These are all words and concepts that sound reasonable but I have never spoken this language.  He said we will try to get the yin and yang closer together.  He said that the area around my pelvis/former uterus is very, very dark and if he had seen that a month ago he would have sent me to the gynecologist -- he would not have been able to say what was wrong, but he could see there was something very wrong.  He says after I heal we will begin to address that region that is in need of much help, but not yet. He was very kind.  When I told him about the upcoming radiation therapy, his face just dropped, but he said it is important and we should try to be as ready as possible. He said, "you need to rest, you need to control the amount of work you do, you need laughter and joy. No adrenaline. This will get you as ready as you can be for the radiation."  And he said that I will need to be careful not to let the scar tissue cause the sides of my vagina to get glued together -- which is just exactly what the radiologist said earlier today.

That visit took 2 1/2 hours.  I go back in a week for my first tune-up. It is all so very interesting. He was very concerned about my knee, as it seems to be pulling everything out of balance. Well, I agree with that.  He also said that the regular doctors have done their job, finding the cancer and taking it out. But he said they won't ask why it happened in the first place, and we need to try to get rid of the conditions that would make it likely for such a thing to happen again.  We need to figure it out. I can't argue with anything he said -- except that Dr. Singh said just the same thing, from a different perspective.

We never talked about my weight, but I imagine that will come up once we get the rest of me in better balance.

I came home and got back on the tractor to finish spading the ground for onions and early spring crops.  This task brings me joy, it does not use any adrenaline, and I am delighted to report that the soil does not seem to be permanently ruined after last year's terrible rains and compaction. The soil looks great.

Next time I will write about something else. I am pretty sure no men got all the way to the end of this post!