Back in the Saddle

I can hardly believe I haven't posted since February! Sorry to those inquiring minds. As always, no news has been good news. Mom has been fit as a fiddle. She continues to eat very well, practice her chi gong exercises and meditation daily, and even managed to spend two weeks in Florida with her father in March.

Two days before returning home she started experiencing significant difficulty maintaining balance, dizziness, and nausea. A CT scan done at the local ER ruled out anything worrisome, and she was diagnosed with a viral inner ear infection, which explains her symptoms because if our inner ears are inflamed, our balance tends to be significantly altered. She was given medication to help with the vertigo and nausea, but it made her feel so drowsy she only ended up taking it once.

A month later, she is still battling some residual effects from the infection. Of late, she's noticed some tenderness and discomfort under her arms to her outer breasts. My initial reaction was that this might be a side effect of the hysterectomy; her hormones are probably out of whack. But the tenderness persisted and she went to see Dr. Nelson (our one-and-only-bestest GYN oncologist) this past Friday. She also checked in with Dr. Donadio (her primary oncologist) because she has some pronounced sites of swelling/lumps in her supraclavicular area (that's the little divot about the collar bone) and some around her breasts.

So who knows. Dr. Nelson and Dr. Donadio were stumped, and we all know Mom likes to give them a run for their money. She had a CT scan done of her neck, chest, and abdomen that was inconclusive. Given that she had this significant infection that she's still recovering from, her immune system might be on over-drive. Think of your lymph system as a long string running along your blood stream with little cheerios dispersed along the way. Plasma travels along that string then those little cheerios suck out any infectious material along the way. Those lymph nodes in close proximity might have just gotten plumb tuckered out and backed up a bit, causing the swelling.

Naturally, because of how unusual Mom's cancer has spread and presented, there is also a possibility that these lymph nodes could be indicative of a more serious issue, or that the lump in her breast is cancerous. These are a few possibilities, and as of now her team is uncertain what the most likely diagnosis could be.

The plan is to biopsy the sites on Monday bright and early. It will be a relatively quick (roughly 3 hour) procedure where using a camera and a needle, they suck out some of the fluid from these questionable areas. It'll then take anywhere between 48 and 72 hours for pathology results to be given to us. Wednesday or Thursday we should know what we're up against.

As you can imagine, it was a rough few days for Mom. As she put it, she went to a very dark place after learning that this could be cancer. In true form, she woke up this morning, chi-gonged, meditated, manged a healthy breakfast, and was off to the theatre tonight when I last spoke to her. Her M.O. remains the same: pray for the best, prepare for the worst.

I'm heading home tomorrow evening so I can accompany her to the biopsy appointment, and with any luck I can re-work my schedule to be with her when the results come in. As always, I'll post as soon as I hear anything.

So ramp up the good vibe-sending again!