Cancer

The local lab could not make a definite determination of the biopsy sample, so they sent it to a specialist who also had a hard time interpreting the slides. The eventual conclusion was not 100% certain but indicated a probability of a low grade malignancy resulting in a recommendation for radiation therapy, so I now have an appointment for a consultation with an oncologist for next week.

"Merry Christmas. You have cancer."  Not what I really wanted to hear on Christmas Eve. Okay, of course that's not what the doctor actually said, but that's what I more or less heard.  Enough of that.  I probably need to make an extra effort to stay positive despite the fact that that's my normal nature anyway. Like now I'm thinking I'm glad I found out about it before it got to be too late. However this is still starting to be a little scary and I'm feeling rather ignorant about it all, but none the less I'm going to hold to the idea that very little, if any, of the tumor remains and whatever might be left will be adequately destroyed by the radiation. I'm trying not to spend a lot of time worrying about it, although I have to admit it's hard not to keep thinking about it.

It occurred to me that it might be good to keep track of what gets done to me and how I react so that I'll have a record of the details in the years to come and that gave me an excuse to investigate keeping a blog so I'll try that here and see how it goes. I entered the previous two entries backdated to preserve the timing.