Angels and Devils

Well, the day I meet with the kidney cancer doctor is getting closer. It's about three and a half days now. Still just sitting around not doing a whole lot of anything. Went down to my cardiologist's office today and got a printout of his patient records for me. It's mostly just office visit notes, nothing of any significant interest. I also dropped by the hospital imaging department and requested a few additional things that probably aren't critical. Their person that does that wasn't there today, I can probably pick up the disk some time tomorrow.

I'm also working on finding someone to take over doing a task I've been doing on a weekly basis for about 30 years now. Our weekly church bulletin has been a labor of love for nearly as long as I've been attending there. I hate to think I'll be giving it up completely, but I don't know what's down the road for me in the weeks ahead. It's best that somebody else knows how to keep it going.

I think the hardest thing right now is just not knowing the seriousness of this whole thing. I mean, I know there's a 8.5 cm mass on my kidney, so it IS serious. There's also a 4 cm mass in my lung. I'm thinking that means it's metastasized...also serious. Lymph nodes are to some extent enlarged; more evidence of metastasis. Based on my online searching for more information, I have the feeling that it's at stage 4. My searches also seem to indicate that the 5 year survival rate for stage 4 renal cell carcinoma is only 5 to 15%. That, in my opinion, sucks. Major suck. But, again, that's just my layman's opinion. I'm not a doctor, so in the back of my mind I'm hoping that I've been looking at this all wrong.

You've seen the old cartoons of someone torn between two decisions. An angel sitting on one shoulder and a devil on the other. Both are whispering in their ear. Right now the angel is whispering in one ear saying, "No problem. They'll cut this thing out and you'll be back to normal in a week." On the other shoulder, the little devil is saying, "Give it up, pal. They're gonna take a look inside and just sew you back up. You've got two or three weeks tops."

Waiting and not knowing is torture.