Follow-Up

Just a brief post today. I wanted to post what my surgeon told me last week when I went in for my follow up appointment. He checked everything out and concluded that everything seems to be healing quite well. He also was able to give me an official official diagnosis. So, before surgery, all we knew was that I had Renal Cell Carcinoma. A rarer type of cancer. After Pathology, it was concluded that I had Type 2 Papillary Renal Cell Carcinoma. 80-85% of Kidney cancer patients have what is called Clear Cell RCC. Those few who have Papillary, typically have type 1. Because I have type 2 papillary, this means I have a rare type of a rare type of a rare type of cancer. No that was not a typo. Type 2 also means it is more agressive. Seeing as all of my treatment has been with the Cancer Care Alliance, I am now a general contributor to the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research. I'm certain that my uber rare cancer, and rare gender and age, will give them much to ponder about. One other thing my surgeon informed me of was that the drugs I took before surgery usually have no effect on Papillary RCC. Gee, I'm just a friggin' enigma, aren't I?

Well, I also visited a nutritionist a few weeks back. She was very nice and helpful. She helped me come up with a plan on how I can eat better to try to gain and maintain a healthy weight, which is possibly the only thing I can think of that lead me to have cancer. She didn't want to overwwhelm me at first, so it's very basic stuff. She advocated smoothies and introduced me to the word "spelt." I have yet to try it. (This was mainly in regards to spelt tortillas.) I'm doing ok but it's taking some time adjusting to all of it. One cool thing is I have been making new meals, and from scratch! I am actually enjoying myself! I downloaded an app for my phone from allrecipes.com called the Dinner Spinner. I know it's in the Android Market for free. If you have access, download it! I bet there is one for Apple too. It has been quite useful. :)

I have an appointment with my doctor I think in like a week, so I'll update again then.

Recovery

I am so sorry. It has definitely been far too long. Anything I say now seems boring and meaningless. I've been without internet for a few weeks but have resigned to using my cell phone to write and post this. First though, I want to say I forgot so much about my hospital stay. Like, my friend Katie Karr came and visited me on her breaks because she actually works in the hospital.

After I left the hospital, I went to my parents house. Even though I've been living with my sister, I had people at my parents house to help me and keep me company. It was pretty rough at first. I spent all my days just lying in bed. If I needed to use the restroom, I would have to shout across the house (it's not very big) to have someone come help me sit up. Even that hurt at times. I ended up watching a lot of DIY and HGTV They actually have shows on in the middle of the day. Sleeping was a bit rough. Y'see, my parents house is totally full. 4 bedrooms, 5 people. During my stay, i slept in my parents bed with mom, while dad slept on an air mattress in the livingroom. My mom said the first night she didnt get any sleep. Well, that's because I was in a lot of pain. It was not fun, not that I think you're imagining it was. Things got better. I started finding ways to roll without much pain and to this day, I clasp my hands around my left knee and rock myself up into a sitting position. It took several tries for the first little while. I probably looked like I was having some sort of fit. One hard thing about my stay was the constant badgering from my dad to "get up and move." The reason this was frustrating, and I expressed as such to my dad, was, Where was I to go? I had nowhere outside of the house to go to. The weather was poor, and the only place inside to go was the livingroom and back. That's a little less than 20 steps there and 20 back. Not really scenic either. But at the beginning of April, I felt it was time to move back in with my sister, give my dad his bed back. He was certainly happy about that. My cats? Not so much. They would spend the whole day with me just sitting and sleeping in that bed. I have several videos of them play fighting. Maybe I'll post them sometime.

As far as my health goes, I've had some interesting times. My breathing was really hard to do at first. There were several times I could only take in short breaths. Also, just a few weeks ago I went to the doctor because my leg was hurting and it was a weird pain. I figured I would be fine, but all my family was worried it might be a blood clot. Well, in my family, we take blood clots very seriously. My older sister did die of one afterall. So I had an ultrasound done on my leg. All was well. Very interesting experience though. I still have a great deal of pain throughout my left side. Dr. Lin said it'd be about a year until all that pain went away. :( Not cool. Sneezing and coughin have been horrid. I have to clutch underneath my left breast and press firmly to keep from having searing pain. Trust me, you don't want it. My incision has actually been healing quite nicely. Occassionally it'll feel like it is being ripped apart, but it has been feeling much better the last week or so.

That's all I can think of now, but I'm going to update soon about my latest Dr. appt. and my meeting with a nutritonist. sorry to keep you waiting on news.