It's Not Even Valentine's Day!

I think Kevin is just so happy to see a glimmer of his wife back.  Then again, while that's true he has been so encouraging to me all this time. Honestly. He must be as exhausted of me being exhausted as I am ... if that makes any sense.

Maybe my start have finally come into alignment but even my appointment with my oncologist and a particularly dreaded phlebotomist went in my favour!

First of all, a bonus is that I didn't have to wait very long at the Cancer Centre and the waiting rooms weren't busy at all. Last time I was there it was standing room only and I was there for so long ... waiting ... seeing ... seeing way more than I wanted to see ... and everything just seemed to go badly.  But this time ...  THIS TIME ... while I cringed when I saw that it was the nurse who rubs me the wrong way who would be taking my blood, everthing went swimmingly!  I don't think she remembered me in particular but I remembered her. Every time I see her, which is every time since I was able to ditch my picc-line, she wants to (and sometimes does) take blood from the back of my hand instead of my arm. She takes one look at my arm where the veins are practically invisible and she goes straight for the hand. Last time she blamed me for her having trouble getting blood out of my arm after I said I didn't want blood taken from my hand. I was not impressed.  But this time she didn't even mention my hand and she didn't even take any time to poke around my arm searching for a vein.  Straight in ... blood quickly drawn ... straight out ... no pain ... no bruising! The only obvious mark on my arm is from the bandaid because I react to the glue in those things and I forgot to take it off right away.

After that I didn't have to wait very long to see my oncologist and that went well, too.  Of course there was a bit of the usual where I bring up a question I would like an answer to, the doctor asks me a few questions in return and before I know it I'm out of the office without getting any real answers to my questions. This time, though, my questions were less important. The main thing is that I have no discernable suspicious lumps anywhere. My oncologist tells me that the tenderness I feel in the chestal area is to be expected and it's from the radiation.  And most surprising and significant to me is that he didn't even mention switching me from Tamoxifen to an aromatase inhibitor!  I was all prepared for a grueling session because he said at my last appointment that this is when he would want to switch me. I suppose I could have asked about it myself to find out his thoughts on the subject but I didn't really want to get into it if I didn't have to. I knew he hadn't forgotten about it because we talked about how long ago I started Tamoxifen and then he added the time from when I had started Arimidex, which is October 2009.  I wonder what changed in my oncologist's mind?  I wonder if it isn't something to do with the recent research ... since my last appointment ... that questions making aromatase inhibitors a standard protocol. Whatever the reason, I'm very glad we didn't have to address the issue.  Now I just have to wait for my bloodwork so I can see if there are any significant changes since last time.

I'm still feeling amazingly good ... amazing considering I was up 2 hours earlier than usual yesterday to get to my appointment.

While I'm elated to be feeling so uncommonly good, I've been feeling sorrow for Marion and her boys who are going through a difficult time and Barb, too, who is being as tough as she needs to be.  What a trooper!