Update, Because That's The Way I Roll

I had my latest PET/CT scan yesterday. I had been planning to have the next one in January, but a couple things pushed me into an earlier date with destiny, so to speak.

One is the lump that is growing on my chest wall, which is causing me some anxiety. About 20% of women my age get local recurrence of breast cancer - in other words, they get another tumor in the same breast (or, in the case for those of us no longer sporting those appendages, in the same region where the breast and its unwelcome guest previously resided). In my life history, I have shown myself gifted in beating the odds... in the wrong direction. So that theoretically lovely 80% chance that I wouldn't suffer a recurrence is not of any particular comfort to me.

If that lump is cancer, I want it out. Not that it necessarily will do me much good to get it out, or that it might not actually do me more harm than good physically - there is a good argument to be made against [more] surgery. It's not like I don't have malignant tumors comfortably growing elsewhere, tumors that are not amenable to excision and so must be left there in the dark to do as they will. But the lumps I can feel, the ones that wave cheerfully at me as they do their dirty work... well, it's just harder for me to get on with what's left of my life when I'm being mocked and badgered from the peanut gallery. They make me more aware that I am becoming an overcrowded, crumbling dwelling for unwanted and destructive tenants; if I can't evict them or restrict their reproductive proclivities, I at least don't want to be subjected to a constant play-by-play update on their daily activities.

The other thing weighing on the side of an earlier scan is a sort of vortex of treatment decisions and situations that have been going on concurrently to the appearance of the new arrival. The scan gives me a sort of feedback on what's been happening lately. With so many possible influences, it's a little difficult to know what is causing what, but a scan will give me an idea of whether I need to make changes in at least some aspect or other of my life. It won't, unfortunately, clue me in to which aspect/aspects need to be changed, or whether changing any aspect will actually do me any good - the percentages are not in my favor, and we've already covered my history with percentages.

But I'm a questing creature by nature, so I am always craving more information. Cancer may kill this cat before Curiosity does, but the odds are still pretty good that my last words will be, "What's that?" (A suitable end to a contrary, backwards life, since my first words answered the question: "That's a button!")

So now I get to wait for the results. Hopefully I will get them next week some time, although the holiday season is slowing things down considerably at the health care facilities around here. Hopefully I will get the results quickly enough that I can make an appointment with my surgeon that will allow me to recover by Christmas, if surgery is warranted.

In the meantime, there is Thanksgiving and Black Friday to keep me busy, and then the weekend and early part of the week to wait through. Looking at my calendar, I'd better think up a short-term but engrossing project to keep me from spending the time in unduly harassing innocent and powerless medical receptionists and schedulers. Maybe I should knit a house cozy...