A visit with my oncologist

I saw my regular oncologist today. I'll see the radiation oncologist in about two weeks for my final radiation checkup.

Anyways, my regular oncologist was surprised to see that I have zero skin damage or problems from the radiation. I'm not quite sure what she expected to see; super-burned skin? Festering sores? Either way, she's happy I'm not experiencing that side effect. And that I'm not experiencing any esophageal side effects. I'm doing great, apparently.

Well, except for being exhausted. But that's normal and should pass in a couple of weeks. I hope. I really do hope that's true because I slept for three hours after I got home this morning, got up long enough to take Gozer for a walk, and then slept two more hours, when Ian got home. I'm sooooo tired. It feels like sleep doesn't even help; that I'm walking around in an exhausted fog even when I'm awake. At least when I'm asleep I don't know how tired I am because I'm asleep.

Anyways. Back to the oncologist. She was very happy with how I'm doing. She's going to scan me in June to see if the radiation treatment worked. She also said that normally, when one of her patients experiences progression (my uptick in scans is little and in one place but it's still considered progression), she has to think about whether the systemic treatment has failed. In my case, that treatment is Femara, or letrozole. She decided that since I've still only got the one spot that was just treated, the Femara may be protecting me against progression in a new area. So she's keeping me on the Femara and we'll reassess after the scans in three months.

Oh yeah, and my CA 15-3 tumour marker is holding about steady at 42; going back through previous results, it was last 40, before that 38, and before that 44. Normal is below around 30 or 32. So mine has been above normal for a while but steady, which means it's unlikely that there's any other active disease going on other than what was recently treated.

So that's today. We were waiting for a person to come and sell us a new fireplace because ours is broken but the weather is bad on the other side of the city so he's coming tomorrow. And we had shingles go flying off the roof a couple of days ago (since fixed). And Gozer hunted down a mouse and ate part of it yesterday. And I trapped two more last night. Sigh.