10 Doctors and Counting

 So here we are, two weeks and 10 doctors later (since the discovery of all this) still twiddling our thumbs awaiting another day of doctor visits and tests. Luckily, though, we have been able to enjoy a bit of Rochester both last night and this morning wandering around town, discovering some fantastic local eats, and enjoying a stroll along the river walk (with Adam and I pondering things like, what color do you think the tumor is?...and do you think if they put the tumor in a jar it would still grow?... and where do you think they throw away all the hospital waste?...you know, important things, ha). It's really not too shabby of a town, and it's quite fascinating to see just how much everything is built up all because of the hospital.

This afternoon was my first consultation with the doc referred to us by the surgeon in Springfield, so the four of us made our way into the grand lobby of this world renown facility...yes, it was awesome. Not a skimp on any of those finishes! This place truly felt high class, especially with the pianist playing somewhere in the background. Up until this point, I had kept my cool, but now I was starting to get nervous again. At least the piano music helped ease the nerves a bit.

We checked in, wandered our way up to my appointment, then met with our recommended doc. But alas, after looking at my scans, him and his colleagues had a different theory about what this might be, and what this might be was not his specialty. Great : / So he immediately set up an appointment for me to meet with another doc who, ironically, is the husband of a family friend of ours. What were the odds? So back through the hospital we went to another floor, another waiting room. About an hour later, we met with this doc who had already set up a consultation for the following morning for the doc of his choice, the guy who would actually be doing the surgery, I suppose? I still don't know why we couldn't have just skipped this step and moved straight to the surgeon, but maybe it was because he knew who we were and knew we were coming, yada yada. Who knows. At this point, we are all just going with the flow. Long story short, though, all my scans and test results were reviewed, and once again, the docs praised the French for such clear pictures. No extra scans have been ordered as of yet. What we did find out, though, was that this could be one of three things: a Wilm's tumor (a childhood tumor), a retropertioneal sarcoma, or some sort of kidney cancer. No matter what it is, the kidney will have to come out, but until we know what it is, we won't know the proper procedure to take it out. The first two options might involve some sort chemotherapy perhaps beforehand (?) while the later may take me straight to surgery to dig it all out? I don't remember all the details, but this is the first time the doc has called for a biopsy to really determine the fate of the next few months of my life.

We asked how long until we know what the game plan will be and the doc's answer made our hearts sink.  Tomorrow will be consultation #3 followed by the biopsy. This will take at least 24hrs to get the results, then, wait...oh, the doc to do the surgery won't be in all next week. So now we're looking into something closer to Memorial Day weekend. For all we know, we might be heading home tomorrow being forced to wait some more.

Up until now, things have all been fairly cool, and the term tumor has become no biggy. But now that we're introducing words like cancer, oncologist, and chemotherapy into the vocabulary, things are sounding a lot scarier. One step at a time, I suppose, and come Friday, we all can really determine how worried we all should be.