As I woke this morning, my thoughts first went to the usual mind ruminations of the morning. What time is it? What day is it? What is the date? What’s scheduled? Oh yeah, I paid Christmas bills yesterday…..Royster has an appointment this afternoon for the dentist. I need to go look at a dress for a wedding. Pick up prescriptions. My eye doctor appointment has to be rescheduled. It’s trash day…get it out to the curb. Too cold to work in the yard … leftovers for dinner tonight. The day awaits something new.
Royster woke early and went upstairs to his office. I sat up and placed my feet on the floor. After all of those waking morning thoughts trampled through my head, the thought occurred to me that I’m 64 years old…I’m upright, bleed when I’m cut, and can still cast a full shadow….so I must be fine. I don’t hurt anywhere, and I have everything I need for the day. I’m still good to go! I smiled at this wry thought. You’ve put yourself through a rough mill, old girl, but have always dodged the worst of it. I’m still good to go! I stood and padded to the bathroom.
I wondered what was in store for the day, daring not to project too far into my future. I’ll just take what’s on my plate for today, Lord…Help me put this day to good use …. do a kindness for someone today.
The past several weeks seemed so long ago already. I found myself unable to stop thinking about the recent past dramas and joys, all mixed in a strange potpourri, I decided to review the last few weeks…starting just before Thanksgiving. Actually, it started months before, while we made plans for The Royster’s retirement and the big Retirement Vacation out west. Things were getting close, as we had planned to start this vacation on January 5th. I decided to get some things tied up prior to this. Getting a check up in order to have all of the age appropriate meds in hand while we’re on our big vacation was at the top of the list….an eye doctor visit was optional, but there was a distinct feeling that I needed to make sure I got my vision checked. I called my “provider clinic” and made all of the appropriate appointments, and an unplanned appointment with the eye clinic there. Strangely, I got an immediate appointment for the next day.
Somewhat apprehensive, but in a bit of denial that there was anything more than just an adjustment in my contact prescription; I sat in the examination room, eyes fully dilated and waiting for the doctor to come have a look. Dr. Patel was a beautiful young woman. She was friendly, but at the same time very professional and thorough. As she flashed the light into my eyes, she kept going back to look at my left eye. I must have squirmed a bit, because she apologized for the discomfort the light was causing, and said that there was something there, and that I needed to have a specialist look at it immediately. There was no way I could go that afternoon, so after some phone calling, an appointment was arranged with a retinal specialist in the medical center down town for the next morning. Roy came home early, and we fretted together about what could possibly be there in my left eye.
We arrived early at the retinal specialist’s office……….Every kind of test was run, pictures taken, ultrasounds, MRI’s, PET Scans through my clinic. Finally, the thing in the back of my eye had a name. There was a malignant melanoma in the retina in the back of my left eye. How could this be? Since I had had lung cancer before (8 years ago), I was examined for any cancer anywhere else in my body. The good news was that there was no other cancer found anywhere else. I was told that there was nothing I did to have caused this. “Sometimes these things just happen.” The doctor said. I was sent to the go to man in the field to be treated. The same imaging was repeated through his office. By all rights I should still be glowing with radiation just from the preliminary imaging.
I was offered two scenarios of treatment. One involved surgery to sew a patch of radiation on to the tumor…left on for a week, and another surgery to remove it. It wasn’t new, but it had proved successful. That just hurt thinking about it. The second scenario was a relatively new procedure called a CyberKnife. It was relatively painless, and a one-time treatment. It involved making a mask to hold my head still and in place for a radiation laser to literally kill the cancer cells. I chose the latter, CyberKnife treatment.
We had asked Dr. B. if we should cancel or post pone our vacation plans. He said that the recovery time was only a couple of days, so the treatment was scheduled for January 3rd … just two days before we were to leave for our vacation. That having been arranged, I was oddly ready to get on with the Thanksgiving and Christmas preparations and celebrations, and tried to put off thinking about the cancer and the radiation treatment I would soon be having.
We went to Fredericksburg for Thanksgiving and enjoyed the festive shopping, photo ops and good food. After a couple of days, we headed home to make preparations for Christmas. We set up a Christmas tree outside on the deck, and decorated very little inside. Got all the out of town mailings done and celebrated the season with friends. Christmas came and went, giving way to the New Year. My surgery date was ironically on my 64th birthday, on January 3rd. I was ready.
I slept very little the night before the CyberKnife surgery, and after a brief snooze in the early hours, I woke with a bodacious headache and nausea. There was not a chance I was going to let that keep me from this life-saving surgery. I was sick for the entire hours’ drive to the CyberKnife clinic, and continued to throw up my toenails until they finally gave me an Oxycontin for my nausea, and then a Vicodin for the headache. By the time they had me in a gown, I was pretty much like a silly beanbag. I was no longer nervous, that is, until they shot my eye muscles and optic nerve with the anesthetic. That hurt like hell. And after one more round of MRI and CT scans before the surgery, they put the mask on me and buckled my head to the table; and I was left alone in the room with the robot that would shoot radiation via laser to the tumor in my eye. A voice spoke to me over a speaker to announce that the laser would start and continue for about an hour. I was to remain positively motionless for the duration (like I had a choice). Let the cure began! The procedure itself was painless, but none the less nerve-wracking. After what seemed like an eternity, a cheerful voice came over the speaker again to announce, “All done!”
Suddenly, there were people around me unbuckling my mask, and setting me free. They raised me up and helped me into a wheel chair to a dressing room. I don’t remember if I had help dressing, but before I knew it, I was being wheeled down the hall to Roy, who was waiting for me in the hallway next to an examination room. It was over, but I’d had so much adrenalin built up, there was nowhere for it to go. All I could do was bury my face in his goose down vest and sob tears of release and relief. It was over, and all I wanted to do was to go home and sleep off the rest of the pre-surgery happy meds.
