Good morning again. Some of you know I'm a bit more of a morning person (but not enough to go spinning at 4:30 in the morning Ronda!), so I expect most of my posts will be in the morning when my brain has lots of energy and the rest of me is getting help from a little morning java! Yesterday brought me some good news. First, a very helpful lady named Cindy called me from the oncologists office with an appointment for Tuesday for my consultation. When I had first talked to their office the day before, she told me it could take up to a week to get a call back about when my appointment would be. I think she could tell that almost made me cry. She then told me that they review the requests as they come in and call back according to need. She assured me she would try to call me the following day to at least give me an update and gave me her direct number in case I wanted to call the next day. Like she promised, she called me the next morning and I was hugely relieved that she already had an appointment scheduled for me. I've already met some very caring, competent people in the past month and I'm very encouraged by that.

In addition, I called for the results on the node biopsy I had earlier in the week and the doc told me it was negative. That's pretty good news. However, that needs to be taken in context, because the needle biopsies are not as accurate, and it was taken from 3 random nodes that were easily accessible. More will need to be explored on this front because the whole area has been swollen for a couple of months now, and the MRI showed that many of the nodes were up to 4x their normal size. That said, either way, it's good news. Even if we do find some spread there later, it should be minimal based on what we see now.

So, the last couple days were a little tough emotionally. I think I let myself hope for a definite resolution when I met with the surgeon, even though my logical mind knew that he was recommending the best path. Of course, after that, fear set in which just sent me in to a bit of spin. But, I've found, in my years on this earth, that facing my fears head on and letting myself "go there" sometimes alleviates them and makes them less scary in the long run. I'm sure I'm going to need a lot more face time with this one before I can thumb my nose at it, but I just logged a little time and now I think I'll try something else for a few days, thank you very much!

John, Roman, Kyla, and I took a drive to Malibu last night because John's brother, Frank, invited us out to dinner. The picture I posted here was the sunset (taken by Kyla) we enjoyed driving in to Malibu. We had dinner at Duke's and Roman was in all his glory with fish and chips, sourdough bread, and a huge desert with pumpkin ice cream, hot fudge and whipped cream.......he had a little tummy ache after all that and fell asleep in my lap on the way home. Thanks, Kyla, for spending a Friday night with your mamma! And, Frank, it was great to see you and catch up and thank you for a wonderful evening!