nuts and their nutshells

April 9, 2011 at 12:31pm
1. I have to see a hematologist for a full blood workup including clotting factors and have intravenous iron administered to bump my hemoglobin levels up.  Last check (Thursday) had me at a 7.5 out of 40 and that is not high enough for...

2. Surgery, I'll be having another one.  The oncologist is going to try to use robots (how cool is that?) through two small incisions and a hole punched above my belly button to do the hysterectomy.  If the adhesions are not prohibitive, this will allow me to be out of the hospital the following day and has a much shorter recovery time - she says it's a 50/50 shot that she'll be able to do it this way - if she can't, she'll go ahead and use an incision and do it the old-fashioned way.  Either way, all the girly bits are coming out.  They'll be examined by the lab while I'm still under anesthesia, and that will determine the actual stage and grade of the cancer and whether she needs to excise some lymph nodes and/or other tissue while she's in there.  Also...

3. I must have a CT scan prior to the surgery, just to give a better idea of what the doc is going up against and to help determine the scope of the surgery.

The good part:  This is all going to happen within the next 2 weeks.  I'm not certain of any of the dates for these items as yet, but it looks like the CT and hematologist will be next week and the surgery will follow the week after.  Oh, and from the physical exam, even though I appear to now have the flu (yes, again! let's hope it's not another round of H1N1, I don't know how many swine I can handle in a lifetime!) my lungs sounded clear and heart was good and all my girly bits are in the right places and appropriately mobile with the uterus only a little enlarged.  Doc is optimistic.

The not so good part:  Week after this is finals week.  I have a geology exam that I'm scheduled to take on the local campus along with two online exams for my map analysis course.  The excel course is going to have to be a write-off as there's no way I will be able to travel to Tallahassee to write the exams.

I am still planning on starting the 6 week summer session the beginning of May, ending mid-June.  I'll be taking the two courses I need to finish my bachelor's degree.  Yay for almost being finished!