Sidelined

The day started with another injury.  Nicholas accidentally scratched my cornea during bottle time this morning and WOW was it painful.  After indulging in a "I'm-going-into-the-hospital-for-a-month" mani & pedi, I headed over to Urgent Care to get it checked out (btw yes, it is quite difficult getting a mani when you are wiping tears from your eye every couple of minutes).  The doctor confirmed a scratch right in the center of my eye and prescribed some antibiotic drops.  By early afternoon, the eye was already much less painful and on the mend.  Thankfully, Jonathan was able to take the day off from his finance job and step into his chauffer shoes!

During the morning, I also received a call from my doctor who had reviewed my latest CTscan from Thursday.  He reported that the mediastinal mass and several other nodes had actually grown over the last few weeks.  This is not good when heading into a transplant.  While it's possible to have a successful outcome going in with some disease, it is very ominous if the disease is actually growing.  So, the plan is to now have some localized radiation prior to transplant.  This will have an acute diminishing effect on these areas.  It will be administered on an outpatient basis; meaning, my mani/pedi turned into a mere Monday morning indulgence.

Tomorrow I'll meet with a radiation oncologist and will know more then about the revised timeline.  But over the course of the last several months I've learned that a timeline is really only an abstract representation of key events.  While it is often arranged chronologically, any references to dates, times, places, people, colors, puzzles, four wheel drive, duck sauce, tightropes, kilts, queso, cowhide, or violins are, at most, placeholders.  Ironically, a timeline (aka agenda or appointment), even when printed out on a piece of paper, is by no means indicative of the actual arrangement of events in time.

While I've grown to accept a day-by-day mentality with this disease, this morning I felt the ultimate frustration.  To be so close to transplant, logistically and emotionally, and to then face more unknown and more waiting...it was a bummer.

On a positive note, we picked up Nana at the airport this afternoon and had lunch at Roam (new place on Fillmore, people!).  Then we came home to play with Nicholas!

My new tie-dye is rad!