June 1st - My fate - or so I thought....

At 9:00am, Grant and I met with my original doctor, the surgeon, and found out that the tumor, while not large, had gone through the rectal wall and possibly into the lymph nodes. We also found out that I had a spot on my lungs. He explained that they already decided to do chemo/radiation first and then do surgery on the rectum or the lung after the first round of chemo and radiation. He would then see me, at the soonest in 10 weeks (six weeks of chemo/radiation and four weeks of recovery). He looked at me and said, "Do whatever Dr. Kaplan tells you to do this afternoon." Dr. Kaplan is my oncologist. I thanked him for helping me get into all these doctors so quickly and he said, "I want to make this go away for you." At 9:15, I was sobbing in my husbands arms. The cancer had spread to my lungs. When I got myself together, I went to the resource center in the basement, checked out a book and got a lot of pamphlets. Rachel, a coordinator at the resource center, saw me, and told me all sorts of resources, survivor stories, and options. "Cancer is a manageable disease." And, with a hug, I felt well enough to go home and tell my mom. At 3:30, we finally met with the onocolgist. He was amazing. He has amazing bedside manner, really listened to me, and then told me that he wasn't sure the spot on my lung was cancer. He asked me if I ever lived in the Mississippi Valley or California. I said, no. He explained that there is a fungus there that shows up on people's lungs during these scans. So, I told him about all the traveling I did as I child. He wanted to know all of it, in detail. With that information, he decided that he wanted to know what this mass is BEFORE we treated it as cancer. He told me that cancer typically doesn't jump from your rectum to your lungs - it leaves a trail on your other organs up to the lungs - like a ladder. So, with all the information - my traveling as a young child, the cancer "jumping" odds, and the autoimmune issues that I tested positive for in fertiltiy, he decided to do a biopsy of my lung mass. That happens June 4th at 7:30am. He said, "Let's hope it is a fungus or even TB." I never wanted a fungus or TB so badly......