Cancer must be popular

That weekend was interesting. I had a name for my cancer but no other information. How bad is it? Is it in my bones? Am I going to lose my hair? What is this thing called chemo? What about radiation? Were the lymph nodes on my body going to start randomly enlarging everywhere? Were they going to continue pumping me full of radioactive dyes and if so, would my veins eventually glow in the dark? I still don't feel like I have anything, I have no symptoms!!! Maybe they're just wrong and should test me again. Nah, going through that once was enough. I'll take the diagnosis.

The weekend was a piece of cake compared to the two excruating days waiting to hear what form of cancer I had. It got downright comical. I did two loads of laundry on Friday, before the call, and wondered to myself how they got done so quickly. Then I realized I was taking them STRAIGHT OUT OF THE HAMPER and putting them into the DRYER and turning them on. I had them half folded when I realized they hadn't even been washed, just dried! Noah now has encrusted banana permanently embedded in his nice Adidas track suit that was a gift. Sorry Aunt Sara- he's about to grow out of it anyway if that makes it any better.

At one point I opened the refrigerator to find a big white bottle of bleach (the full bottle like you buy at the store) on the top shelf of our fridge. The milk was sitting on the counter. I said "Daniel? Did you somehow put bleach in the fridge... in the drink section?" They both are white bottles with blue caps! The milk was warm and had to be thrown out so we have no idea when he did it. Good thing nobody drank that bleach!

That's when we started being extra careful to be sure one of us didn't burn the house down. We have three lovely children and would like to keep social services away, thank you.

We were told to wait by the phone the following Monday to speak to my new oncologist and schedule my first appointment with him for the same day. I was very sad to be handed off so to speak, but knew my primary could do no more and it was time to get with the big, scary cancer doctor. When the call finally came I was told (by a nurse at my primary) that NO cancer center in the area had any openings until mid next week. So, I said "Is this normal? To get a cancer diagnosis but not know the stage or start treatment for weeks? Really???"

Oh, by the way the appointment mid next week was for Lake St. Louis when there are about 3 centers closer to me. Not that I mind that of course- just saying they booked me out quite a ways just to get me an appointment- that's how backed up these cancer centers are.

Luckily when (primary) Dr. Ganninger (have I mentioned how wonderful he is?) got wind of this he would have none of it. He physically walked down to the cancer center attached to his offices and had them rearrange some patients to get me in the same week. I hope I didn't knock anybody out of something important. You know, because there is so much 'un' important stuff going on at a cancer center. I was scheduled with the scary cancer doctor that Wednesday.