Good Day

Today was a good day :) Time flew by at work, there was no phone call from the mammo peeps, i've given my prearrival info to the nurses and have a surgery time of 8:55am on Tuesday, we had a yummy potluck at work (with super yummy brownies!), and I got my good luck/get well soon gift from the department! The girls had gotten together and decided a handmade quilt would be better than flowers and they were SO right! Various people worked on it and it is absolutely beautiful! While I go hypo i'm sure I will be cold as my body functions slow so now I have a warm and beautiful quilt to wrap up in! I am so blessed to have such wonderful friends and coworkers!

Quick Update

Still waiting on results of the mammo. If i get a phone call today or tomorrow that is not good news... if I get a letter in the mail by sometime next week, that means all is normal. I'm hoping I get the letter before my completion surgery on Tuesday so I have at least a little time to enjoy the negative films!

Other than that... trying to get things wrapped up at work and taken care of at home before being off for the next 6 weeks or so.

Work has been absolutely crazy lately because we've been working through a "shared service" arrangement with our downtown group. Basically this means integrating my department with downtown's coding department. It was a loooong period of discussion where I wanted to make sure that we would all have jobs and that the transition would be mostly smooth for everyone. I was sure that my girls would all have jobs but was actually more concerned they would cut out my management position for a while! Talk about anxiety... going through cancer treatments and worrying about loss of income and benefits! Thankfully we are all keeping our jobs and I will not be transitioning until after I get back from my surgical leave so it doesn't disrupt any of my benefit coverage. Again thankful that I work for a great company with wonderful people! We have our full info/paperwork meeting this Friday so it will be interesting to see the new compensation packages offered... Then during all of this we have 2 audits going on - barf! These are the least favorite part of my job! I hate having to defend WHY we coded a patient a certain way because sometimes things are subjective and always there are thousands of rules to remember. I'm getting things done before I go so I don't worry while i'm off and i'm trying to set up my girls with a solid plan so they aren't so disrupted by my absence. Right now there aren't enough hours in the work day and i can't stay over because of the hours i need to use in my personal day! I'm excited for the surprise potluck the girls have planned for tomorrow to wish me good luck...at least i think it was supposed to be a surprise! Oops! LOL

So on to everything else i need to get done... I did laundry this past weekend (had to after not doing it for 3 wks!) but I still have to put it away - UGH! I need to unload/load/run the dishwasher, clean out the fridge, dust, vac, and just put everything away. If I don't get this done before surgery it won't be the end of the world but it will drive me nuts when i can do nothing but sit and stare at it all day! I also want to make a list of the books I have to read and decide what order i'm going to read them in... i think i have 20 or so in the lineup. I need to get my pics printed from 3 Day 2008 so I can work on my scrapbook when i'm bored or can't concentrate to read. I need to find some LID compatible recipes for bread and pasta sauces so I can find people to make me some ;) Oh and I have to get a water filter, yoga DVD (know any easy ones?), and thermometer! I will probably have some paperwork for the merger mentioned above to complete. Oh and this weekend I have a meeting at Gilda's Club, a wedding shower out of town, church... Monday i'm actually working but may decide to work from home so I can cut out my hour drive and work on my to do list instead. Everyone thinks i'm nuts for working on Monday but if my first day of my surgery leave is the day I stay overnight in the hospital, I don't have to use 40hrs of my PTO before my leave pay kicks in - crazy!

So that's basically the peek into my mind at the moment... i'm a bit scattered so i'm sure this post reads that way too! Any suggestions/thoughts/comments on any of the above?

If Anyone Is Out There...

Tomorrow I have to go for a second mammogram... wait, what?! Yup you read that right - second mammogram. I got my first one ever last week to serve as a baseline because of my increased risk factors and on Thursday I got a call back saying I needed to come back for some more views of the right side.

So if anyone is out there tonight and tomorrow morning...please pray that they find nothing and that's its only because the first films were of bad quality. Not sure how I would deal right now if I found out things were going the other way...

Decisions

Something has been on the back of my mind since this whole mess started. The RAI that I have to get could potentially kick me into menopause - not likely but still a possibility. What does that mean, well you all know what menopause is [i think?] but being I have no children at this point in my life, it could also potentially mean that having children would no longer be an option.

I've been trying not to really think about it much because who likes to focus on the negatives? This past weekend at the 3 Day, my Aunt was working on the medical crew with some Oncology nurses who told her to tell me to freeze my eggs ASAP.

I did some reading on this when I first heard of this as a possible side effect. I found that it is very expensive [about $10,000] to harvest the eggs and then you have to pay to keep them frozen as well as pay for the implantation procedures. Also, there is only a 2-4% chance that a frozen egg will result in a live birth. If you freeze a fertilized egg the percentage is much greater, but then there is that little problem of not having a someone around to fertilize the egg... Yes, I could use an anonymous donor or ask a friend to do the honors but that just feels wrong to me. If I was engaged or in a serious relationship talking about marriage, then maybe it would be a discussion to have. If I was married it would be an obvious discussion to have. Being single, its my decision alone to make.

My decision when I first did some research and even now after the well meaning warnings from the oncology nurses is to let go of this worry and put it in God's hands. If i'm meant to be a biological mother, I will be. If that is not possible, adoption is always an option. If i'm not meant to be a mother in any way, then there must be another mission for me out there...

I'm at peace with this decision and am not worried about what the future may or may not bring.

Comments

So i've heard some of you are new to the blogosphere and aren't really sure how to comment on a post! :) Here are the simple instructions:

1. At the bottom of each post it says "Posted by Christina at (time) (#) Comments"
2. If you want to comment on a post, just click the word "Comments"
3. You should then see "Post a Comment" and a little white text box at the bottom of the post.
4. Type your comment in the white text box.
5. Then pick a "comment as" option from the drop down box. If you don't have a blog, Google, AIM account, pick the NAME/URL option and enter your name in the top box and click continue and it will add your name to your comment. If you don't want anyone to know you posted, then choose the Anonymous option.
6. Then just click on "Post Comment" and you are done!

I hope that clears up any confusion :)