Better late than never...

I have been putting this off for over 2 weeks now. I really have not known what to say. It’s funny how fast you forget what life was like before. I feel like I have started to….. I don’t want to use the word accept because I will never accept this. I guess you could say "cope" with it. I feel like the radiation treatments were my whole life for 6 weeks and all we know for now is that the radiation did change the tumor in the fact that it now has a ring around it. The way the doctor explained it is the radiation kind of cooked the tumor. The good thing is that the radiation can still have effects on the tumor for 6 to 8 months. 

We also talked to the doctor about doing surgery. He told me that if we did try to take it out he would have to remove a lot of muscle and I would more than likely not have 100% use of my left arm. He also talked to me about what I did as my day to day work and because I do a lot of work with my arms out in front of me. He also thought there was a good chance I wouldn’t be able to do my job anymore.  He told me doing the surgery would be up to me. I did a lot of thinking about it and I don’t see me doing the surgery. I think the only way I would do it is if I was told it was life or death. 

From all my research I have found that I still have other options. I am already on Celebrex, but there are other drugs we can try that might have an effect on the tumor.  There is also chemotherapy. MD Anderson has had some luck with the desmoids reacting to what they call “low dose chemotherapy”. I am really up for trying anything to keep from losing the use of my arm.

This past week has been my first week back to work. It’s been a hard week. I have been in a lot of pain and have been sore and very tired every night when I get home.  I think when I go back to the doctor I am going to talk to him about going to the pain management center a UAMS to see if they can help me keep this under control and not be drugged up all the time. At this point I am up for trying anything. 

It’s hard to always stay positive through all this, and I have my ups and downs. When I get down I try to keep going back to “Tough times don’t last - tough people do.”