I used to love Fridays, until they became chemo-treatment-day

Everyone (except the office plant department) got back to me today. Dr. OBG called first and said "I'm not ignoring you," and I believe her, I think we've both realized that she can't do much for me anymore, and she hadn't heard from Dr. GO...but did she really have to say "we've done everything we can!"??? It makes me feel like I've run out of options and now they're just going to do the best they can to make me comfortable till this whole thing does me in.



Dr. GO on the other hand, is Mr. Fabulous, I've decided. He called and said, sure, take MTX this week. I'm also starting Provera today, 10mg/day for 10 days. If my HCG levels are zero as a result of this injection, take two more weeks of MTX. If levels are still around 10-15, we're stopping MTX to see what happens. If the levels go up, he will conclude GTD and do an MRI and more aggressive chemo treatment will ensue, possibly surgery. If they stay the same, he's going to look farther into whether we need a more sensitive test. Apparently sometimes run-of-the-mill HCG tests can accidently pick up certain antibodies, or cross reactions of different hormones and things like that. So he may have to call a more sophistocated lab. He actually did research on this this morning before he called me. Which is very nice. But scary that this is such new ground, even for him. How strange. Maybe I'll end up in a scientific journal.

I am relieved to have a plan at this point and to have Dr. GO sanction today's MTX treatment. My standards for what makes me relieved have gotten very very low, as you can see. Like, I might have cancer, but I feel better than I did yesterday 'cause at least we have a plan! At least there is hope.

I've always said I would NOT want to know if I had terminal cancer. Even as a kid I remember thinking this. I just would not want to know. And I always thought it was because I would not be able to deal with the thought of dying. That such a thought would depress me so much that I don't think I could cope. But I realized just today that it's not the knowledge of death that I would be so desperately trying to avoid by pulling the wool over my own eyes. It's the absence of hope. Despite being a pretty pessimistic person, I am realizing that I place great great value on hope, sometimes without even realizing it. And there are plenty of things to be hopeful about in my life currently - I think that's what keeps me going. Hope that I will move on from this, hope that my cycles will regulate, hope that the next time I will have a normal pregnancy. Hope that there will be a next time. Hope that my parents will live to see their grandchildren. All of these things are not only entirely possible, but probably quite likely.

But, back to reality, I should point out that the term 'likely' doesn't mean much to me after this experience. "Likely" I often equate to "more likely than not" which typically refers to a more than 50% chance. I was likely not to miscarry, and even if I did I was likely not to need a D&C. And then even if I did, my HCG was likely to go down normally. And even though my HCG is reacting abnormally, I am likely not to have GTD, but it's looking more and more like I do with every beta draw. So statistics are dead to me.

But I still have hope.