The in-between years

PART 2 OF 3

So, there I was, late winter of 2016. I had just had two major cancer surgeries in five months. For the next couple of years my oncologist monitored me closely. I had a few scares (e.g. A Lump In My Breast!!! which turned out to just be a fatty lump.) along the way but for the most part it was blissfully uneventful.

Until June of 2018.

My oncologist noticed a teeny tiny spot in my liver on one of my CT scans. We talked about it, but she wasn’t too worried, and was going to keep an eye on it. Six months later, another CT scan. The teeny tiny spot is just a wee bit larger. Six months after that the spot is still small, but now there are other tiny spots. You can see where this is going. Small, but growing in number, spots kept appearing in my liver.

Now, logically, the next section should be about my liver biopsy in November of 2021, and I will get to that in a moment. However, something weird happened to me in March of that year, and with hindsight being 20/20, it does need to be included in this account.

On Sunday, March 14, 2021, I woke up at my usual 6:30am time to a strong pain just underneath my left ribcage, to the left of my bellybutton. I thought it might be constipation, so I did some stretches, took some Tylenol, and encouraged myself to use the toilet. However, none of those strategies worked to lessen the pain, although they had worked in the past to move things along. In fact, as the morning went on, the pain grew stronger and stronger. And stronger. And stronger. By 10am I was rolling around on the bed holding my stomach, still unable to start my day. I realized something was different, something was wrong, and I needed help. I pulled on some clothes and stumbled downstairs to tell Corey it was time to take me to the ER.

Luckily, it wasn’t busy that time of day, and I was able to be admitted within ten minutes. It was taking all of my focus at that point to answer the doctor’s questions. I was starting to cry from the intense pain, which seemed to get worse with every second, and I couldn’t catch my breath. At that point the ER doctors knew something was really going on, so they threw an IV in me and started a morphine drip. I was quickly taken to get a CT scan. The results: my spleen, of all things, had gotten a clot, and 20% of it was dying off. Which, turns out, is a very painful process. I spent the night in the hospital and was sent home the next day.

My doctors and oncologist were so worried about me! The clot had apparently come from the direction of the heart, and so I had to visit a blood specialist and a heart specialist. I had an echocardiogram. I also had to wear a Zio Patch for 10 days to capture heart activity. But, long story short, nothing was ever found! No one could figure out why the clot had happened! It was a crazy little painful mystery.*

Ok, now back to the narrative about my liver…

By November 2021, my oncologist decided to send me in for a liver biopsy.

We did it in December. This was the giant-needle-through-your-skin kind of biopsy. It was PAINFUL and I cried during it, even with the IV pain meds. The spot they were going for was in a tricky location, and the tech wasn’t sure if they got a good sample. In any case, the pathology comes back negative for cancer. Hooray! Celebrations all around! However, my oncologist said “That’s great, but let’s do another CT scan in six months, and reassess.”

And so, six months later, another CT scan, and yet again my liver spots have grown, and there are more of them. So, my oncologist (I had been switched around at this point due to some retirements and staff shuffling, and now I was with the amazing Dr. Aimee Kohn) says it’s time to dig a little deeper, so to speak. She referred me to Dr. Rodney Pommier, a local neurocrine cancer expert and surgeon. He sent me to get a DOTATATE-PET scan, which he said will be even more accurate than a biopsy.

I get the scan on July 21, 2022, and Dr. Pommier called me later that same day with the results.

You probably know where this is headed.

PART 1, PART 3

*Fun fact: when you get a clot in your spleen it’s called a “splenic infarct” which sounds silly and still makes me giggle a little.

Published 8/17/22