Friday’s Fretfulness

This has not been the best day of my life. I got up early as I had my quarterly post surgery appointment this morning. I felt pretty good as I went about my morning, I had oatmeal with raisins, a banana, wheat germ, molasses, maple syrup and "Go Lean Crunch", and I even made a fresh pot of coffee. I left for the doctor's office early as I thought that I might have to fill out new paperwork, I did not, but I got there early, just in case.

I even got into see the nurse about 0900, my appointment time, for a blood draw and urine sample. Then back to the waiting room for another twenty-minute wait. Then I was called again, this time I got to see the doctor's assistant. The nurse hen she brought me into the room said that my urine sample was good.

That made me feel pretty good, but about ten minutes later the doctor's assistant came in and said that my PSA levels were higher than they should have been and that the doctor would be in to see me in a little bit.

Twenty minutes later the doctor, the one who preformed the surgery last June, came in and told me that there could be a couple possibilities as to why it was elevated, one he said was very unlikely and another he said my body could be producing PSA from some other source, again, probably not too likely.

The third possibility was that there is still some cancer there that was not detected last June. Since the last two times that I have had my PSA checked, it has gone up each time by .1. So it is now about three times what it was last June, right after my surgery.

He recommended that I undergo radiation therapy and gave me the name of a radiation oncologist that he recommended., so when I got done seeing him I went down to the first floor and talked to the folks at the radiation oncology office.

I could not set up an appointment at the time, as they wanted to get my files from the hospital, on the surgery, and from my urologist, who did the surgery and has been treating me since. They did give me several forms to fill out and bring back with me when I have my consultation appointment.

After leaving the hospital, I stopped at Fred Meyer to purchase some TriMet/Max tickets, as I was scheduled for jury duty next week. Then I headed home.

The mail was hanging out of the mailbox when I got to the front door, so I picked it up and set it on the piano. Kathleen was in the living room, so I told her about my morning and then I went upstairs and changed clothes.

Once back downstairs, I opened up the mail, most of it this time was something that I wanted to look at. Most of it still wound up in the recycling, but there were a few items, a fly-fishing catalog and a discount Christian book catalog, that I kept.

I spent quite a lot of time this afternoon canceling some obligations that I had made, as once the radiation begins I probably will be pretty limited in what I am able to do. I also decided to see if I would be able to postpone my jury duty, they usually require a weeks notification, but since my circumstances were a little out of the ordinary, they have rescheduled me for June.

Somewhere and sometime this afternoon I decided that I needed to eat something, since we were out of leftovers, I toasted some raisin bread and smeared some limburger cheese on it and poured myself an other cup of coffee.

I finally got to read the paper about 1600, for some reason I just did not feel the need to read it any earlier. Kathleen had slow cooked some ribs today and then made some rice, so that is what we had for dinner tonight.

She is upstairs now and I am pretty tired, mostly emotionally, so I think that I will say good night.