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| my appointment this morning with dr. bezjak (my thoracic radiation oncologist in toronto, chest cancer doctor specializing in radiation) didn't exactly go as expected. and it took a lot longer than i anticipated. but these differences were largely a good thing!
the appointment was at 9:15, and i was close to punctual leaving the house. there was no way i could've anticipated a passenger pressing the assistance alarm, which resulted in my being half an hour late. once at the hospital, i didn't have to wait too long before getting into an examination room, but was soon sent by the nurse to get a chest x-ray. and i have no clue how much time lapsed between the chest x-ray and dr. bezjak coming in to see me - for some reason, i was really tired and sleepy this morning, and i think i might've actually fallen asleep in the chair while waiting for her.
in any event, she assured me that my chest x-ray was normal, and she didn't find anything abnormal in her assessment, which was more thorough than usual. remember: in medicine, normal is good! and then she sent her nurse to call up dr. dawson (my head and neck radiation oncologist here in toronto). the end result of that is an appointment with dr. dawson tomorrow at 9 a.m.! she doesn't even have clinic tomorrow, but she will be seeing a certain subcategory of patients - a group i don't fall into - but she's willing to fit me in.  i'm so blessed to have such a great team of doctors!
at the end of my appointment with dr. bezjak, she added that the order for blood work had never been canceled, and since i was at the hospital anyway, i might as well go get it done. i was more than happy to do that - you may recall that i didn't get any blood work (besides a kidney check) done at my last appointment in kingston - so i headed to the blood lab before leaving the hospital. they were seeing patient 9 (they only use numbers 1-99) when i arrived and picked up a number. i was 65. fortunately, i had brought my laptop with me, so i had stuff to do while waiting. by the time i left the hospital it was past noon.
so that was today's appointment! hopefully tomorrow's will be a rinse without the repeat...
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| in the world i'm in, BM stands for Bowel Movement and MOH for Ministry of Health. and i know that our world contains many worlds, but i was never quite sure i'd be asked to change their meanings. until recently.
okay, no, that's not quite true. i did figure that one day, someone somewhere, some family member, some friend, would ask that BM become BridesMaid. but it wasn't until recently that i found out for sure that MOH would ever be Maid of Honour. but it's happened...and you know...  ...it's kinda exciting!
i'm not sure how we're gonna pull this off. me being in kingston, her being in toronto. after all, a maid of honour has certain duties does she not? we'll figure it out. after all, as different as we are [and hun, you know we're sometimes really REALLY different] we've managed through probably more than our fair share of difficulties together.
so Christmas is around the corner...a mere 9 days away now!...and i guess part of my holidays will now be devoted to some of those under-recognized but beautiful traditions that come with growing up. not so much the walking down the aisle part, but the spending time together part. picking colours and balloons [and flowers? i don't see you so much with flowers...] and dresses and such...the excitement that comes with preparing a sister for moving from one stage of life to another.
can't wait! 
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| you'd think a follow-up appointment would be fairly straight forward, but apparently not.
i received a call yesterday afternoon from the cancer center. they were concerned because there was no record of my having a chest CT (3D x-ray) that apparently dr. zaza had wanted me to have before seeing me. that was pretty easy to answer - i haven't had one. i also don't particularly recall talking about having one already with dr. zaza. anyway, so since i hadn't the chest CT, they wanted to know if i still felt i needed the appointment, because from their end, they had nothing to discuss with me. i was also informed that dr. zaza wouldn't be in clinic, so it'd be someone else covering for him.
i almost canceled. i'm a week away from exams, and i could use the morning hours that the appointment would likely take to study. but there were a few things i wanted to ask about, so i kept the appointment.
i studied while in the waiting room, and eventually got a phone call from one of the nurses in the clinic - lou, whom i particularly remember. she said something about knowing i had questions, and did i want to come in today in the afternoon? that was definitely confusing, because there i was, checked in and sitting in the waiting room. i told her i hadn't canceled the appointment and was already there. she came out to get me right away; i'd been waiting for 2 hours.
i was quickly seen by one of the residents (doctor who is in training for their specialty) and then by the attending doctor. there was, of course, some confusion over why certain things had been done in the course of my treatment, which makes sense since they don't have all the detailed information that would be in most patient's charts. also, neither of them had seen me before and my medical history is a bit weird.
the appointment was fairly normal, but i confess to being slightly irked. i asked about doing some blood work - maybe i presented it in the wrong way, because i mentioned iron and vitamin B12 (which i'm concerned about because i'm now mostly vegetarian) - and they said no, because then they'd have to book a follow-up for it. i understand that line of reasoning, but then again, i thought they were going to order blood work for the usual panel of things anyway, and i just wanted those 2 added to the list, not as a thing for them to book an appointment for. we did blood work last time, and it wasn't really to follow anything - it was mostly to have it on record. should i have asked for blood counts, LDH (which tends to go up in cancer), and liver function tests instead? and then thrown in iron and B12 as a side note? i can't help but notice that blood work was ordered anyway...for kidney function, to make sure i'm okay for the CT scan that still needs to be done (the contrast dye that they use for CT scans goes through the kidneys). and there's no question that my kidneys are fine.
okay, so i guess i'm still kinda irritated, even though i understand their rationale. anyway, that was my morning. took a lot longer than expected, and i've got a ton of ground to cover today. over and out.
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| so, uh...in about 2 minutes, some of you are going to want to yell at me. please hold off for a moment.
i had a whole bunch of appointments booked for mid-december with my various doctors at princess margaret hospital (PMH) in toronto. we knew we were taking a risk since it might clash with my december exams, but they of all people were also aware of the fact that missing whole days of class to bus in and out of toronto for a single appointment would be...difficult. so we booked them.
just now i pushed them back.
3 appointments plus blood work on the 16th and the 17th. the person at registration was not too happy with me. one of the doctors has a clinic the week after, so i now have an appointment with dr. bezjak, my thoracic radiation oncologist (chest cancer doctor specializing in radiation) on monday, december 21 at 9:15. as for the other two, well, it seems that either neither of them are holding clinics those two weeks, or the registration person couldn't get me in. i don't know how possible it is to pull a few strings. anyway, so for drs. dawson (head & neck radiation oncologist - head & neck cancer doctor specializing in radiation) and leighl (thoracic medical oncologist - chest cancer doctor specializing in chemo), those appointments have been re-booked for the next time i'll be in toronto in the middle of the week. which is during march break.
(insert fire and brimstone)
but! i do have an appointment next week here at kingston general hospital (KGH, or more accurately, at the KGH cancer center, which is technically called the CCSEO, cancer center of southeastern ontario) with dr. zaza, who is my local head & neck radiation oncologist (please see above  ). that's thursday, december 10 at 9:40. thankfully, classes will be over by then, so i shouldn't have to miss anything to go. i'll probably ask him to order some blood work, and we'll see what he thinks about that suggestion.
so to sum up:
dr. zaza: thurs dec 10 9:40
dr. bezjak: mon dec 21 9:15
dr. leighl: wed mar 17 12:00 (inc bloodwork)
dr. dawson: thurs mar 18 13:45
and right now, i have a problem: the med school says my TB testing isn't up to date, and i need to check on my vaccinations. the issue here is that...well...i don't have a doctor.
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| i just finished the first of 3 exams for this semester. here at queen's med we have a pretty predictable system of examination: at the end of each semester, you get 3 exams - the OSCE, a multiple-choice, and a short-answer exam. the latter two are 3 hours each and cover all of the material that was taught that semester. the OSCE (objective structured clinical examination) is the practical exam, testing that part of medicine where you do doctor-y things like asking the right questions when a patient comes in saying "i've been having dizzy spells recently" and knowing what components of the physical exam to do when a patient comes in with weakness in both arms. today was the OSCE. one down, two to go.
so it seems like a good time for me to take myself away from medicine (or the television) and talk about other things in life.
most of you know that i went on a bunch of trips towards the end of the summer and moving into the 2009-2010 school year. trips that i never got around to writing about...so yeah, it's more than a little late, but here goes anyway. i'm starting backwards, which is why this one is numbered #4.
montreal technically shouldn't be a transition-time trip, because it was during the first weekend after school had started, but it's close enough. my friend caroline has been living there for a while now, having moved there from toronto for a post-doctoral fellowship (a research position that you can take after you finish your ph.d.). and in spite of all the almost-plans to go, i still hadn't actually made it onto the train and into the city. so it was great when between her and i and our friend alina, we found a weekend that suited all of us!
so on friday, alina hopped onto the VIA in toronto, i joined her when her train got into kingston, and we arrived in montreal without any problems. it was late, so after our hugs and truly brief catch-up, caro got us settled in and then we all went to bed like responsible adults.
saturday morning was sleeping in a bit and then breakfast, and then we subwayed over to old montreal. we visited a catholic church where caro and alina had lit a candle for me last year just before i started chemo.
we had a great time just walking around the city and catching up...
and were a little surprised to discover that we'd actually been immortalized in bronze already!
and then we headed down towards the waterfront, where we learned a bit about travel techniques and cooperation:
that's a quadricycle, with two sets of pedals, a steering wheel, and it can seat three. we took turns driving. (yes, that means i was driving too!)
dinner was...well, we were in montreal. what do you think dinner was? CHEESE! really amazing cheese fondue, and then we were really full. but happy.
we were all pretty wiped after that, having walked all day, so we made our way back to caro's...and then i realized that i'd made the huge mistake of not hydrating enough that day and developed a pretty bad headache. both of them told me to go take a nap, and i did...finally awakening when the two of them were trying to quietly sneak around me to make arrangements for sleeping.
woke up the next morning feeling much better, and after breakfast and packing, we took the morning walking around and buying some yummy items in a huge farmer's market, and then visited a favourite shop of caroline's.
that's a chocolatier shop, and they're having hot chocolate. that was our last stop before we headed back to the train station and said our good-byes. 
overall a good time, seeing my two friends, catching up...and we had a beautiful weekend for all our outdoor wanderings, and a lot of good food, both out and at home. hope we'll do it again soon!
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