Last week I had a follow-up appointment with Dr. Cancer. It’s been about twelve weeks since my final round of chemo. Every time I see her, I need to get a blood test beforehand, and I’ve learned that I can schedule that, so I did that the day before – and again, it required lots of poking and multiple tries. I don’t know why it’s been so hard to get blood out of me since my treatment; I’m really glad this did not happen during the human pincushion phase of life better known as pregnancy.

The visit with Dr. C. went fine. After first getting set up with her nurse, and then going through an initial exam with her fellow (who I really like, but whose name I can’t recall – let’s call him Fellow), she breezed in all smiles and announced, “Your blood tests look great! No more chemo needed!”

Um. Yay? I had no idea more chemo was a possibility! Ok yay no more chemo … but, WTF? Ok ok, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth…

Next we discussed my recently earned PhD in Lymphedema Studies. Like many others, Fellow was surprised that with only three lymph nodes removed I developed this condition; he’s never seen that before. Surprise surprise. We talked about what I’ve learned in terms of my surgical options, although this is not an area about which Dr. C. is knowledgeable. I found a local doc at a different clinic who has been trained to perform some types of lymphedema surgery, but won’t see me without a referral, which Dr. C. was happy to do. In fact I just got off the phone with her admin, who says she faxed them 100+ pages of my medical history, LOL … welcome to the ’80s.

That was about it. I’ll see Dr. C. every six months, and Dr. Zap every six months, alternating them – so that I’ll see one or the other of them every three months.