Back to School, Back to Business

Today was Brynn's first day in the sixth grade. Much to her disappointment her new school continues to group 6th grade in with the elementary school, and she had been looking forward to officially being a middle schooler.

I knew she was at least a little nervous this morning because she asked me to walk inside with her. We've reached the stage where 85% of the time I'm an embarrassment, so her willingness to be seen with me was a sign that something wasn't sitting right with her. It could have been the fact that she'd forgotten how to get to her classroom or it could have just been first day jitters, but either way I was happy to escort her inside.

At first she stuck close by me, but then we bumped into the only other sixth grader Brynn knows at her new school (our neighbor). Immediately Brynn shifted her attention to her friend, but subtly looked over her shoulder and indicated she still wanted me to tag along. This lasted until we ended up in the cafeteria and the girls sat down at a table full of potential new friends. When I leaned over to tell Brynn where I'd be picking her up in the afternoon she looked at me like I had 3 heads. Like the lamest 3 headed monster ever. Time to go.

Thank goodness for school dress codes. I won't miss this summer's short-shorts.

This afternoon when I pulled up to the curb to pick Brynn up I was happy to see that she looked cheerful. Of course I asked how her first day was. Without missing a beat she replied, "It was good. There are two cute boys in my class."

Well, I'm glad all the important things fell into place.

A Perfect PET

It's not unusual for me to know the results of my PET/CT scans long before I sit down with my doctor. The scan is performed at the hospital and, once the results are ready, a summary is faxed to my doctor. Because I'm the patient though, I can go directly to the hospital and request a copy of the results. When there are several days between my scan and my doctor appointment, I'm prone to getting the summary early because the curiosity (and worry) are overwhelming.

This round was different though. My scan was on a Friday morning and my doctor appointment was on Monday morning, so there was no time for me to sneakily find out my results on my own. I'd have to wait for the doctor to deliver the news. By the time he came into the room I was ready to burst, certain I was going to simply blurt out "WAS IT OKAY?!?" with a crazed look in my eye. He beat me to the blurting things out though.

Dr: (clearly irritated): You're not getting scans there any more.

Me: (somewhat thrown off): Okay?

Dr: They shouldn't just put anything that's wrong in the report, they should outline everything they see. You're just not going back there for any more scans!

Me: (sort of laughing at his irritation, but now also alarmed that he referred to something "wrong" in the report): Okay?

Dr: (picking up on my alarm): Oh, nothing's wrong, but this report is awful!

Me: (giant sigh of relief) Oh thank goodness!

So that's how I found out that my PET/CT results showed NO CANCER, as an aside to my doctor's annoyance at the quality of the scan report.

Did you hear that folks? One hundred days out from receiving my donor's stem cells, my body is still not re-growing any cancer!