Unfortunately some of those highs came with some lows. I did have the gamma knife radiation right before Christmas and we will know at the end of January if it has worked. I was not prepared that it entailed my head being screwed into a halo for the majority of the day. 4 screws into your head so you can’t move. Then they bolt the halo into that machine. You are drugged up just enough to manage what is going on. It’s a full day process but as always Roswell makes you feel like you are their number one patient. 

After Christmas I started to not feel so great. I thought I had the stomach bug. I still went for my vaccine injection and all my labs looked good so we all agreed it was the tummy bug. I got through New Years and had a great evening with Shawn. By Monday morning I woke to that all too familiar pain in my left side. I told myself it’s just trapped gas and tried to go about my day. Which didn’t work. By the time the Bills were starting to play the on-call doctor said to come into Roswell’s urgent care. That one hour and 45 minute ride took forever! They got my pain managed pretty quickly and had a CT within about 30 minutes. I was so jacked up on meds when the doctor came in with the results that I don’t remember much but I do know I heard him say the tumors are back to where they were a year ago when you started. Ohhh 2023 this is NOT how I wanted to start our first dance. Unfortunately Dr. Iyer is out of the country and I have to wait until my scheduled appointment next Thursday to talk about next steps. The on-call sent us home but not with the right pain medication. We were instructed to go home and call the clinic the next day. 8:00am rolls around and I can barely breath through the pain. We get a hold of the clinic at Roswell and they instruct us to go straight to Strong ED. My Roswell PA said she would call a head with notes and orders and just go right in. That is NOT what happened at all. Shawn and I got there and the triage nurse said she couldn’t see any notes or orders and do have a seat. We sat with my pain at a 10 for 4 hours! When I got back to a room the doctor went to put orders in for the Dilaudid and steroid and couldn’t because you guessed it the orders had been there for 3 hours!! I truly wish that someone would come up with a better intake system for emergency so doctors, nurses, PA’s and Techs aren’t so overloaded they miss things like that. 

I am finally home with a good pain management in place by my palliative care team at Roswell. Im nervously waiting for what is next and praying. Keeping my eyes on Jesus and leaving this at the foot of the cross. It’s not mine to bear..