Triumph over the Bagel: An Update on my Second Scan

I had my second scan yesterday. I was prepared this time, I guzzled two giant cups of spiked coke like a champ. When I got hooked into the CT Scan, I knew that the warm sensation I was about to experience was definitely not me peeing my pants. At the end, I went and devoured an omelette. All the while, I checked my work email. I got this shit down.

My husband and I went this morning to find out the results. If you read my last post, you know I wasn't all cool like cucumbers.

I had a 15% shrinkage. In my head I was a bit bummed, hoping for more, but our doctor made sure to assure us this was good. Early scans will show big progress, later scans are more of a slow and steady game. We will continue with a modified regimen until progress halts or reverses. There is a path ahead, but it's unclear, it twisty and turny. We just don't know what lays ahead till we get there.

To give you an idea, my largest tumor starting out was 8.2 x 10.3 cm. 10 cm is about the size of a freaking bagel in width. I had a tumor all around slightly larger than a baseball! And that is only one of several. Ewww. That same one is now about 7.6 x 6.3 cm (the diameter of a soda can). All the others are currently the size of a banana slice. (I am referencing a website on Cervical Dilation.)

I know its good but I am impatient. I just got to keep moving ahead. Everything is normal. I need for it to be. At the same time I yearn for the extraordinary. Can I keep my job and simultaneously live on a Caribbean island?

I am trying to keep up with work, my art, life.

On a brighter note, I picked up a new book for the first time in a long time. Mary Roach writes a weird science book and I love it. She first wrote Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers which detailed the weird things that cadavers have been subjected to through history (for example, ballistics testing for the military in the days before ballistics jelly was invented - spoiler: it's a terrible test subject, or practice for plastic surgeons). This book won my loyalty, science is at its best when it honestly indulges your worst questions.

Her new book was Gulp: Adventures in the Alimentary Canal. This book covered the science of saliva and fart research, megacolons (Elvis died from constipation caused by a colon three times the size of a normal persons...the gut that he had in his late performances were not from eating fried peanut butter sandwiches. In fact, he could loose 20 lbs between performances by pooping alone. He died trying to do just that) and more intestinal oddities.


My favorite part? The colon cancer ribbon is a Navy Blue color. When I first found this out, I laughed that this was a missed opportunity to make it brown. Apparently, according to the book, it had been at the start (as bladder cancer was yellow) but patients complained that it was insensitive. Clearly I am not a majority.