i miss evie very much!

i haven't seen evie since 4/14. it's been almost a month... she's grown so much - outgrowing the clothes and shoes she had before i left, or so i was told. i can't really tell how much she's grown. She's not very enthusiastic when she sees me on Skype now though. Soon she will forget who ma ma is or what it means. i feel kinda stuck here, and very sad, whenever i think of her. i want to bring her over as soon as i can, but when is that going to be? when will i be able to take care of her myself?? i have no answers, just a lot of questions. and i wish she could be here with her mom and dad.

PET+CT Scan

OK.. so i saw the dr. who gave me the PET scan on Friday. his conclusion was that i should start chemo immediately. i was to report to the hospital on Sunday and get a catheter installed on my chest. i would be on chemo for 2 days per 3 week cycle, and i would need a minimum of 6 cycles - 18 weeks at least. we were in shock, mom, bro and i. but we signed up anyway thinking if it needs to be done, it needs to be done. i should get started on treatment while we make arrangements to get a second opinion on the side. (if the dr wanted me on chemo on Sunday, i must be in deep shit.. no?) however, after we separately consulted our own friends about this, it seemed to us that we should seek a second opinion before commiting to the treatment. also, our friends all recommended us to go to a particular cancer center. One of my friends, Theresa, helped me arrange an appointment to see a dr there on Monday. I'm so glad we did this. The cancer center was so much better than the general hospital we went last week. At the general hospital, there were 3-4 people sitting inside the room waiting for their turns while the dr told me i needed chemo right away. yup, all very rushed with no privacy whatsoever. At the cancer center, on the other hand, we meet with the dr. in a room, while other patients waited outside of that room. Also, because the cancer center is not a general hospital, the number of patients is significantly less. The atmosphere much more peaceful and pleasant. Most importantly, the dr. makes a lot of sense to me. He read through all my records from Toronto as well as from the general hospital from last week. He studied the PET scan i did last week. Really carefully, he told me the PET scan only told half of the story. At the cancer center, they do PET+CT scans together so that what shows in PET can be cross-referenced in CT. PET may show an area of cancer cells (in black), but the location and size is fussy, and it may not even be cancer cells depending on the circumstance. (For example, the image showed a lot of black around my neck. The technician told me we can ignore those black areas because that is due to my stiffness.) So according to my new dr., my PET scan from last week reall didn't give him any concrete evidence that i have cancer in my abdomen lymph node. He recommended me do a PET+CT scan. If PET+CT indeed identifies tumor in my abdomen lymph node and if it is large enough, the next step will be a CT-guided biopsy. If the biopsy reveals cancer, then the next step is to figure out what treatment i'll need............ so, we were so ahead of ourselves last week and had a good scare for a whole weekend. Of course, maybe what i'm doing at the cancer center may prove to be a mere delay to a full-blown chemo in the end, but at least by that time i'll be thoroughly convinced, and i'll be receiving treatment from a dr i feel comfortable talking to and an environment that makes me feel safe. big thanks to our friends who recommended this cancer center, especially to Theresa and her family! and my poor mom, wasted $ on that feeble PET scan last week...
i will return to the cancer center on Monday to see the results and discuss next steps with the dr.. until then.

PET Scan

I think if there is a God, he really does want me to live longer. After our trip to Taipei, i was really exhausted from the flight and my digestive system continued giving me problems. It took me about 2 weeks to recover from the trip. I also had adjusted my diet (less raw veggie and fruits) so my diahrreah finally stopped. Then we were wondering if we should to go Shanghai to see the Forumla 1. Hubby said it was all up to me. I was reluctant, because I wasn't sure if traveling was doing me any good. However, he had just finished school, doesn't have a job to pin him down yet. And, he's always been the biggest Formula 1 fan. He hadn't seen Formula 1 live yet. Montreal no longer hosted it, and we suspect Shanghai won't host it much longer. I didn't want to be the cause of hubby's never seeing the Formula 1 live... So we booked flights to Shanghai. About 2-3 weeks before the trip, I started having this dull pain on the right side of my pelvis. I wasn't sure if it was part of my intestines or the pelvic bone itself. It felt like I was constantly having this pain, sometimes less, sometimes more, sometimes in the flesh, sometimes in the bone, but always on the right side of my tummy. I told everyone who cared to listen. I was planning to see more doctors after our Shanghai trip. Then Mom said she knows a good doctor in Shanghai who moved there from Taiwan. Dr. Chu specializes in pain management (疼痛科). We had a chat in his office in Shanghai. He examined my tummy, pressing here and there to see where I was hurting. It was not easy to pin point where my pain was coming from because it doesn't seem to stay in one defined spot. He recommended me to take a PET scan in Taipei. He said it would be best to eliminate the risk of cancer before anything else. So we immediately revised our travel plans. Hubby would return to Toronto as scheduled, but I will go to Taipei with Mom. If hubby came with me, I'd feel pressured to rush everything so we could return to Toronto for Evie as soon as possible. I didn't think I should rush doctors. I also didn't want hubby's parents continue their work shifts in order to take care of Evie in our absence. So hubby went home without me. I came to Taipei to see Dr. Liu, recommended by Dr. Chu. Dr. Liu reviewed my case and asked me to get blood test, ultrasound, and an x-ray done that day, and scheduled CT scan the next day. He was about to dismiss us when I asked him about PET scan. He said because of the fee which is not covered by health insurance, he doesn't usually offer this scan to patients. We said we were willing to pay. So I got to do this scan on Thursday (yesterday). The scan took a very long time. I went in at 9am. At 11:30 I thought I was done but they told me to go eat and return at 12:15. When I came back, they scanned me again for 15 mins. Finally the imaging was done. The doctor there showed Mom, my brother, and myself the results. We looked at pale pictures of my body where black indicated cancerous cells. I had a condensed black dot right in the middle of my body. It looks to me like about where my belly button is but I couldn't be sure. The doctor said it is located on one or two lymph nodes located near the main artillary. (i'm not sure if i'm translating it right - the biggest vein in the body? 主動脈旁淋巴) Clearly it was outside of the cervical area and we wouldn't have known about it if Dr. Chu in Shanghai didn't recommend PET scan to us.. We don't know what this means yet because the PET scan doctor only told us about the image. We have to wait to see Dr. Liu and I suspect another doctor who specializes in lymphoma before we can get any info on what this means. One thing is clear to me - our fight with my cancer isn't over yet, and that God, if there is one, really wants me to live longer.

小Evie 3月的照片精選集

Skype with Evie during our trip to Taiwan

These pictures were snapshots from our Skype sessions with Evie while we were in Taiwan.
Sometimes she was unhappy, sometimes she just pretended we weren't on the computer calling out her name.

Sometimes she got really excited.


And here she gave us a flying kiss :)

So glad we were able to see her everyday on Skype during our Taiwan trip~ Evie is so damn cute!!