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Houston, we have a problem.

“What are all those spots?” I said out loud to no one really. My new chest CT was up on one screen and the one done two months ago was on the other. Side by side. They weren’t the same.

There were four people in the room. Dan and I on one side and Dr House and Dr “Young-Guy-I-Don’t-Know” on the other. Dr Y was at the controls, tuning in the pictures, trying to match them up. That’s when House moved him aside and sat in his place. I watched his face. I knew there was something wrong.

“What are all those spots?” I said again, more slowly this time.
“That’s what we are trying to find out. What ARE all those spots. Some of them are normal blood vessels. Some of them are not.”

I couldn’t breathe. I looked over at Dan and he wasn’t breathing either. It was one of those moments that lasted a lifetime. How long of a lifetime? I couldn’t even ask that question- not even in my mind.

“Teresa, we have a problem.”

Ya, that’s what I thought.

“See this spot, and this one. And here is one trying to emerge. Then there is this one here . . .” That one was much bigger than the rest. There were spots. Several spots. I counted five or six. But only on the screen on the left. The one from yesterday. They weren’t there two months ago.

The sneaky little devil. What’s it doing up there?

My calmly confident Dr House turned from the screen he had been studying.
“I’m sorry.”
“Yah, me too.”

“If there was just one spot, I would say that we would just go in and take it out. Because there are many spots, we need to treat it systemically.”
“You mean Chemo.”
“Chemo.”
“It’s a good thing I didn’t spend that money on a new hair cut.”
“Ya, you won’t be needing a haircut.”

Lung spots.
Chemo. Sarcoma Chemo
Lungs.

“It’s the sarcoma that spread? Not something else?”
“Without taking a piece of it, I can’t be positive, but it looks like sarcoma. I would say it’s sarcoma.”
“What do we do now? What does this mean for my surgery on Monday?”

“I’m thinking. I’m still thinking. There’s two thing we can do. But if we don’t take this out now, we have wasted the radiation. There is a window of benefit after the radiation and we measured it exactly.”
“Let’s take it out as planned then. I want it out.”
“Yes. Let’s take it out.”

I never asked what the second thing that he could do was. Go figure.

“And then what? What do we do about the other?”
“You need to go back to your medical oncologist.”
“Dr E.”
“Yes. He will make a plan for the chemo. There will be several different drug combinations. We talked about this last time I saw you. It won‘t be fun.”
“Yah, I remember. How long will I be on chemo?”
“At least six months, maybe more.”
“And then. . .”
“Then what hasn’t dissolved, will hopefully shrink. And those will be removed.”
“Will you do that?”
“No. I don’t do the chest. There is another surgeon that we send the chest to.”
“Is this other surgeon part of the Sarcoma Team?”
“No. This doesn’t happen enough for us to keep a chest specialist on the team.”
“What about a biopsy?”
“That will be up to Dr E to arrange. I would contact him right away.”

So the script for the sequel appears. Not the plot I ever dreamed.

Dan had one very good question left. “So, the delays . . . They hurt us?”
“Yes. The delays hurt us.”

We went over the particulars for the surgery. He answered all my questions. I have to admit, though, I didn’t ask them in the same manner that I wrote them down.

“See’ya Monday.” And we were walking down the hall. The kids were in the waiting room. We had no time to discuss what we were told. No time to fall apart. We had to put it all on hold. And we had ten minutes to get to our next appointment for pre-op with the anesthesia department.

Getting lost in the maze of buildings and departments within helped to stem the tide of panic as well. By the time we got where we were supposed to be, I was worried about how my emotions would play into the tests they had for me. I left Dan and the kids waiting and followed the yellow brick road in a purple haze. Pulse: An Ok 77. Blood pressure kinda high: 150 over 90. Not as bad as I thought.

“Are you nervous?”
“I wouldn’t use that word. I just got some unexpected news.”

The word I would have used was calm. Weirdly, inhumanly calm. She wouldn’t have believed me.
*********

Shock and awe.

There is still so much to tell you, but not much time left in this day to write it. I will have to call this part one. Or is it part two? No part . . . Part . . .Part 109.

Day 109 is done.

To be continued . . . Tomorrow.