My Endless Afternoon at the Doctor

The WAITING.  Ugh.

And what's the deal with the waiting room having no good magazines?  They're all freaking cancer magazines.  Just what I want to read about when I'm in a cancer waiting room.  Gah.

All right.  So I saw the CO today, and he mostly just wanted to make sure I was comfortable with the chemo plan that the Atlanta Oncologist proposed, which, it turns out, was the same thing the CO would have done.  CO mentioned FOLFURI and Avastin, then mentioned Erbitux, flipped through my file, mumbled some stuff about the type of cancer cells I have, and we started talking about port surgery.  We decided that I'd have the port put in next week, and start chemo the week after.  I couldn't think of any other questions, so he left and sent in the nurse.

The nurse is very nice, but...not super helpful.  She gave me a card that said I should report to the office at 8am March 8-10th.  I was shocked, because all three days???  I asked, and she was sure I was to be there that much.  Then when I questioned what exactly happens on those days, she mentioned that I'd be doing FOLFURI and Erbitux.  And I was all WHAT???  What happened to the Avastin?  What's the difference between Avastin and Erbitux?????  The nurse had no idea.  She offered to get the doctor.

The CO came back in, explained the differences between the two drugs, explained why he wanted to start with Erbitux, and assured me that I would only need to come in for one day.

The nurse came back in, we set up my first chemo day to be March 8th.

Then I was turned over to the schedulers where I found out that the people who deal with scheduling port placement left at 3:30pm.  Sigh.  Sigh.  So they will call me tomorrow.  I also found out that I have an appointment with the doctor before I do chemo.  Okay, fine.  That was standard in WI, not a problem.  However, the CO doesn't start until 9am, and because my chemo is so freaking long, they wouldn't schedule me to see him before.  So I now also have an appointment to see the CO the day before chemo.

After all that mess, I had to go to the lab for bloodwork because the nurse noticed that it's been a month since the last time they took blood.  Sigh.  Sigh.  By th e time I finished, it was 5pm.

This whole thing is freaking stressing me out.  But I'm not going to worry about it (too much) tonight because it is Survivor Wednesday.