Yesterday, a friend sent me a message because she was worried that I hadn’t posted the results of this month’s MRI, and that’s when I realized I’d been absent from my blog and social media and I was unwittingly worrying people.
My last MRI was with new, local doctors and so the switch has complicated getting my results. See, when my MRI results are reported to me every four months or so, the current result is always compared to the most recent result. For the past several months, that result has always been “stable”—meaning there’s no discernible change in the size or shape of the brain tumor.
But the new doctors who are interpreting the imaging results from last week don’t have the most recent prior MRI (from March 2019) for comparison. They only have images from from February 2017, when I was first diagnosed.
So because I didn’t have anything official to report, I didn’t say anything. I figured I’d just wait. Well, it’s taking even longer than I anticipated to get the official results, and I realize now that my silence was a little worrying. Sorry about that! I’m not sitting on bad news over here. There just isn’t any news. As soon as I hear, I will report back to you all on my blog and an on Twitter.
As far as symptoms go, there’s no reason for me to believe that the report won’t be “stable” again when I finally get it. But I’ve learned not to take things like that for granted either. So we’ll see what we see.
In the meantime, I have returned to my palliative care doctor a couple of times, and he is helping me work on managing my most burdensome symptom: fatigue. So I have a couple of new prescriptions that I’ve started and he’s helping me adjust the dose. I’m pretty optimistic about getting that sorted soon, but in the meantime I’ve just been focusing on my health and avoiding Twitter. God, it’s a cesspool of Trump and his related shenanigans these days.
Anyway, those of you out there with chronic health issues know how tiring and time consuming it can be to track and monitor your progress on new drugs. Whether it’s cancer or fibromyalgia or arthritis, adding a new treatment into the mix can really complicate the balance you’re trying to strike between each symptom and side effect. That’s what’s taking up so much of my time at present.
As for the long-term disability fight, my attorney is still working on the appeal with Lincoln Financial Group. These things take forever. But, as always, in the meantime I encourage you not to give them your money, and I encourage you tell the people you love not to give them their money.
A friend of mine is working on an article about my battle with Lincoln Financial Group that I anticipate will be published this month or next. I’ll be sure to post a link when that’s live too.
So I’ll be back with an update when I know more. Watch this space!
