I am posting this evening to the Monday Night Cancer Club to say Hello, and more. But before anything else, let me say that I am hoping that all cancer patients, members of the Monday Night Cancer Club are doing well and hanging tough. My best wishes to you.
This diary is for the purpose of sharing with you some important issues that I left unsaid in my initiation diary here with the club, "An Eye-ball probable cancer diagnosis. No end in sight" of June 23rd. And as usual I seek your advise.
I have not been in tune health wise these days. Nothing that serious that I can qualify for any sympathy or feelings of pity. Perhaps its only my inner demons that have decided to mess with my head at this time of my uncertainties. You have done more than enough to make me feel well despite of it all.
After deep thoughts I decided to write and add my apologies first to peregrine kate and also ZenTrainer for not being with them in their recent diaries here at the Club.
The peregrine Kate`s diary of June 30th I read with much interest. I was actually unable to concentrate on any issue to comment, due to a nagging unpleasant state of inner turmoil that had a lot to do with cancer.
I will explain fully below. On top of that other personal issues have kept me on edge lately. But I am good and I`m here. No worries and I insist on these apologies. I know better.
I relied on my own diary of June 23, that actually generated 75 comments where I kept going back days later to find folks making comments and I would attend to them. I thought that perhaps peregrine Kate used the same method as I did about managing this particular diary. I noted however, that she closed that diary and turned off the lights and everyone left, no more comment could be seen.
But I was not discouraged. If you go back to that diary peregrine kate closed, you will see that I came back next day to post a comment. A sincere comment and I am sorry Kate.
ZenTrainer, if I owe someone here an apology for not even making a late comment in your diary of July 7th, it is you. I have been rather wrapped up with some issues as I have said above. I even tried to follow the advise I was given to write a diary by my not too secret mentor to distract whatever ails me.
I did write two diaries on immigration. Something and probably the only issue that attracts my attention these days, other than my health. Those type of diaries are not suited for Monday Night Cancer Club in my opinion, but writing those raised my spirit significantly and triggered this message to the Monday Night Cancer Club.
I did that Thursday and Saturday. I wrote diaries on the same topic and this evening, (again Saturday), I am writing this message for the following reasons other than to convey my apologies to you and Kate.
There was much discussion in the comments section of my diary of June 23rd, as I have said. The one issue discussed was anxiety that I raised as a probable cause of my fear to the new found horror that I might have caught cancer, or rather, as I recall I was terrified that cancer had found its mark on me in the form of a small growth on my right eye.
I have gone back to glance at my previous three diaries to see if I have mentioned to you what I suddenly suspect caused this small growth on my eye. I did not find anything, so I have to think that I have left that unsaid. I want to address that suspicion and maybe someone, here, anyone can tell me if this could be possible. That what I suspect might be the cause of this growth in my eye with potential cancer possibilities.
In order to consider my suspicion I will give you facts to take into account and decide. I had to find in my disorganized files the date on which I first had eye cataract surgery on both of my eyes. I have a bill dated 09/09/08 that shows the amount charged for one eye. It doesn`t say whether this bill is charging for my right or left eye. But it does not matter because both occurred close to each other.
So according to my fuzzy math, it has been give or take a few month over five years that I had surgery on my right eye -- time enough for any form of virus or disease to take hold...Knock on wood.
Now this is what I suspect: While doing cataract cleaning of my right eye, the doctor told me the next day after surgery, when I complained of redness and discomfort -- not pain actually, but I felt different from the surgery to my left eye. Because my left eye was done first. I asked the doctor about the redness of my right eye which actually looked like someone had poked a finger in it.
He asked me: "didn`t you feel it?"
When I asked, "felt what?", he said that he had difficulty with my eye and had to inject it with steroids. That brief exchange was lost in my head until several days ago.
When I recently saw the eye-cancer specialist who will remove the growth July 30th, I still had that exchange about steroids lost in my memory files. So I failed to notify him.
Because even if the steroid shot made my eye red, the redness disappeared rather swiftly and my eye sight was later measured at 20/20 during following up examinations. My right eye never bothered me since 09/09/08 following cataract surgery and I had perfect eyesight. So I never had any valid reason before to suspect anything wrong might have resulted by the steroid shot.
Until I started to feel this strange sensation of itch and discomfort this mid-year, again no pain, but started having difficulties seeing two blocks away clearly. That is when I called and ask the doctor for an appointment. A follow-up appointment that I had been putting off and off for a year.
It was on this day if you recall, that I have mentioned to my horror and uncertainty that I was told about the growth in my eye could be cancer! Damit, yet on this same day, if it had depended on my life - I did not remember the steroid shot to complain to the doctor.
And now my question to you: Can it be possible what I suspect? Could that steroid shot have sprouted into what I believe have played the horrific role to the situation in which I now find myself? Could it give off shoots or buds to emerge and develop rapidly.?
What I am writing here about my suspicion to the steroid shot somehow came back into my mind just recently.
This information I am sharing with you today haunts me from the time I slip off the bed in the morning. I go to bed afraid and my wife notices. I have every reason to think that where the steroid shot was injected, that is the same place where the small growth grew.
Mood swings mess with my head when I think of everything I have told you here today. I had difficulty writing this diary but I completely understand that its probably just my head playing games with me. Or that is what I make myself believe.
I could hardy wait to post this on Monday Night Cancer Club. Someone here, anyone, tell me it is alright to feel as I do. Your reasons to tell me that will be greatly appreciated.
That is what goes in my head these days. It pains me just to wonder how folks here feel who already know of their own situations with cancer. I struggle to say that afraid is not the word I should use in my situation. I want to be wrong about the steroid thing and I want to be wrong about everything I suspect.
The steroid shot is the important issue I wanted to share with you and ask what you think. Whatever you tell me I will forever appreciate because I know it comes from some who know and care deeply. Thank you very much for reading this far on my message and my suspicion.
I am keeping my fingers crossed hoping that someone with sufficient knowledge in my situation tell me that the length of time between 2008 when cataract surgery was performed on my eyes, and the day the small growth was discovered by my doctor in 2014 makes my suspicion Impossible.
As for the length of time set for my eye surgery to remove that growth from my eye on July 30th, it has nothing to do with the cancer specialist. If you recall, I told you the examination that day in June with the cancer specialist took about five minutes for the doctor to tell me about his plan to cut the growth with scissors.
When we shook hands and he walked off his assistant nurse led me to the desk where an appointment scheduler looked into her books to find the earliest day open for this particular doctor to attend to my needs. The closest she found was July 30th.
I mention this because someone in the comments to my diary suggested that if my case was that serious, the doctor would have ordered an immediate day for surgery. So I want to assure all of you that have been so helpful and caring that the length of time while it did create some anxieties, it did so solely for the uncertainty, and not the time I had to wait.
What the cataract surgeon did on my right eye might be evidence that the steroids might have generated some sort of cancer. So we will see when the cancer specialist looks at the growth through his microscope and expertise in identifying whatever it means.
At present I am wondering if it would be prudent, before July 30th to call the doctor who will perform my surgery to inform him of what I wrote here today on that steroids shot. I could not contact my cataract doctor on the phone when I tried recently, so I am unsure how to go here. But I will try this cancer specialist, and if necessary I will try to get an appointment before surgery. I am sure these two doctors have not talked about the steroid shot.
This waiting period has indeed been helpful. I have time for an appointment. These mild cases of mood swings once in a while have basically kept me off of things I normally do. But I am good and no matter what results I get through my upcoming surgery, I know I am ready for good or bad news. My family too has been prepared.
Again I send my best wishes to those members of this great club who know and understand my reasons for being scared.
Call me crazy all you want, but this is one club I am glad to have joined. I am very glad to be here this evening. Best regards to those who joined me previously.
Monday Night Cancer Club is a Daily Kos group focused on dealing with cancer, primarily for cancer survivors and caregivers, though clinicians, researchers, and others with a special interest are also welcome. Volunteer diarists post Monday evenings between 7:30-8:30 PM ET on topics related to living with cancer, which is very broadly defined to include physical, spiritual, emotional and cognitive aspects. Mindful of the controversies endemic to cancer prevention and treatment, we ask that both diarists and commenters keep an open mind regarding strategies for surviving cancer, whether based in traditional, Eastern, Western, allopathic or other medical practices. This is a club no one wants to join, in truth, and compassion will help us make it through the challenge together.