Hi Ho All,
Hope that you are well in this COVID world. Interesting that we have all had the thin veneer of "certainty and stability" ripped from us when we all had the luck of being diagnosed with cancer, and now the rest of the planet is finding it hard that the certainty that they all had has been taken from them with COVID taking all certainty away from them.
I have had an interesting year and have been really busy with work, and am fortunate that I have not had to worry about job security, more managing with a greater volume of work with reduced staffing numbers. I have thus avoided going for check ups this year but finally designated some time to this, even if it was 6 months later than I should have.
My Oncologist always used to tell me that I was "interesting" but this time when I met him he smiled and called me boring. We had a number of discussions over the last few years and I had a very good inkling but he said I was so boring that he no longer wanted to see me as I had the same chance as anyone in the general population of having a new cancer, and the chances of my lung having a recurrence was very low. If it made me feel better, he would continue to see me on a yearly basis for CT Scans and bloods, or I could see my own GP for chest x-rays in relation to a lung recurrence. I will need to ponder on that.
I had a follow up colonoscopy at the end of last month and my dr (who was also my colorectal surgeon) found 3 polyps and 1 pre malignant polyp. The Australian government changed regulations on NOV2019 so that it was much harder to get colonoscopies as they had so much success with campaigns to educate the public it was costing them too much. Thus under Medicare (meaning our government pays for it $750 of the $1000 that it costs) will only allow 1 colonoscopy every 5 years. Given that I have developed 4 in just under 3 years I am not happy with that but my surgeon has said that he has ways around it.
I did have an issue in that I had secondary bleeding several days after I had the scope and lost a lot of blood. I should have gone to the hospital for a transfusion but I didn't as I stopped bleeding and didn't want to get stuck in ER for more scans and tests but it has taken me about 3 weeks to get back to normal.
I hope that all of you on this site are well, and a big hello to all those I know, and a bigger hello to those that I don't.
Almost at the 8 year mark now so feeling more comfortable with life.
Cheers
Kiwi