First things first.

I thought this might be a good idea to keep everyone updated on what's going on with Peggy, since I don't think facebook is the place for all of this. Hopefully I'll be done with this blog in a month or so {because the cancer will be a non issue by then}. In the meantime, here's the background...

Right before Thanksgiving mom came down with pneumonia, for which she was eventually hospitalized. This lead to a chest ex ray, which lead to more ex rays and they wound up finding a "mass" on her kidney.  She saw a surgeon who wanted her to be cleared by a cardiologist and pulmonary doctor before even talking surgery. At the time, he said she has two options..it's small (about an inch), so they could jusst continue to monitor it, or have surgery to remove the mass, and or the whole kidney if need be.

The pulmonologist wanted her to have a sleep study, which lead to her finding out she has chronic sleep apnea, so she now has a c pap machine, which she is getting used to.  The pneumonia went away very slowly.

Finally pulmonary and cardiology cleared her, so we went back to the surgeon, who now said we have three options (I guess he thought of one more since the last time we were there.) The same two as above (wait and see, and surgery), and now a third choice, freezing the tumor...which would be a whole lot easier on her physically. 

This was an important appointment with the surgeon, BUT, for some reason he did not have the cardiologist report, which we really needed to make this decision of surgery or not.  (BTW, my mom at first was all for the surgery; go in, get it out, done. Turns out it's not that simple.)

The freezing option sounded pretty good, so we decided to have another MRI done, and hope it has no grown any. (If it did grow, mosly likely she'll have the surgery). I made the appointment and asked when should she take the valium the doctor had prescribed (she doesn't like being in the MRI machine). They said DO NOT TAKE IT TILL SHE GETS HERE. We get there and the first thing they say is she should have taken the valium before hand. Eye yi yi.

She gets all prepped, she's in the machine, iv's are going, they are playing Frank Sinatra for her and the machine breaks down.  They have to cancel the test. So now, she is woozy from the valium and I'm helping her get redressed and mom says, "I think they were looking at my liver by mistake anyway." So figuring what else can go wrong, I checked with the nurse that it was a kidney test, and she VERY STERNLY said to me that she told my mother it was a KIDNEY test, not a liver test (I think she even threw down the pencil she was writing with). Apparently, this nurse did not have much patience for a 74 year old lady on valium.  That stuff always amazes me. I'm standing there with my mom who has cancer, is still woozy, has to go through this whole thing again, AND YOU HAD A BAD DAY???? 

We are going to a different MRI center tomorrow at five. This is going to be fun, trying to have the MRI's from two different sites compared...but I don't trust that broken machine and I didn't like the tude anyway.

I'll keep you all posted!

ps. I never blogged before. Hope I am doing this right.