Bits and Pieces Taken

Well, my throat is all better from my weird strain of strep. It has been for a couple of weeks now. About the same time it was feeling better, my upper left wisdom tooth decided it would be fun to be cheeky- literally. It turned sideways and chewed up my cheek quite nicely. I was going camping so I used sugarless Trident gum as a gum tooth cap to keep the tooth from enlarging the hole it had already made in my cheek. It was very painful and made me not want to eat... again, like the strep. I don't currently have a dentist, so my mother-in-law set up an appointment for me with hers the day after we got back from camping. She also went with me for moral support, because I'm terrified of the dentist. Due to my compromised immune system, he referred me to an oral surgeon who happened to have a cancellation for the next day, so I went- again with Connie- and had my last wisdom tooth extracted. That was a week ago yesterday. My extraction site feels pretty good, however, I have a cut in my upper gums and I keep biting my cheek and neither site is healing well or quickly. Again it hurts to eat.

I finally saw a dermatologist about a mole that appeared on my shoulder post-chemo. He said it's nothing to worry about. Yea, good news. I asked him about some bumps on my hands that have come and gone for the past couple of months and are sometimes very painful. He decided to take a punch biopsy of them. Basically, he numbed my hand with a shot (yes, another shot), and took a punch of skin from the side of my hand between my thumb and index finger. He wasn't too concerned about them, which is great. Within a week I had a tooth and a punch of skin taken from my hand. At least it wasn't anything major, and I'd like to keep it that way.

Best Appointment in a Long Time

I saw Dr Bernstein today and he was much less serious and more laid back than the last appointment, which was a good sign. He said we're throwing out the most recent PET. Because of my Strep infection it lit up many false positives and is inaccurate information. He presented my PET at Conference last Monday and several colleagues felt that the scan lit up falsely due to the infection, which was great to hear since he was skeptical that it was just the infection and was thinking that the disease was probably back.

I see him again at the end of August for another PET and we'll go from there, but he hopes the disease is gone. Us too. We'll also talk about getting my port out at that time.

My hair is coming in nicely. I'm trying to get used to the short style, but I'm so glad to have hair again.