The Five Year Circle

I started this blog almost 5 years ago as a way of keeping track of my thoughts regarding my dad's health and its impact on me as I headed back to NY for his heart bypass.  I never expected less than five years later, I would be back.  I'm just gonna say, a mid afternoon phone call on New Year's Day saying your dad has pancreatic cancer, isn't anywhere on my list of top 100 ways to start a new year.

So, a quick phone call (and a big shout out to Delta for getting me back to NY within 24 hours in the midst of one of the biggest storms to hit the east coast), a fairly "easy" trip with no surprises (for me) aside from a really ugly ferry ride from VT to NY and I'm at my dad's.  And the current news is that the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, might...MIGHT have been premature.  He had a scope procedure to place a stent in his liver/pancreas and a scraping was taken for biopsy as well as a cat scan and the biopsy and cat scan came back with no indication of cancer. HOWEVER, the Dr has said that he WON'T say that there is no cancer. He is sure there is something there, he's just not sure what it is.  Unfortunately, the internet isn't very optimistic with regards to pancreatic abnormalities.

Next step, consultation with a surgeon in Albany to see what they can do.  I don't THINK that they're looking at a Whipple Procedure (which involves removing a whole bunch of organs) but if they get in and find that which isn't there, then we might just be looking at that.  We talk to the surgeon on Monday.

What I am most concerned about at this point is the lack of urgency.  No rush on the biopsy report. No rush on chatting up a surgeon.  The only rushing going on has been me and my siblings hauling ass to NY.  My poor sister is on day 2 of traveling and we still don't expect her until tomorrow.  She had reservations from Seattle to Burlington via Detroit, thinking Detroit is more capable of dealing with snow.  She made it to Detroit to find her Burlington leg cancelled and ended up at LaGuardia via Cleveland, expected to leave LaGuardia at midnight only to find her plane to Burlington was sitting in Raleigh.  Put into a hotel at midnight, back in the morning to find her 330pm flight was again cancelled.  So, maybe tomorrow.  Fun huh?

Hurry up and wait.  Not one of my strong points.