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Dude... that sooooooooooooooo sucks.
Keep up the good fight. The upside of this trough will come!
P.S. I recently went through a bunch of very uncomfortable tests related to an annoying condition I will not mention here. But after several visits to a specialist and several of these diagnostic procedures, I was told I'd "just have to live with the problem." No medications worked, and the only surgery offered had a high risk of other problems. And I work in the medical field--still sucks!
maybe doctors are like tech support:
"Did you try turning it off and on again?"
'well what good would that do?'
"well... we have to try to force an unexpected reboot... you see, the driver hooks a function by patching the system call table, so it's not safe to unload it unless another thread is ready to jump in there and do its stuff. You don't want to end up in the middle of invalid memory!... hello?"
Some advice from the trenches:
* start a binder with all your test results, a chronology, etc. that you can refer to. Take it to every medical appointment.
* Get copies of ALL test results and clinical notes for yourself. (a friend had her medical file get lost by the cancer centre, and they now use HER file).
* Treat this as if you were getting a mortgage or a car. Ask a LOT of questions, and while you should be polite, don't give up without answers that you understand.
* Read read read. I found "Cancer is a word, not a sentence" by Dr. Rob Buckman useful. And learn about YOUR particular disease too. Information is power. The more you have, the more you have.
* Look long-term. I know you have to be disappointed right now, but this is just the first skirmish in a war, the first step in a dance.
Courage.
Hang in there Derek, as I told Airdrie I'm rooting for you. I agree with the previous commentators, ask lots of questions and read. Force the doctors to be straight up with you. Find out about all the what ifs, buts and I don’t knows. I know it is scary but you can do it and get through it. There is light at the top of the mountain.
We definetly miss having you around the office and hope you are back soon.
Kevin
I just heard about your blog on CBC radio and wanted to thank you for publishing it. I have been having some gastrointestinal problems and will be seeing a specialist in March. I have been very anxious and it helps to know that your blog was created. I am 40 years old and am not sure how I will handle a diagnosis.
Calvin
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