Thursday, October 2, 2008 - This and That

Hiya Bloggy,

Yes, it is 3:36am as I'm typing up this blog entry. It's one of those insomnia nights. I have taken a med that will hopefully kick in soon and make me sleepy so I may have to leave in mid-blog to go to bed ;)

I guess I should really always read the last blog entry before I start a new one so that I don't repeat myself, but alas, I forgot to do that this time.

But, from what I can remember, I had reported on the visit I had with Dr. John Yee, my lung surgeon. He went over the CAT scan report which showed 4 small nodules, as well as the one 1/2 inch nodule that we knew about and that will have to be surgically removed. The plan was to go in and do that surgery this Fall, but now, because of the 4 small nodules, that plan is on hold. These 4 nodules are very tiny, all of them under 5mm in size (1/5 of an inch). So he is recommending that I go through 6 more cycles (3 months) of chemo to see if the chemo will shrink/kill off those nodules. There's no point doing the surgery and taking out the 1/2" nodule if these other ones are growing and they may just be the start of a bunch more. But if the chemo kills them off, and kills off any potential unseen cancer cells from taking root, then it makes sense to do the surgery. This is very scary for me because if the chemo DOESN'T affect them, I will be in very big trouble... and when cancer spreads from one area to another, it is tougher to eliminate it.

Today, I went into the BC Cancer Agency and had a PET scan. The last PET scan I had was 6 months ago. So this scan is to see if there is any new growths in the abdomen/liver/surrounding organs. So, everyone must keep their fingers and toes crossed that this scan doesn't find anything.

Next will be an appt. with my oncologist, Dr. Sharlene Gill on Friday, Oct 10th. It will be at that appt. that she will go over the results to the PET scan and then we will also go over the plan for the chemo treatment, if that's what she suggests, etc. It will mean scheduling an appt. at the hospital to have another portacath inserted under my collarbone, then a few weeks for that to heal before we start up with the chemo again. I would think that we'd probably be doing the chemo Nov, Dec, Jan and then maybe the surgery (if still needed) in Feb.

So, the battle continues! Meanwhile, to keep me distracted, my friends are throwing me a support party/celebration on Oct 19th. Theatre friends... they are just the best! There's even going to be a show of musical theatre performers, but I'm being kept in the dark about that. Hehehe.. my dear friend, Kevin, will not tell me who is involved in this so it will be a surprise :)

Now, last weekend... I simply must tell you about last weekend! I took a two-day weekend workshop in Voice Overs ... or "Voice Acting". This is the field of radio/tv commercials where you don't see the actor, you just hear them; PSA announcements; audio books; GPS Walking Tours; cartoons; characters, etc. I took the course just for interest's sake. I thought it would be neat just to learn about the business, how it works, the equipment involved, etc. I had no idea that I would totally fall in love with it! Seriously... I loved every single moment of it and didn't want it to end! I also found a niche for me... one that totally surprised the heck out of me and that is that I have a voice for children's audio books. Taking children's stories and putting them in an audio book form. It is so much fun because the narrator can be a character of it's own and then of course, there are all the characters in the story so these can all be different voices. It is going to take a lot of practice but I got great feedback from the vocal coach/director (Pam) and the sound engineer (Bill). I can't believe how much fun I had with this. Here is a picture of me in the sound studio:



Hmmm... I do have a couple of demos of the voice over work I did but it seems we can't upload audio files to the blog. Only images or video. I'll have to work on seeing if I can do some sort of html coding and setting up a link to a server or something... but maybe when it's not quite so late/early in the morning ;)

Here is a picture of Pam, my vocal coach for the weekend...



And a picture of Bill, who did the sound engineering:



And my friend, Alison, who I went to the workshop with:



Oh, and here is Paul, one of the other students in our workshop. He was really, really good! Had a great voice for audio!!



Well, it's now after 4am so I'm going to attempt the sleep thing :) I'll report more here later... both updates on the next plan for the chemo, etc. as well as just stuff I'm doing around here :)

Ta ta for now!

Cheryl