One of the most important questions we were faced with was where I should go for treatment. This was a really difficult decision given the need to balance life, family, and work, as well as trying to create as little disruption as possible for my children and husband. While Abu Dhabi has made amazing progress in its health care systems, we decided to find a comprehensive cancer center in the States where I could have access to the latest treatment possible.
This comes with its own set of challenges. Which center? Which doctors? Where to live? How to move around? How to manage the insurance?
As soon as i received my lymph node results, my husband and I decided I should leave as soon as possible so I ended up leaving 10 days before my planned date. I am used to traveling with my three kids and this time I got to travel alone, leaving the pleasure of traveling with 3 kids to my husband who would follow in the next 2 weeks. Strangely the flight felt longer than usual so to use the time wisely I started writing my story.
After arriving to San Diego, where Matt and I married and lived for more than ten years, I immediately felt the beautiful weather, the crisp air and the beautiful sunshine. One of my good friends picked me up from the airport and I stayed at my aunt's house which was very comfortable.
My goal for the next ten days was to be as productive as possible and to start curing myself. I arrived on a Thursday and the next day was my first doctor's appointment. I decided to go to the beach and watch my first sunset where I did a guided healing meditation for 12 minutes. I sat on a high cliff right infront of the ocean. The sunset was beautiful, it was so perfect. Picture the perfect waves and perfect ocean sound, birds flying around and fresh air. Also there were a lot of surfers that day it was absolutely beautiful. When I started doing the meditation I envisioned all the cells of my body traveling throughout and i pictured them white. Then I added a few tiny red cells floating around. During the meditation I made the white cells surround the red cells and make peace with them and eventually the red cells disappeared and became white as well. I try to do this everyday, it helps me a lot. Now that I am not jet lagged, I also do long fast walks for about an hour followed by strengthening exercises. Then I sit infront of the ocean and do a meditation or pray the Rosary. I am lucky enough to have my family supporting me with taking care of my kids when I do my exercise. My husband has been amazing, so supportive, as I am writing he is looking for yoga classes for me to attend in the area we live now. I just keep counting my blessings and I am thankful for all the support, for the amazing weather and for the fact that right now I feel very good physically.
My first appointment was that Friday at 12:30 pm, I woke up went for a short walk got ready and went to my appointment. I was going through a mix of emotions. One one hand I was feeling exited to finally meet the famous doctor everyone was recommending me and on the other hand I was feeling scared and thinking ok..here we go, this is it...
Doctor Parker showed up, she was the most professional, decent, straight to the point person I have ever meet. She sat down and reviewed my information carefully. We were there waiting for her to speak...after a while, she said ok..we are going to perform a few tests before starting your treatment but this is what you will need if I take care of your case...She showed me a paper with a map of my treatment. She said because you are very young you need to have Chemotherapy, radiation and hormone therapy. She said a patient my age with a positive node could be at risk of having reacurrence of cancer later in life. She wanted to do everything in her power to make sure my cancer does not come back. She also said, even if we do all these we dont know if the cancer can come back, hopefully not. My doctor is very experienced, I trust her 100% and she is the type of doctor who likes to feel like she did everything she could to cure me. She does not like to leave any strings hanging.
I left this appointment with so much information in my head and I was really overwhelmed.
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