MRI Update

Got good news about the MRI - NOT sarcoma! Still not really sure what the "bump" is, if it's just so much lymphedema it makes it seem solid, or scar tissue, or what. The MRI report doesn't diagnose but does mention myositis and intramuscular edema. My oncologist is going to check with the radiation oncologist to see if he has any suggestions about overcoming the lymphedema, but in the meantime I'm just to keep working with the lymphedema therapists.

On Thursday I started taking a higher dose of lasix (diuretic) for the edema elsewhere in my body, which worked really well - so well that on Saturday I started getting really light-headed. I was losing so much fluid my blood pressure was getting a bit too low! I talked to an on-call doctor, who suggested weighing myself to help figure out when I need to take a lasix - sounds great unless you're traveling like I've been the past few days. Luckily it hasn't worsened too much since stopping - hopefully now that I'm almost done it will cease to be such an issue.

Sunday morning I had a 6:15 flight to Portland (I guess I booked it looking at the arrival time of 10am). After I arrived, I checked into the hotel then went exploring. I didn't think I'd get very far, I still felt pretty weak. But after two breakfasts I felt better. I wandered the Pearl and Alphabet Districts for much of the afternoon. The weather was nice, there were flowers blooming, birds singing, and Portland was really great!

I felt pretty good when I got up yesterday, but after my meeting I decided to head to a coffee shop to work instead of going back to my hotel. The sky had turned gray and it was cold. I tried two different coffee shops in the Hawthorne neighborhood, but just felt cold and had an achy back. Whether that was from bad coffee shop chairs, the neulasta injection, lingering yuckiness from the hypotension, I'm not sure. I finally gave up and drove around some more, looking for a place to warm up and eat dinner.

I still felt bad when I got back to the hotel, and when I got up this morning it just seemed like an effort to figure out how to get to the airport and check in. I drank a liter of water and a monster juice at the airport, which helped, so maybe I was still just really dehydrated. It just shows how easy it is for me to get out of balance right now.