Blood work drama

I am at the stage now where I go back to the medical oncologist for blood tests every few months.  He is the chemotherapy man. He looks at  my test results to see if anything wacky is going on. I always knew that the next time there was bad news, I would probably hear it from him.  So today, when the nurse called to say there's something wacky going on, I wasn't horribly surprised; but I am fighting the urge to panic.

My liver enzymes are a bit high, the nurse said.  When did I start taking my anti-malaria drugs for my upcoming trip to South Africa?

Haven't started taking them yet, I said.  We are going to London first, so I don't have to start them yet.

Oh.

By now I am freaking out. The nurse reassures me that these enzymes can be messed up by Tamoxifen, which I am taking. She asks me to come in tomorrow to do a re-check.

I ask her, "Does this mean my cancer is back?"

"No, no, no, no, no!" she says.  But I need to come in tomorrow.

Okay, scratch plans for tomorrow. Tomorrow is the last day of the school year. I'm supposed to be watching Matthew's Moving On Day assembly and then taking him to the third-grade picnic. I hastily arrange for his brother to get him there so that I can go down to D.C. for more blood work.

Of course, I immediately go online and start reading up on liver enzyme levels in breast cancer patients.  Elevated enzyme levels can be caused by various drugs, including Tamoxifen.  They can be caused by heavy drinking (not my issue).  And they can be caused by cancerous tumors in the liver, including metastasized breast cancers.  As a total non-expert on things medical, I have no way of gauging which scenario is most likely, or how badly I should be freaking out right now.

I am supposed to be getting on a plane for England and South Africa the day after tomorrow.  Part of me wants to cancel all that and go get a PET scan and make sure the cancer monster isn't back. But I doubt they will offer me that sort of option, at least without trying to rule out other things first.  PET scans cost maybe $10,000 and they aren't really good for you. I bet they will tell me to stop taking the Tamoxifen for a while and let's re-test this in a few weeks. Meanwhile I will have to figure out how to stop wondering if there are metastasized breast cancer tumors quietly growing in my liver. I hope I can talk with my doctor tomorrow, and I hope he has something seriously encouraging to say to me.

I also wonder about the ethics of writing about this publicly.  Should I be causing you, my friends, to freak out, too, when quite possibly there is nothing at all to freak out about? Am I going to share every test result from now on that comes back less than perfect? If, God forbid, the doctors ever come back to me with truly bad news, am I going to share that, or keep it to myself as long as I can? I'd have to think about that.

I don't have much of a poker face.  Anybody who knows me well could look at me right now and see that I'm  a little tense. I am going to have to pace myself on the freaking out.  I should save the real panic for the day when I get real bad news, and not just the first dodgy blood test result.

I will keep you posted.