Waiting

The hope with the enucleation is to remove all the cancerous cells from Anya's right eye, socket, and orbit. We will not know if this goal is achieved until we receive the pathology report.  Our oncologist said it would take about two weeks.  Our ophthalmologist was sure it would be less, about one week.  Each of them thought that they would be the one to receive the report and promised to call as soon as they had it.  Tomorrow will be three weeks since surgery, and I am starting to get impatient to find out the results.  We also learned in this last week that both doctors were out of town.  I hope that tomorrow someone is back to work and not too overwhelmed with other business to give us a call.

There is a lot resting on this report.  The most important would be to learn if the cancerous cells had spread outside of her eye.  The doctors don't believe that it has, but if it has, it would change our lives once again.  The next most important thing to learn is where in the eye cancerous cells were found.  Studies have shown that if the cancer is found in certain parts of the eye, it poses a greater risk for recurrence.  Studies have also shown that this recurrence can be kept at bay by additional chemotherapy. I suppose I should be thankful that there is a way to (most likely) stop recurrence, but I have a hard time thinking of more chemotherapy for Anya.  We know, though, that she did it before and I have confidence that she would do it again, and do it better than I ever would have imagined.  Still, I would rather not see her body pushed that far again.