Whew!

Thank the little baby Jesus!


Turns out they didn't run out of BBQ pork before we got to B's after all!




Oh, and Chuck's CT scan was all clean. No cancer :D



What a long day we had. A long day of waiting in two different cities with nothing to do in between the couple of things we were waiting for.

The appointment for the CT scan was at 9:30, so we left here about 7. I expected a long wait at the hospital in Greenville, because the waiting room in Radiology was packed. Normally he gets his CT scan here in Jacksonville, and they send the results up there where Chuck gets checked out by the doctor at a later date.

This time we decided to do it all same day. Chuck was in for his test and out in record time. Those people really run a tight ship! Best hospital I've ever had to deal with. If you're going to get sick, go to Pitt Memorial in Greenville.

Chuck came out of the test kind of loopy though. Have any of you ever had a CT scan with contrast dye? You can taste a really strong metallic taste in your mouth and feel it in your nose, and your crotch gets really really really warm. Your balls feel like a hot teabag.



Since we got out of there in record time, we raced on over to B's BBQ. We had beat the rush! I felt triumphant.

Which wouldn't last long. Because although their pulled pork is delicious and succulent and I thoroughly enjoyed it, there is one problem with the place. No air conditioning. It looks like a hole-in-the wall dive from a movie about the South. There's a smoke shack out behind it. Which gives it a great ambience!

If only it wasn't 100F/37C outside. And even hotter inside, of course. Dear God, I felt like a roasted pig myself!

We actually killed most of the day by eating, which I hate to admit. The appointment to see the doctor was in the afternoon at 2:30. There's nothing to do in Greenville, so we stopped and got ice cream. Then we stopped and visited with my old boss who now manages the Barnes & Noble bookstore there. Then we got coffee. Lots of thumb-twiddling.

Boring enough for you yet? There's not even any way to turn this into something funny!



Finally the appointment came nigh. We did have to sit in the waiting room at the cancer center for quite awhile. That is one of the most depressing things you can ever do. People are there waiting for their chemo. Everyone looks so sad. A lot of people are bald and skinny. I applaud the people that work in that clinic, but man, I don't know how they do it without Prozac.

I remember the first time we came into that clinic, when Chuck started his chemo. I even remember where we sat while we were waiting. Chuck was very silent. That was....I think 'ominous' is the descriptive feeling I'm looking for. Chuck is never silent.

This the the Leo W. Jenkins Cancer Center from the outside. The Brody School of Medicine looms in the background.


We did see one of his chemo nurses this time, who totally remembered us. She even remembered the year we were there...she didn't know we got married, and was very happy to see us still together. Chuck is as big a ham as I am (and an even bigger charmer of the ladies), so he kept all the nurses laughing every time he went into the chemo bay. Tough to forget Chuckles. He copes with difficult things through making other people laugh, just like I do.

We weren't expecting the results from the morning CT scan to come back so quickly, but they did. The doctor told us Chuck's lung was clean as soon as he walked in the door. Dr. Walker is AWESOME. We were shuttled around to a couple of different oncologists over the last five years. Even though they were good at what they do, they weren't specialized in thoracic cancers (which lung cancer counts as). This guy is. And he CARES about his patients, I can tell. Sometimes doctors get a bit desensitized and mechanical, but this one isn't. You can't teach that in medical school.

Anyway, I mis-spoke last post. I meant to say we actually went back for bi-yearly check-ups, not yearly. They're every six months. Turns out, Chuck does have to come back one more time in 6 months. And we thought it would be done. Or at least Chuck would only have to come back to be checked out every couple of years.

The doctor got all Dennis Downer on us. Chuck still will have to come back every year. For like the next 20 years. After 5 years, it's unlikely the SAME cancer will return to Chuck's lung. But after 5 years, there's a 20-30% chance a different lung cancer will attack him.

That kind of depressed him. More correctly, that kind of depressed his wallet.



We were cheered up later on though, we did end up going to that baseball game in Kinston. Ate some bad-for-you-but-delicious stadium food (I stayed away from the hot dogs, IG....but I may have had a chip or twelve O_O). Drank a couple of beers. The game got cancelled near the end, on account of a nasty thunderstorm.

And it STAYED nasty. The hour drive home through the rural countryside was a white-knuckle affair. We could barely see out the windshield a couple of times. And a crack of lightning struck something quite near us and seared the image on our vision for about 10 minutes afterwards...scared the crap out of me.

But we finally made it home. 13 hours out on the road. Glad that's over for another six months :)

Thank you everyone for your well-wishes and good thoughts. Not to get all mushy, I truly believe that they help. :)