second opinion...

new doc, new thoughts, bad news. he says it looks like a grade 3, according to the MRI and the radiology report and the fact that it wasn't there 2 years ago. i'll get some more specific MRI scans done in the next day or so, and he wants my biopsy slides to be reviewed by the penn neuropathologist. his other theory is that it could be multiple sclerosis.

he showed me on the MRI the places where the tumor has infiltrated the healthy tissue. i hate it i hate it i hate it i hate it i don't understand how this is happening and today i feel ready to fall apart and just die from the sheer magnitude of this. what the fuck. what the fuck.

at any rate, the tumor must come out as soon as possible in my opinion.

i'll see the neurologist/neuro-oncologist at 2:00. i was hoping that i wouldn't need her, but it looks like i may after all.

i hate hope. i hate these glimmers of something better that pop up in the haze of really bad news, because everything is so uncertain anyway and i wish i was never told that it could be a lower grade. i wish it had never been suggested to me. i told myself not to believe it could be true until there was more supporting evidence, but i went and did it anyway, and now i feel so fragile and terrified and foolish and deceived.

cancer. you know, in all honesty, i had steeled myself up for it so much last week when i was told i had it, i did a really good job convincing myself that this wouldn't be a big deal and that i would beat it no problem. i was ready and determined and wanted to just get started with it. and then when i was told that maybe it wasn't cancer, this small part of me (this is about as honest as it gets here) was almost disappointed that i wouldn't have the chance to fight that fight. i guess it's as if i were all riled up to go to war, and then i was told that the battle got called off. it's stupid, but there's this transcendency that comes with the title "cancer survivor", like those folks know more than the rest of us could, they've seen the other side or something. i wanted a piece of that. i wanted to see what those folks get to see. there's no challenge in having a benign tumor, just a little bit of a scare. but now that the prospect of cancer is back, holy shit--what was i thinking? i don't want this. i don't know if i can handle this. i'm more frightened than i've ever been of anything ever in my life. i've got to figure out a way to keep things together so that i can fight this.

is this what i get for feeling like the jilted soldier? did i bring this on myself? because now i feel defeated and i haven't even started.

oh my god. someone tell me this isn't real.