“At Least, Not At This Time…” At that last Zoom meeting with Dr. Malakoti, I complained that in all these months of tests and speculation I haven’t yet had a physical examination. I guess I got through to her because the scheduler at Fred Hutch called me the next day and made an appointment for […]
Recent Posts
Marilea Rabasa
Walking Through Cancer? – Part 7
Still Digging Time flies. It’s March now, a long time to not know what’s wrong with me. But the medical community operates, sometimes, at a snail’s pace. Gene and I drove back to Fred Hutch in Seattle for my second PET scan. We had another dinner out and stayed at the same hotel so we […]
Walking Through Cancer? – Part 6
“It’s a fluid situation.” The limbo I’ve been in for half a year has been a challenging test for me. A test of dealing with the gray areas in life—the ambiguities— where we want answers to a problem but don’t get them, and we find ourselves at the mercy of our coping abilities. There was […]
Walking Through Cancer? – Part 5
The Waiting Since my first bone marrow biopsy back in October, I’ve become more pensive than usual. Just taking it all in. I’ve never been seriously ill and now, seemingly out of the blue, I have a blood disorder. There’s no precedent in my family. This past year I’ve had to say goodbye to several […]
Walking Through Cancer? – Part 4
Fred Hutch I check in. Very dim lighting. Not harsh, comforting. I look around at all the cancer patients, some with hair, some without. Some walking around with a mobile IV. I recognized that I was in a special world of sick people, just sick people and their companions, and I wondered whether or not […]
Walking Through Cancer? – Part 3
Critical Second Opinions The lymph node biopsy was another easy procedure. I had general anesthesia. And because it was so easy with only a small incision in my groin, I decided I was fine to get back to my busy routines. Which I did, full force. After one week of acting as though I hadn’t […]