I spent the day today at a medical imaging center. I was strapped to one of those tube shaped scanning machines. The first one was used to scan my head. They placed a plastic mask over my head, about an inch over my face, then they slid me into the scanning chamber which is about one inch higher than the mask. I had a small slit to look through, but just kept my eyes closed the whole time. I never felt so claustrophobic in my life.

It is also not very reassuring when the staff goes and runs behind a six inch lead door before turning the machine on. “Everything ok, Jim?” They would ask. “Um, yeah,” I would mumble through the mask.

The machine then went on to make the loudest bangs and whirling sounds. The first scan lasted about thirty minutes. The second scan lasted about one hour.

Then they moved me to another room where I did a full body scan. That one took over two hours. The hardest part is trying to hold perfectly still that long. You know after fifteen minutes it feels like there are ants crawling on your legs and you just want to scratch. But you can’t.

But maybe that wasn’t the hardest part. The hardest part is the waiting! You see, now that the doctors have collected all of the information from me, they are sending it on to the skin cancer specialist at UCSF med center in San Francisco. He is the one who will get to look at the data and FINALLY share it with me and tell me what my outlook looks like and what my treatment will be.

And when am I finally able to meet this rock star of skin cancer doctors? How about September 15th!! A full ELEVEN days away! And no one can talk to me about my condition before he does, even though all of the information is sitting around somewhere.

Sylvie wouldn’t have it. She got on the phone right away and started screaming about life and death situations. And asking why was there such a moron on the phone making appointments for this guy, etc, etc. She was awesome.

It now looks like I may be able to see the specialist next week, but again, I won’t know until Monday. It is all so maddening. As you might expect, all of my friends and family are asking for the latest since I’ve been under the impression that I would know what in the heck is going on right away. But I’ve been wrong.

So I ask all of your patience too. Understand that as soon as I get news, I plan to post it on the blog within an hour.

Please keep the comments coming. They really are terrific medicine for me right now. And if anyone has any tales of others beating this damn thing, I am all ears! (Well, except for the big gaping hole over my right ear)

I’ll be back tomorrow.

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