Friday it was back to the KU Cancer Center for blood work and CT scans.  Mohamed prefers early morning appointments since there's usually little waiting, so we were up at 5 a.m., out the door at 6, and in our parking spot at 7:15.  The waiting room was fairly empty, though that changed quite quickly.  I remarked that I didn't see Marci the Maladroit in the room where they draw blood, at which point Marci emerged and called my name.  She was on her game and found the vein, drew enough blood, and put in the appropriately sized IV.

From there we descended to the basement, where they do the x-rays and scans.  Again, there was very little waiting.  The most boring part usually is the 30-40 minutes when I drink the two large glasses of water necessary before a scan.  There are only three chairs in a row, facing a wall, with only a corridor separating the chairs from the wall.  It's always extremely cold, so they give you a warmed blanket.  This time, though, another guy waiting for a CT scan entered, started drinking his water, and initiated a conversation.  He too has stage 4 kidney cancer, though it was a diagnosed less than a year ago.  He was 56 and looked healthy.  He kept finding similarities between our cases: no symptoms in the kidneys, major tumors in the leg and hip, tumors also in the spine; he too takes 400 mg of Votrient and has Dr. Van as his oncologist and sang his praises.  When he said he prayed a lot, I bit my tongue, since I think he was very encouraged when I told him that in October, it would be four years at least that I've lived with the stage 4 cancer.

The tests went quickly, and then we returned to the second floor for our meeting with Dr. Van, which very uncharacteristically took place early.  The blood tests were generally fine, though the red blood count was, as always, low, as were the thyroid numbers, so we're going to increase the dosage of the thyroid med.  More important, the preliminary results of the CT scans showed that the primary kidney tumor hasn't grown.  One of the advantages of modern technology is that once the final results and the analysis are complete, I can log onto "My Chart" from the med center and read the complete results.  Now if I could only understand the vocabulary...

We left KC by 11 and were pretty much wiped out for the rest of the day.  After the scans, they always give me a yellow sheet with instructions of what to do to mitigate the effects.  I always just drop it in the waste can on my way out.  Perhaps sometime I should read it.