What a Hoot.

So I realize that many people read my blog to see how I'm doing with the whole Hodge thing, which may lead some of you to scratch your heads and say, "Why is this chick writing about baked clams all day? I just want the facts! SHOW ME THE MONEY." So for those folks, this post is for you--an update based (almost) solely on what the blog purports to be about.

I'm halfway done with chemo, (four down, four to go) which means it was time for the halfway point PET scan to see if the tumors are shrinking, which, um, hi, they better be. I stayed up really late last night reading Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald because my mom and I saw Woody Allen's new movie Midnight in Paris, which was so magical and enjoyable and now I'm entering a 1920's Paris phase of my life where I throw on knee-length skirts and cloche hats and pretend I'm Zelda Fitzgerald and have my mom take my picture by a tree in a park to text it to my friends who also appreciate fine literature and it's hard to stay on target right now. Point is, at 9:30 this morning I was a wretched, grumpy mess of a girl who was made more agitated by the freezing temperatures PET Scan rooms have to be at, and I didn't enjoy it.

The only other one of these I had had was diagnostic, and already that period (late March) is a touch foggy. I guess I was just really scared to get the results, even though this force in my body, something similar to intuition, told me that I definitely had cancer. Either way, being back on that machine and battling a strong desire to fidget brought me back to the beginning of all of this for the duration of the test. And there's also the familiar anxiety of waiting for the results, but this time I'm waiting to hear something positive, so there's that.

After some corn beef hash, my mom and I went to my regular blood check and shot appointment at my oncologist's, where we discussed the rest of the timeline.

ACTUALLY wait. Before that, we saw on the TV in the waiting room that planking (google it) is soo over and owling is actually the new cool thing to do. Look, even the Washington Post says so.

And, I mean, who am I to miss a golden opportunity? Personally, I think this photo reads a bit more "gargoyle," but... (Also plz ignore my stupid 10 year old's face but plz notice the ballin' scarf my friend Ari got me from Ireland.)

So right, the rest of my timeline--last chemo treatment is Sept 1st, followed by 2-4 weeks in which I "chill out" (ummmmmmm can I elect to donate that time to my parents because I've been mooching off them all summer? Or Andrew because he drives me everywhere? Or my doctor because he is curing me?) because my bone marrow needs to regenerate. Then comes radiation, which is 5 days a week for a month. It's like I'll have a job! Apparently, physically it's a lot less taxing than chemo. And GUESS WHAT? I get to get a tattoo during this whole process after all.

Well, not really. But the way radiation works is that they take the original PET Scan, the one I picture as a Rorschach test composed of tumors, and map out where they're going to zap you. In my case it's my chest, so once they pinpoint their spots, they actually pinpoint ME--they tattoo tiny blue dots on you as an outline that lasers supposedly line up with. They're no bigger than a pen mark, but they don't go away. Kinda cool, but I'm still going for multiple real tat ideas once I got the go ahead.

So it's looking like maybe Halloween, which I have long ago deemed myself the mayor of, could signal my release back into the wild. This costume better blow the rest of them out of the water. Oh my god, the pressure is enough to keep me awake for the rest of the night.