As the Squirrel Turns

Remember that heirloom chicken I roasted, my very first roast chiecken ever? Well, I am finally getting around to turning it into stock., also a first attempt for me. Yes, I know, I may be asking for trouble... or as my friend Ellen (a/k/a "EG" - pronounced "Eege") puts it, my kitchen is a lab! But I figure simmer it for 3 hours should make it safe, right? Right? Umm...

Anyway, today was my first day back at the office, where I found that (a) I had a mere 971 messages in my inbox, and (b) my out of office message was not functioning properly while I was out for 33 days... great: there are now people out there thinking that I am beyond slow in getting back to them. Phooey. Well, at least by the end of the day, I had wrestled my inbox to a more manageable size of 226 messages awaiting my attention tomorrow.

Yep, my co-workers were all happy to see me back, poor souls, since not only were they shorthanded with my absence, but then one of them went on a long-scheduled vacation with his wife (plane tickets were involved, etc.). OK, to review: so our department was originally 12, and then slashed down to 7 in December, but one person went on maternity leave in January (sub-total: 6). Then I went on disability leave in February (running total: 5) and another person went on vacation last week, so they were down to FOUR people until I came back today. Ouch!

Of course, we are still waiting for the other shoe to drop, since we know that another round of layoffs is somewhere in our future, and as my co-worker Dennis so helpfully pointed out, the last 2 rounds occurred on the Monday after a payday. Today was payday... but my paycheck has yet to show up: when an employee goes on disability leave, their direct deposit is stopped and is replaced by paper paychecks! (Because as we all know, when you're home ill, that's when you want to trudge to the bank to deposit / cash your check, right? Right.) In theory, they mailed it out to me on Monday. In practice, it's not here yet! A girl could get paranoid.

And in other dramatic developments (well, I exaggerate for the sake of living up to the title of this post: remember the soap ATWT?) I received the results of my OncoTypeDX test back yesterday. And after reading it through 3 or 4 times, all I have to say is: "Umm.. HUH?" (The informational video by the lab/manufacturer is not very helpful either.) The results are sort of confusing, but I guess they're reasonably good... I think.

I'll have to confirm my understanding with the oncologist next Friday, but it seems my recurrence score of 16 indicates I have a 16% likelihood of having breast cancer again within 10 years; this is classified on their chart as in the high end of the low risk category (low risk = scores of 0 to 18). Personally, I'd prefer a SINGLE DIGIT SCORE, thank you. Oh well.

It appears that with radiation (5 weeks) and tamoxifen (5 years) and chemo (18 weeks), the recurrence score can be reduced from 16 to 10, so chemo it is. Obviously taking any of the 3 items out of that combo would change the recurrence score in the wrong direction. Hence, the oncologist's comment on February 20th that it would have to be an unusually low score on the test to get her to recommend against chemo, and yeah, I'd have to agree. Since I'd rather have a 10% chance (vs. a 16% chance) of travelling down this loathsome road again, I'm going to opt for the chemo.

I know the specific chemical cocktail I'll be imbibing for chemo, but that's a post for another time. Bleh.

Now, it's time for me to go inspect the progress of my chicken broth.