I made an appointment with a doctor who specializes in cysts and tumors at TriService General Hospital two weeks ago. Without any previous knowledge about the doctors at TriService, I read the bios of all the doctors there before making an appointment. Long story short, after I clicked on the button "make appointment now", my head was filled with different pieces of information about different doctors and all I wanted to do was to jot down my appointment number (#24) and never look at the computer again.

Two weeks flew by.

Even after celebrating Halloween for two days straight last weekend, I still remembered that I had an appointment on Tuesday afternoon. I arranged a substitute teacher and gave the lesson plan and materials to him Monday afternoon (being a responsible teacher that I am). I stayed up late Monday night watching Six Feet Under (yes, I'm hooked) thinking I wouldn't have to get to work until 5pm the next day. Tuesday morning, I stumbled out of bed at 10:30. I figured I might as well check out the schedule of the shuttle bus that travels between the two locations of the hospital. While online, I noticed an icon called "Doctor's progress", which is a real-time display of the appointment number of the patient that a doctor is seeing. Thrilled, I checked out my doctor's progress and learned that he was with patient #65. I took a second look and wondered how it'd be possible. Turned out, my appointment in the MONRING!! By then, it was already 11 o'clock, one hour before the doctor's office closed. I called the hospital and they said the only thing I could do was to make another appointment.

So there. I gotta wait for another week to see this doctor, and this time, I don't think I'll mess it up again.

June '06
We first discovered three cysts in me on the ultrasound. Two in the uterus; one in my ovary. Though the doctor said there was nothing to worry about, he took a blood sample just in case.

September '06
The result from the blood sample set off an alarm in the doc's head. It wasn't a blinding red light with a blowhorn kind of alarm, but it was enough to make the Taiwanese doc went, "mmm......... it's pretty high........mmm......." while flipping back and forth between the ultrasound image and the blood test result.
What he was referring to was CA-125.

A Wikipedia Moment:
* CA-125, Cancer Antigen 125, aka tumor marker or biomarker.
Normal values of CA-125 range from 0-35 U/ml. Elevated values in post-menopausal women are usually an indication that further screening is necessary. In pre-menopausal women, the test is less reliable as values are often elevated due to a number of non-cancerous causes. *

My CA-125 was 198 U/ml from the blood test in June.

The doctor ordered another ultrasound and blood test. Before leaving, I asked if there was anything I could do to bring the value down. He stared at the black and white picture of my chocolate cyst for a moment, then he said, "mmm...... just live your life....... mmm....... we'll discuss it more after your second ultrasound and blood test results come out."

October '06
Dr: "It's currently 2.4 cm big and rests in the ovary on the right. Your CA-125 is 178.9 U/ml from the blood test in September."
K: "That's.... good, right?...... that it has gone down?"
Dr: "(chuckle) It's considered pretty high when a value approaches 100 U/ml. Yours is approaching 200 U/ml. It's not something to be happy about."
K: ".................. so........ what now?"
Dr: "There's not much we can do right now. Let's schedule an ultrasound in December to take another look at it."