My appointment for this time around was scheduled for a Monday so that we could have it the same day that I met with my new surgeon. As it turns out though, whoever scheduled my appointment with the surgeon created an appointment at a bogus time that wasn't in the system and they had to call me and reschedule it for the following week...

Since it had been almost 5 weeks since my last appointment, the nurse had a little bit of trouble getting my port to work correctly... (I actually think that the nurse was a little too hesitant at sticking the needle into it and didn't get it in good enough. We will have to see though - that is just my personal observation from someone who has had her port accessed at least once every 4 weeks for the past 4 years...) Once she got the port working, it was much slower at drawing the blood out than I ever remember it taking. Hopefully it was just a one time thing - we will find out in 4 weeks when I have my next CT scan.

They also didn't have all of my normal labs listed to draw today so I made them call the nurse who works with my doctor to get them ordered. Again, since I have been doing this for a while now, I pretty much know the routine and try to make sure they get it right so I don't have to have my port re-accessed - which they've had to do before.

After all of that, everything went fine with my appointment. The study coordinator who I have been working with for a little while now apparently just recently took a new position up at Huntsman so there was a new coordinator there today. She seemed nice though - it will just take her a little while to get up to speed on everything that she has responsibility over now - she was the previous coordinator's assistant.

After my appointment I had an interview with someone who is conducting a study of young cancer patients and how they can best be helped and supported during the cancer treatments. It was interesting and made me think a lot about what I have gone through up to this point and maybe what would have helped me more while I was going through my initial diagnosis and early treatments.