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The Look of Soft Tissue Sarcoma

The Sarcoma Doctor had a nurse, Kathy. She came in at the beginning of Mathew’s appointments and was available during the day if I had a concern. In fact, one day she returned my call and said “When I saw your name and number, I knew something was wrong.” They knew I paid close attention to Mathew and what the doctors and nurses explained to me. 

Anyway, one time towards the beginning of this journey a comment was made and I had a question, I don’t recall the preceding conversation, but the end result was this statement by Kathy. “We can tell what is going on with the cancer by looking at the patient.”


At the time, I believed her but had no clue what she meant. Some of it was obvious, such as the way Mathew looked when he was first admitted compared to how he looked after just two treatments. But over time I came to understand what she meant. One day I looked at Mathew as he sat on the exam table and Dr. Reed tried to examine his abdomen. I say, tried, because Mathew, even when he was doing well, was very tender and had a lot of pain. Dr. Reed asked Dr. Knight one time, “How do you get Mathew to let you examine him?”  But that day I looked at Mathew and I could see that things were starting to go downhill and that’s when I realized what Kathy meant. 
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