Osteosarcoma

Since the first of the year I've been having pain in my knee. I went and saw a Kaiser doctor and they told me it was a sprained MCL. I ignored it for three months, then saw a doctor in Korea. He prodded it, then got an x-ray, then turned all gray in the face and ordered an MRI. That hospital referred me to another hospital for a biopsy, but they gave me a preliminary diagnosis of osteosarcoma, a rare cancer that arises in the bones. The biopsy confirmed it.

I'm shitting it. Osteosarcoma is not the deadliest cancer by any means, but I have about a 30% chance of dying over the next five years. (That's up from about a .75% chance, according to an actuarial table I just looked up.) The chemotherapy regimen is also pretty intense, and could kill me, or wreck my heart or kidneys, or give me leukemia. Even if it doesn't do any of those things, it is definitely going to make all my hair fall out and make me sick for months and months. The internet doesn't have any first person experiences of people having treatment for osteosarcoma beyond "And then I had chemo and it made me sick and sad," which I guess is why I'm vomiting up this blog. At least the next poor bastard frantically Googling "osteosarcoma blog" will have a little information to depress her or himself.