It's been a long time since the last update. The main reason for that is that I've been waiting on a decision from my doctor regarding the next step in my ongoing maintenance treatment. I met with him today and we've come to a decision.
The path to arrive at this decision took a few twists that I want to share with you. I've been getting a monthly shot and taking oral chemotherapy each week since November. This has been going relatively smoothly, but my blood counts have never really been up to a normal level. They have remained for the most part slightly below the bottom edge of the normal range. They are high enough to not be of much concern, but low enough to indicate that my bone marrow is not at full health.
This maintenance chemotherapy regimen I'm on calls for a couple of trips back to the hospital over the course of two and a half years for a week of IV chemotherapy similar to what I was getting before. But due to the blood count issue my doctor wasn't sure he wanted to give this additional chemo to me. He was concerned with the idea of over-treatment, and I shared his concerns.
A couple of weeks ago I had a PET scan. This was a first for me, and thankfully it came back normal. So according to all tests and scans and empirical evidence I am free of cancer still and doing quite well. This is great news for me and I'm thrilled to be able to share it with you. But I've had this decision hanging over my head for a while now and I really wanted to wait to write an update until it had been made.
Much of the research into the type of cancer I had has shown great success with a certain set of factors. I happen to fit all of those categories for likely success, with the slight exception that the younger one is the better off they are; but I am still pretty young in the grand scheme, so still good. And a part of the treatment that has proven successful has included this prolonged maintenance treatment.
So, to make a long story shorter, the decision has been made to go ahead with this next round of chemotherapy. I will start in a week, spend a week in the hospital. Have another week or so of low blood count recovery time, and then be able to return back to 'normal'.
I have spent most of the past few months dreading the outcome of this decision, if I'm honest. My experience with induction therapy was pretty intense. I felt completely disconnected from the world around me. Now that I look back on that I wonder how much of that was related to all of the pain meds I was taking. But the point is that it was a traumatic thing to go through and I really don't want to have to do it again. Thankfully this won't be the equivalent of doing it again. I will have to spend time in the hospital again, and I will have to go through the discomfort and the physical challenges of recovery. But it will be just one quick round, and then I can recover and resume my lovely, enjoyable life.
I feel really grateful that I can share what I feel is good news. A friend of mine recently lost a loved one to relapsed cancer. My heart goes out to them and their family. I feel a lot of things about that and even about my own situation. Conflicting things. Anger, frustration, confusion, gratitude, love. I am glad that life is so full of experiences, really deeply intense things that we go through, that we get to go through. But man does it suck sometimes. There's no getting around that. At least we can respond to those challenging things by pulling together and supporting each other. That's the beauty of the challenging things, they end up bringing us together.
I think the thing that stands out the most for me right now with this experience of dealing with cancer is that it has given me an opportunity to really step back from the nose-down, fully engrossed reality of every day life. And what I've seen from there is that most things just aren't so important as we think they are. Most of the things we are worried about and caught up in are just things, things that come and go, and fade away. We decide what matters out of it all.
I'm so glad that this has brought me closer to so many of you, even if it's just through you reading my words and in so doing sharing this experience with me. We all live in our own versions of reality and so the experiences we get to share with each other are important to me. Wish me luck with this next round of chemotherapy. I will update you on the other side.
Love,
Chris
