A cancer update

And it's good news!

In what has been a whirlwind week, yesterday I had my oncologist appointment. I’d been anticipating this appointment for some time – after getting the pathology report a week after my surgery and learning I could be a candidate for surveillance, I reached out to a third party medical organization for a second opinion. Just this week I received the second opinion, which agreed with the surveillance option but also recommended a couple rounds of chemotherapy. Needless to say, I had a lot of questions going into yesterday.

Mentally I arrived at the cancer center with this mindset – I know that the possibility for this cancer to return is 15%. If I do a couple rounds of chemo, that possibility is reduced to 2%. Let’s do chemo – and if that’s a bad idea, convince me. I’m 39, I have a third kid on the way, and I am not interested in dragging my feet here. I want this cancer dead and out of me.

My oncologist was great. She answered literally every question that Katie and I had for her, and we had a lot of questions. But I won’t bog this writing down with the intimate details – I will get to the good stuff. Remember what you read like 30 seconds ago when I said I wanted to be convinced that I didn’t need to jump right into chemo? She did that.

I knew that I had caught my cancer early. From the moment I noticed the abnormality to the day that it was removed from my body, only 5 days had passed. My biggest issue with taking the surveillance route was, what about the lymph nodes? On my CT scans there were lymph nodes that seemed like problems. The second opinion agreed, and I had questions about it. She answered them – the lymph node that was big could be big for any reason. If we wait a few months and check again, we can reassess. The pathology report showed that the masses they found were contained and had not spread out. The team at Vanderbilt believes that there is a strong possibility that the cancer has been successfully removed from my body.

What I had to digest mentally was the fact that waiting three months will not kill me. I am in a situation that many who have cancer wish they were in – I am going to beat it. I’m one of the lucky ones. I had one surgery – a major surgery to be sure, but only one. Some people have to have multiple. There will be an end. The cancer will die. The cancer may already have died.

So the plan right now is to go in for full scans in December. At that point we will have an idea if the cancer exists in my body anymore and, if so, we can take action. If it doesn't, we do surveillance for a few years. And where I was previously skeptical about “only” doing surveillance, I’m now appreciative of that being a real option for me.

Anyway, here we are, waiting once again, but the difference is that I’m waiting with less apprehension and uncertainty. I’m excited to be finished with cancer, God willing this will be my only bout with it. I’ve still got lots to write about, though, so stay tuned! I currently have 3 or 4 drafts typed up that I’ll update and post soon. Thanks for reading, for reaching out, and for your prayers.