PET results in.
The cancer is back. CyberKnife didn't seem to work completely. A new liver spot, as well. Starting chemo again on Friday. The same Folfox as before. Every two weeks I will spend two days hooked up to chemo. For... 6 months?
It worked last time. It should work again. My doc has seen people require a number of courses of chemo til they finally go five years cancer-free. I have hope. And I have some work to do.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Friday, August 19, 2011
No news yet
Hi all,
Just a quick note to say that I haven't heard back on my PET scan results yet. I promise to post it here when I do. I am not sweating it, to be honest. I have a good feeling about it.
Happy weekend!
Just a quick note to say that I haven't heard back on my PET scan results yet. I promise to post it here when I do. I am not sweating it, to be honest. I have a good feeling about it.
Happy weekend!
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Peanut butter and fish
After a glorious summer of health, happiness, and normalcy, tomorrow I return to the shit-for-brains cancer world for a PET scan. Just heading in that damned building makes my quills stick up. That place SMELLS like terror.
This scan will prove if radiation I got in April and May worked. And, just as importantly, that the rest of my body remains cancer-free. If the latter proves to be true, it will be almost TWO YEARS since any NEW cancer has been detected in my body. (Apparently, the spots they burned earlier in the year were old cancer, cancer they already knew about, and that's significant and different than if new spots were growing rampantly in new places.)
I am not a numbers gal, FAR FROM IT (has anyone seen my solar calculator?), but in this utterly senseless cancer dimension, things are completely uncertain and unpredictable, so you gravitate toward anything concrete. In this case, I look at survival rates, WHICH I KNOW, I KNOW, I should completely ignore because I am just one spot on the spectrum and what happens to "most people" doesn't apply to me. Hell, I shouldn't be in this group in the first place. But still, it's hard to ignore those dreary numbers.
And yet, shitty stats being what they are, if this scan comes up clean, my long-term survival percentages will rise dramatically. It will be almost two years with no new cancer. I will be a respectable distance down the survivor road. It's almost too much for me to think about. How can I possibly allow my hopes to rise, when I know all too well how devastating it feels to have them dashed? The results will be what they will, and I am placing myself in a protective "cross that bridge" mindset.
I'm hopeful. If I were sitting at the Vegas Sands right now, I'd put all my chips on GREEN. (Dad, I know. You raised me better than that. That's not how gambling works.) But it's my not-so-swift-in-the-cranium way of saying, I think I'm going to pass the scan. I just feel too damned normal and good for it to be any other way.
So today: the PET scan diet. No carbs. No sugars. No fruits. Only proteins. Nuts. Cheese. Lean meats. PTTTTTTTH.
And tomorrow at 8 a.m., the PET scan. Then, I am going to let my doctor call me with the results whenever he gets them. I am not going to hound him and live in a state of desperation, where the sound of the phone ringing fills my entire being with utter terror. It's too taxing. I'll let you know when I find out the results.
Love, Shelly
B.A., drama
This scan will prove if radiation I got in April and May worked. And, just as importantly, that the rest of my body remains cancer-free. If the latter proves to be true, it will be almost TWO YEARS since any NEW cancer has been detected in my body. (Apparently, the spots they burned earlier in the year were old cancer, cancer they already knew about, and that's significant and different than if new spots were growing rampantly in new places.)
I am not a numbers gal, FAR FROM IT (has anyone seen my solar calculator?), but in this utterly senseless cancer dimension, things are completely uncertain and unpredictable, so you gravitate toward anything concrete. In this case, I look at survival rates, WHICH I KNOW, I KNOW, I should completely ignore because I am just one spot on the spectrum and what happens to "most people" doesn't apply to me. Hell, I shouldn't be in this group in the first place. But still, it's hard to ignore those dreary numbers.
And yet, shitty stats being what they are, if this scan comes up clean, my long-term survival percentages will rise dramatically. It will be almost two years with no new cancer. I will be a respectable distance down the survivor road. It's almost too much for me to think about. How can I possibly allow my hopes to rise, when I know all too well how devastating it feels to have them dashed? The results will be what they will, and I am placing myself in a protective "cross that bridge" mindset.
I'm hopeful. If I were sitting at the Vegas Sands right now, I'd put all my chips on GREEN. (Dad, I know. You raised me better than that. That's not how gambling works.) But it's my not-so-swift-in-the-cranium way of saying, I think I'm going to pass the scan. I just feel too damned normal and good for it to be any other way.
So today: the PET scan diet. No carbs. No sugars. No fruits. Only proteins. Nuts. Cheese. Lean meats. PTTTTTTTH.
And tomorrow at 8 a.m., the PET scan. Then, I am going to let my doctor call me with the results whenever he gets them. I am not going to hound him and live in a state of desperation, where the sound of the phone ringing fills my entire being with utter terror. It's too taxing. I'll let you know when I find out the results.
Love, Shelly
B.A., drama
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Grover Cleveland
No news! That's good news. All still great here. I feel like a HUNDRED BUCKS. No, make that a thousand. I literally feel like one thousand dollars. I feel like legal tender, all papery and crisp. Somebody billfold me--quick.
Since I have no bad news to share, I guess I will have to start writing about happy, pithy, or trivial things. Seems more fun to me, anyway.
So today's topic will be: discontinued US currency.
After referring to myself as a $1,000 bill, above, I wondered if such a bill really existed. (You'd think I'd know, but really, I tend to deal with 20s, mainly.)
Sure enough, it did.
From Wikipedia:
"The base currency of the United States is the U.S. dollar, and is printed on bills in denominations of $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100. At one time, however, it also included five larger denominations.... $500, $1,000, $5,000, $10,000 and $100,000...The designs were as follows:
$500: William McKinley
$1,000: Grover Cleveland
$5,000: James Madison
$10,000: Salmon P. Chase
$100,000: Woodrow Wilson"
Cutting to the chase, these big bills were discontinued in 1969. Alas. Now we know.
Poor Salmon Chase. If you ask me, that was kind of his only shot at becoming a household name.
Over and out.
Since I have no bad news to share, I guess I will have to start writing about happy, pithy, or trivial things. Seems more fun to me, anyway.
So today's topic will be: discontinued US currency.
After referring to myself as a $1,000 bill, above, I wondered if such a bill really existed. (You'd think I'd know, but really, I tend to deal with 20s, mainly.)
Sure enough, it did.
From Wikipedia:
"The base currency of the United States is the U.S. dollar, and is printed on bills in denominations of $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100. At one time, however, it also included five larger denominations.... $500, $1,000, $5,000, $10,000 and $100,000...The designs were as follows:
$500: William McKinley
$1,000: Grover Cleveland
$5,000: James Madison
$10,000: Salmon P. Chase
$100,000: Woodrow Wilson"
Cutting to the chase, these big bills were discontinued in 1969. Alas. Now we know.
Poor Salmon Chase. If you ask me, that was kind of his only shot at becoming a household name.
Over and out.
Monday, June 20, 2011
A+
Quick update, since I haven't written in a while:
I feel fantastic! 100% normal. Healthy, strong, happy, FINE! And I'm having a terrific summer.
Here's how I've been occupying my time in the last few weeks:
1- MOVING SOON! Neil and I have spent the couple weeks getting the house ready to put on the market. We unloaded loads and loads of stuff to Goodwill and various organizations. (FYI: looking for a simple, free-of-charge way to renew your spirit that I guarantee will work? GET RID OF JUNK YOU DON'T NEED! I didn't really realize we had a "situation" in our house and basement until we started unloading crap. But how much of that stuff do you really need? NEED? So donate it! Consign it! Have a garage sale. Someone out there does NEED it. It feels so fabulous to have open space and order and organization in my life. (I'm sending my resume to Martha Stuart after I finish tapping out this post.)
1b-I GOT OVER IT. I finally finished unloading all those boxes of kids' clothes I lamented about a few months back. The ones that I was saving for the theoretical third child. And I felt fine doing it. It's just stuff. It's just stuff! (Especially since I'm giving about 300 outfits to my cousin, so they're all "still in the family", which somehow makes me feel happier, as I'll someday soon see them trotting around again on a new lovable human.)
2- FRIEND IN REMISSION! My friend, "A", the one I wrote about a year or so ago, the one who shared my stage 4 colon cancer diagnosis, and who came to all my chemos, is finally, after 12 sucky months, in remission herself !!! So keep hanging in there, fellow fighters. Medicine is improving literally every day. My own doc told me my odds for long-term survival have improved since this time last year. (I made him give me the numbers-- he is not normally in the practice of doing that, but I wanted some science behind my good feelings).
2b- On the topic of health, next steps for me will be a scan in mid-August to judge the effectiveness of my CyberKnife(s). And of course to see if anything new has grown. Until then, I get to stay the hell away from the Cancer Institute for a while-- at LAST.
3- SWIM! My daughter did her first freestyle recently--well, using the term "freestyle" extremely loosely, but hey. And we're going to be hitting the pool a ton this summer. Want a fun, productive goal for the summer that will help others? You can sign up to be on our Swim Across America team (you can be on "Team Shelly"!) Choose between a half-mile or 2 mile distances, in Lake Washington, on Sept 10th.
4- CAMPING TRIP! As I am holed up in a corner hurriedly writing this, my kids and husband are rushing about me, packing up our gear, since we're headed out for a camping trip on the Sound this weekend. Tidepools. Tents. Stars. The sea. We are so excited.
5-OHIO!! We are headed back to Ohio to see the family and friends this Tuesday-- for 12 days! We can't wait for the heat and all the fun back home.
Must run. My husband is being patient, but I'm not holding up my end of things today, so I gotta run. Hope you are all doing well, too. Go out there and get 'em today, tiger.
I feel fantastic! 100% normal. Healthy, strong, happy, FINE! And I'm having a terrific summer.
Here's how I've been occupying my time in the last few weeks:
1- MOVING SOON! Neil and I have spent the couple weeks getting the house ready to put on the market. We unloaded loads and loads of stuff to Goodwill and various organizations. (FYI: looking for a simple, free-of-charge way to renew your spirit that I guarantee will work? GET RID OF JUNK YOU DON'T NEED! I didn't really realize we had a "situation" in our house and basement until we started unloading crap. But how much of that stuff do you really need? NEED? So donate it! Consign it! Have a garage sale. Someone out there does NEED it. It feels so fabulous to have open space and order and organization in my life. (I'm sending my resume to Martha Stuart after I finish tapping out this post.)
1b-I GOT OVER IT. I finally finished unloading all those boxes of kids' clothes I lamented about a few months back. The ones that I was saving for the theoretical third child. And I felt fine doing it. It's just stuff. It's just stuff! (Especially since I'm giving about 300 outfits to my cousin, so they're all "still in the family", which somehow makes me feel happier, as I'll someday soon see them trotting around again on a new lovable human.)
2- FRIEND IN REMISSION! My friend, "A", the one I wrote about a year or so ago, the one who shared my stage 4 colon cancer diagnosis, and who came to all my chemos, is finally, after 12 sucky months, in remission herself !!! So keep hanging in there, fellow fighters. Medicine is improving literally every day. My own doc told me my odds for long-term survival have improved since this time last year. (I made him give me the numbers-- he is not normally in the practice of doing that, but I wanted some science behind my good feelings).
2b- On the topic of health, next steps for me will be a scan in mid-August to judge the effectiveness of my CyberKnife(s). And of course to see if anything new has grown. Until then, I get to stay the hell away from the Cancer Institute for a while-- at LAST.
3- SWIM! My daughter did her first freestyle recently--well, using the term "freestyle" extremely loosely, but hey. And we're going to be hitting the pool a ton this summer. Want a fun, productive goal for the summer that will help others? You can sign up to be on our Swim Across America team (you can be on "Team Shelly"!) Choose between a half-mile or 2 mile distances, in Lake Washington, on Sept 10th.
4- CAMPING TRIP! As I am holed up in a corner hurriedly writing this, my kids and husband are rushing about me, packing up our gear, since we're headed out for a camping trip on the Sound this weekend. Tidepools. Tents. Stars. The sea. We are so excited.
5-OHIO!! We are headed back to Ohio to see the family and friends this Tuesday-- for 12 days! We can't wait for the heat and all the fun back home.
Must run. My husband is being patient, but I'm not holding up my end of things today, so I gotta run. Hope you are all doing well, too. Go out there and get 'em today, tiger.
Friday, June 10, 2011
T.G.I.F. - Thank God I'm Finished
It's Friday night. The last of my three Cyberknife treatments concluded today. Amazing: Three days ago, I had a little cancer. Tonight, I probably don't anymore.*
Amazing. You lie on a table for an hour a day, for three days, and KAPOW! Gone. No pain. I bet back in the 1950s, they envisioned something like this would be possible in "the future", and if you step back and think about it, doesn't the year "2011" sound sort of futuristic?
If you are just tuning in, and you want to know what happens during a Cyberknife session, check out my February 28th, 2011 entry entitled, "Meet Lenore".
Helluva week. Nitey-nite.
*This statement blows my mind so thoroughly, I had to leave it dangling there, alone, on the end of the paragraph. Because what can I add after something like that? "HOLLA!"? "THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKIN' ABOUT!"?
Woefully inadequate. So for once, I'll just say nothing.
Amazing. You lie on a table for an hour a day, for three days, and KAPOW! Gone. No pain. I bet back in the 1950s, they envisioned something like this would be possible in "the future", and if you step back and think about it, doesn't the year "2011" sound sort of futuristic?
If you are just tuning in, and you want to know what happens during a Cyberknife session, check out my February 28th, 2011 entry entitled, "Meet Lenore".
Helluva week. Nitey-nite.
*This statement blows my mind so thoroughly, I had to leave it dangling there, alone, on the end of the paragraph. Because what can I add after something like that? "HOLLA!"? "THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKIN' ABOUT!"?
Woefully inadequate. So for once, I'll just say nothing.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
My life as a rich, older gentleman
Last Thursday, I had my planning CT scan for this week's CyberKnife. All went well, and I'm set to get my lung 'Knifed this Wednesday-Friday. It will only take an hour a day. Then, as the informative marketing video states, "(I) can go play a round of golf afterward!" (I get the impression most people dealing with this procedure are men of a certain age.)
The pneumothorax biz-nasty is a thing of the past. After my recent two week (+/-) stay, I know half the staff at that hospital. Truly. I walk down the halls and find myself high fiving, pointing, smiling, and stopping to field questions, like some wealthy old codger roaming the halls of his beloved country club at cocktail hour. I even introduced one O.R. nurse to a CyberKnife tech, and suggested they grab lunch in the hospital cafeteria sometime. (I think those two would hit it off.) It's weird, I know... but I guess you gotta make the most of your days, no matter where you spend them.
That being said, I'm doing fabulously now. In fact, last weekend was jam-packed: Friends, dinners out, yard work, pool time with kids, lap swimming, big stadium rawk concert, Mariner's game, birthday party-- all in two days! All I missed was some time out on the back 9, and I'd really have been living large.
All right. Gotta run. This french toast isn't going to cook itself. Sometimes kids can be so neat!
The pneumothorax biz-nasty is a thing of the past. After my recent two week (+/-) stay, I know half the staff at that hospital. Truly. I walk down the halls and find myself high fiving, pointing, smiling, and stopping to field questions, like some wealthy old codger roaming the halls of his beloved country club at cocktail hour. I even introduced one O.R. nurse to a CyberKnife tech, and suggested they grab lunch in the hospital cafeteria sometime. (I think those two would hit it off.) It's weird, I know... but I guess you gotta make the most of your days, no matter where you spend them.
That being said, I'm doing fabulously now. In fact, last weekend was jam-packed: Friends, dinners out, yard work, pool time with kids, lap swimming, big stadium rawk concert, Mariner's game, birthday party-- all in two days! All I missed was some time out on the back 9, and I'd really have been living large.
All right. Gotta run. This french toast isn't going to cook itself. Sometimes kids can be so neat!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
