Spent the morning organizing all my various doctor appointments necessary to remove my chemotherapy port.  Need my GP and my Oncologist to sign off on it and then schedule with my surgeon.  Always more involved than you think with this stuff.  Anyway, pleased that things are progressing and I get to remove the slightly bulging device from my right shoulder soon as my two year old loves to poke at it.  Ouch.

Christmas Eve at our house.  We are baking and making eggnog and writing notes to Santa and the reindeer and thanking God and family and all the other powers that be for the best Christmas present ever, my health, and today, a few more eyelashes!

I have EYELASHES!!!  Not noticeable to the naked eye yet but with my glasses on and a magnifying glass you can see them, TINY but in full force.  A little Christmas miracle!  This may seem shallow but I can’t wait to be able to wear mascara again.  What a wonder!  Thank you universe, for hair where I want it, and not yet where I don’t!

On Thursday we learned that I am cancer free.  In remission.  Done with this horrible chapter.  No words can express my happiness. My gratitude to my family and friends for their support, and my total devotion to my husband, who dropped everything for the last 4 months to help me get through, recover, bring me crackers, get my medicine dosage right, drive me to chemotherapy, to the hospital, to the pharmacy, etc.  You get the idea.

Up until Thursday, we’d had a rocky few weeks.  My final PET scan had shown a hotspot and doctors we’re unsure the cancer was gone.  A subsequent CT scan showed a larger spot and a biopsy was ordered.  Prior to the biopsy three doctors had told us that they were optimistic that the spot was scar tissue from a healing spleen but the biopsy was necessary.  Expecting the news to come Friday the 16^th, I was up and out running errands to keep busy during the waiting period.  Mailing my Christmas cards at the Post Office I got the call from my great oncologist who said “susan, it’s scar tissue”.  YAY!  I asked him if I could dance.  He said Yes.  A moment I will never forget.  I am very lucky and so grateful.

Friday night we hosted an impromptu tacos and cosmos party at my house for all the friends and family who fed us, brought us presents, sent us hopeful notes and basically kept us afloat during our time of need.  What a wonderful community we have been able to lean on and what an amazing night of celebration for me!

In the vein of it’s never really over, I may have to have radiation, but for now, we celebrate!

October has been a pretty good month for me.  Knowing that the Chemotherapy (still EPOCH R protocol) is working has given me great peace of mind.  And so has my mother.

A few weeks ago, my mother dropped everything in her life, got on a plane and settled into our house for the duration of my treatment.  I was nervous about having my mom come to help me, I am a grown women and a mom too!  As it turns out, I am so grateful.  There is something about getting sick and having your mom around–or at least my mom– that makes things seem better.  I know this sounds funny coming from a 42-year-old, but if you had a mother like mine, you’d understand.  She has pitched in with vigor!  Driving the girls to school when I’m in chemo, sorting through all the daily tasks of our busy lives and generally just being an optimistic force around the house.  The best thing of all is that she has bonded so strongly with number one daughter that she is getting her to vocalize some of the stress she holds inside about this dark business.  They sleep in the same room and giggle way past her bedtime and sometimes talk about serious issues, like mommy having cancer.  The most difficult part of this whole thing has been me fearing for my little girls, and balancing the need to shelter them with the need to be honest about what is happening.  Thank you Mom for making this a little bit easier.

PET scan.  Scared witless.  Good news, cancer was originally 25.6 and now is 6.1    HOO-F&^%$$#-RAY!  90 percent gone.   Feel like Dirty Harry.  Make my day.  Bye bye tumor.

I want to talk today about human kindness and the fact that it is alive and well in the world.  I have had friends and strangers take time out from there lives to talk to me about my illness and recovery, bring me food, wigs, scarves, offer to organize my closet, take care of my children, and just walk around the block with me.  Everywhere, I see people who want to be good, do good things, have good intentions, and make good on them.  Illness is a bugger, I am not happy to have it, but I am happy to have learned that to quote the movie, love is all around.

Today, I found out that the stress of having lymphoma and all that comes with it has spiked my blood pressure levels to an alarming number.  Have always prided myself on being a fairly grounded person, it now it turns out I’ve got some crazy and it’s affecting my health in a new way.  EXCELLENT PROGRESS.  So, my lovely GP and friend has prescribed some new meds for me, one to help with “situational anxiety” and one to lower my blood pressure.  Both hopefully will only be needed for a short time.    I’ll try anything once.  Here’s to the pharmaceutical companies that are keeping me up and running!   If I could do one thing for healthcare, I would give the drug companies anything they need to continue their research programs, because I know, now more than ever, they are the hope for patients like me—www.phrma.org.

Today I went to a yoga class for cancer patients and survivors.  To quote a good friend who also went through chemo, “I’m not really a joiner” so I was nervous about what to expect, who would ask me what, etc.  I found out a few things: one, yoga is good at anytime, for me, and I should always make room for it in my life.   Two, there is a reason I’m not a joiner, as evidenced by a women in the class who would NOT stop telling me how I can manage my illness, my family, my work, and host a pot luck for other survivors.  And three, sometimes, it’s good to open yourself up to new experiences because today, in the same class, I learned to breathe a little better and met two new friends and cancer warriors, neither of whom asked me to make them dinner.  All an all, an hour well spent.

While on vacation one of my great doctors called me to give me the news that my non-hodgkins lymphoma was of the more aggressive type and they weren’t sure the standard RCHOP therapy would do the trick.  So, beginning round two I will go to EPOCH-R, which is a 96 hour continuous infusion of the same basic drugs, which a few more thrown in for good measure.  The idea of continuous infusion as I understand it is to allow the medicines to stay in my system longer, and therefore kill more of the cancer.  The continuous infusion is a challenge with my children, who like to hug and crawl all around me (and I like that too by the way) but we will do what it takes to kill this bitch once and for all.  Once again I am mindful about the fact that this therapy is relatively new and 20 years ago, I wouldn’t have had this option.  Thank you science.