Good News Comes in Shades of Gray
“I have to admit that I am in a place I never expected to be. I am a long, long way from being cured, and that probably is still not in the cards. But this is the first good news in ten months. That counts.”
I finally got the call I was waiting for late Monday night. You all know what that waiting is like. The football game was OK, not great. Nothing else really on TV to take my mind off of it — no way I could concentrate enough to read a book. Even a couple of glasses of wine didn't help. Well, that may not be true.
Then my doctor called. He said the results were a mixed bag. As much as we might want everything to be black and white, the cancer world is made up of grays. The tumors in my lungs have shrunk — at least a couple of them have. That's good news. The tumor on my spine appeared to have grown, although just a tiny bit. That was the mixed news, color it gray. Did that growth happen before the Avastin and the drugs kicked in? Or is something else going on?
I have to admit, I really didn't know how to react to this news. I should have been happy. It's the kind of news I never expected to hear. But for some reason, I was sort of emotionally blank. Maybe it was the prospect of staying on chemo for the foreseeable future, with maybe radiation for the spinal tumor. Maybe I was just tired and afraid to get too excited. After all, there's been so much bad news.
But I had another conversation with my doctor Tuesday afternoon. After he and other specialists looked at the scans, they think there are signs that my spine may actually be healing. That would mean that the tumor has been affected in some way by the chemo. So all in all, I did pretty good.
What does this mean? We're going to keep doing what we've been doing — more Avastin, more chemo — and hope that this trend continues. The more I think about this now, I have to admit that I am in a place I never expected to be. I am a long, long way from being cured, and that probably is still not in the cards. But this is the first good news in ten months. That counts.
More than anything else, I want to thank all of you who wrote in with good wishes, and all of you who kept me in your thoughts and prayers. I think that I owe much of this good news to all of you. And by extension, I know that we are keeping each other, the entire cancer world, in our thoughts. For those of you out there fighting this same battle, don't give up, because we haven't given up on you.
6:14 AM ET | 10-25-2006 | permalink
