Just News
5/23/24: Celebrating Ollie's first award for completing swim school. Proud dad!
I didn’t plan on posting again so soon, but I figured I would provide an update on how my appointment today went. I’ll keep it short.
Yes, there is active cancer in my body. It appears to be a mutated version of the original cancer.
There are many unknowns in a situation like this. Nothing is certain. There's no explanation for why the cancer suddenly reactivated in my body or why it wasn’t identifiable through the CT Scan or my blood tumor marker. There's no clear reason why the maintenance therapy failed to fight off this new version of my original cancer, why it appeared only in this one isolated spot, or why it only manifested as back pain. It's unclear why a 2 cm tumor on the right part of my stomach is causing pain on the lower left side of my back. Like I said, nothing is certain.
There is so little data on thirty year olds with pancreatic cancer to begin with, I really am left to the mercy of “we’re just going to have to wait and see” quite often. All news is just news.
My oncologist had the weekend off, so I knew he would see the results from my PET Scan first thing Monday morning. I was expecting to receive 12 emails from the hospital soon after he read the report. 6 emails confirming my appointment times for chemo on Thursdays, and another 6 emails confirming my appointment times for fluids on Fridays. Back to chemo, I thought. I could handle that. But even if the chemo was as successful as it was the first time, would the cancer just come back again once I stopped treatment? I couldn’t do chemo forever.
The emails never came. And when we got to the appointment, my oncologist was more relaxed than I had anticipated. I know he delivers bad news for a living. Trained to keep a straight face, and remain optimistic. But I could generally sense when the news wasn’t going to be good. And if he wasn’t going to show it, the look on the face of my main nurse would be a dead giveaway. She had become a close friend. I golfed with her fiancé. We were even invited to their wedding. She would be easy to read, I thought.
I looked over at her. She seemed calm. Not staring up at the ceiling in order to avoid eye contact, her usual tell. Maybe it’s not bad news after all.
My oncologist seemed surprised to see the active cancer. But he didn’t seem overly concerned. He was confident. We had options. And since the cancer was located in just one small spot, it would be manageable. His recommendation was to get a MRI of my abdomen and get going with radiation therapy as soon as possible. The MRI was more out of curiosity. How it would compare to a CT Scan for my specific case going forward? I was indefinitely scheduled for CT Scans every two months, but if they weren’t going to detect my cancer, maybe an MRI would be a better option. Assuming insurance would cover it.
The radiation would serve two purposes.
Precisely target and kill the active cancer.
Release antigens. The antigens from radiation would trigger my immune system to attack any other potentially cancerous cells in my body that may be lying undetected.
I was quite happy with this. No spending ten hours a week sitting at the treatment center. No fatigue, no nausea, and no neuropathy. Plus, I wouldn’t have to lose my hair that just started to grow back. Let’s do it.
There are some other, less-relevant, things that came from the appointment. Alternative maintenance therapy options after radiation, new detection methods that may be available to me, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Overall, the appointment seemed positive. All things considered.
While going through treatment I wanted to find a way to give back, or support others going through something similar. Truthfully though, when I finished treatment, I found myself trying to leave it all in the past, and get back to my “normal” life. Maybe this small cancer growth is happening because I needed that extra push to start this blog. Maybe it leads to finally giving back, or supporting others. Everything happens for a reason. Listening to the optimist in me. Ha!
I’ll leave it at that for now.
Love,
Mikey
