Good Oncology News

The news is good. I have just had my appointment with the cancer doc for an evaluation of the six chemo sessions, the cat scan of a week ago, and the most recent blood tests, as well as an assessment of how they think I have fared. Everything is above expectations!

The tumor has been virtually eliminated by the chemotherapy. From reading the notes, it turns out that it had been bigger than I had been told before. If you hold two CD cases back to back, that is about the original size! A few nodes in other locations have also disappeared. The negative effects of the chemotherapy they had seen, like red and white cell counts, and certain imbalances have normalized. They still need one more PET scan and more blood tests this month to check a few possibilities, but things are looking good.

I should be celebrating and dancing, but somehow I know that I haven't yet escaped this prison I am in, since I am still disabled to a degree with the stiffness and neuropathy in my legs, tingling and numbness in my hands, shortness of breath and the continual pain that I still have. These keep me in bed some days, and dragging around weak and hurting many others. Instead of declining as the chemo end came in view, they actually increased.

It is not clear how these conditions relate to the cancer and/or the chemotherapy, but at least they made it worse, and the timing of the main troubles are far too aligned to be coincidence. So I am now on a track to check what is going on, and willl see a vascular doc and other ideas. Both my primary doctor and the specialists have told me to slow down a little, and let the chemo effects get out of the way, because some of it might still be my body reacting to all that. After all, they dumped 7 poisons in me every three weeks for 5 months, designed to destroy part of me, and I did have a rough time, so maybe I should be more in awe of that.


Here is a picture of me on a navy boat on the Saigon River in 1968 when I came in contact with Agent Orange stored at a depot down the river. I know it was a long time ago, but the government has agreed that that is the likely cause of my disease. Thank God that the VA has been there for me, providing care perhaps better than I could ever have expected. I have lost some weight, but my goal is not to match, but get closer to that youthful 1968 profile.