Four years & counting

An anniversary for me today. I am a cancer survivor. Four years ago an oncologist looked me in the eye and gave me some unhappy news. This woman that had walked into the examination room where I waited for her weeks earlier and introduced herself to me as the Queen of Lumps informed me that I have non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Not only this, but there are two different types, B and T, and it was discovered that I have both. The icing on my particular cake was that the disease had metastasized, a fancy word that pretty much means "spread". Two different bone marrow samples had both tested positive, meaning that I was at stage four of the disease. This doctor explained to me that by the time this cancer has made a home within your bones, chances are that it has spread throughout your lymphatic system, and may also be present in major organs, as well.

How completely odd that the world does not come grinding to a halt when these words are delivered. I like to envision myself as a strong person, but being told you have cancer knocks the toughness right out of you. The sense of shock should be enough to sweep your feet right off from underneath you, yet I somehow remained standing. The news itself is breathtaking, but my lungs kept on working, in and out, in and out. My reaction at the time was that a forty five year old male should not have to be thinking of writing a will. I had expected that if I ever faced death at a young age, it would be more as a result of my lifestyle, rather than my health...possibly because some knot head ran a light and nailed me on my motorcycle.

What the diagnosis meant to me was that at this stage of the game my choices were pretty limited. Surgery as a solution was out, as by the time enough had been hacked off to eliminate the cancer there would not be a lot left. Radiation was also out, as the amount required as a cure would cook me like a hotdog in a microwave, while making sure that my last few days on earth were as miserable as possible. Consequently, I walked out of the cancer center that day staring down the barrel of chemotherapy. At that time I was facing fifteen sessions, one per day, five straight days of treatment followed by a breather for the rest of that month, to give my body a chance to deal with the poisons being introducedinto it. This eventually became a total of thirty sessions stretched out over six months, and my treatment began being called "intensive." 

Really, if ever there was a "right" time to become a cancer patient, the twenty first century is that time. Advances in dealing with the disease are made almost on a minute-by-minute basis, and I believe that I am alive today specifically because knowledge of cancer as well as of treatment continue to move forward at a rapid pace. Some day soon cancer may be ranked along with polio as something you are more likely to see in a history book, but that day will only matter for those of us around to see it arrive.