This week has been filled with bad news. The night before the marathon, I found out my Hodgkin’s buddy/Pen-Pal Eve in Georgia had her 3-month post chemo PET Scan where she was told her Hodgkin’s had returned. The chemo regimen we both completed did not kill all the cancer in her body, so they will now start her on a different regimen. This of course is a sucker-punch to Eve, but I have confidence she will still come through this okay. It does however leave me feeling uneasy for my 3-month check which will be at the end of August. I am hoping with the addition of radiation, which was not required for Eve, it will help terminate the cancer from my body for good.
The bad news doesn’t end there. In fact, it gets worse. Today my heart nearly broke in half when I found out that my friend Wendy is now in the fight of her life. The metastatic melanoma which they hoped they had knocked out when they removed her entire left lung three months ago, has now presented itself as aggressive tumors on her brain. This is not good news, not good news at all. The 5 year survival rate for metastatic melanoma is, well, I don’t even want to say it out loud nonetheless type it out.
I really don’t know what else to say about Wendy because I am in shock. The thoughts that are going through my head are not ones that I want to write down. It is hard for me to face this reality without being pessimistic at the same time. All I want to do is say a big screw you to cancer today. Stronger words come to mind, but someday my children might read this and I don’t want them to know mommy used the “F word.”
As one could imagine, this has put me in quite a funk, and I can’t be in a funk because this weekend is Cristina’s wedding and I've been looking forward to it for a long time. It’s been one of my goals that I’ve been reaching for to keep me going since January. I will enjoy myself and do whatever it takes to help Cristina have a beautiful wedding. I don’t want to talk about cancer all weekend because this is Cristina’s time and I want to enjoy it with her. Until Sunday, cancer does not exist in my world.
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Hey, I have my google e-mail alerts set to metastatic melanoma. Couldn't help but notice your story about your friend Wendy. The website I am referring too www.melanoma.org have had many people in the same situation who have done well and survived. Go to melanoma.org, then click on bulletin board. The other one is melanoma international. If surgery is not an option, there is a drug called ipilimumab which crosses the blood brain barrier and has been helpful in treating this sort of thing(in melanoma patients anyway)
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John