7 Months Later

WE’RE BACK BABY!!! What’s up everyone? I know how much you’ve all dearly missed reading these blogs so it is with great honor that I can announce that, much like my cancer, they’re back and better than ever! Just can’t get rid of me that easy. Like herpes up in this bitch. Anyways, as I mentioned literally two sentences earlier, my cancer is indeed back. Thankfully, this time it’s only a few isolated locations of minor growth, so a little bit different from the first time I got this news about two years ago when it was like the most depressing version of the Oprah Winfrey show ever, just handing out tumors like hotcakes all over the place. So a little backstory, I got my 3rd set of CT scans in September that I would get every 3 months to make sure nothing was coming back, and they came back with no new growth. A+ news, really. Over the course of that month, however, I started getting really bad pain in my right forearm, right where I had a large mass of scar tissue from my 10 weeks of radiation. So I went to get an MRI to get a better view of what was going on with my forearm lump and my main man Dr. D-Money Magic decided to get a PET scan to ensure there was no active growth anywhere. For those of you who aren’t doctors or 2-year cancer veterans like myself, a PET scan is basically a CT scan only you get injected with this dope looking radioactive material and it makes any active cancer sites glow. It’s kinda cool, makes you feel like spiderman. I got a call from my doctor a few days later (getting a call from the oncologist after scans, never a good sign) and he said I had growth of a couple of percentages in my arm, back, heart, and near my liver. Nothing major, but worth addressing. I’m now scheduled to meet with the doctors from Dana Farber in December about a clinical trial I may enroll in. I’ll have more details about the trial itself after that appointment, but initially I have some thoughts, which is rare for me. Not usually a big thought guy (unless we’re talking about thots, amiright gentlemen?). My initial reaction was much like how I’ve always reacted to all the bad news I’ve gotten over the past 2 years, subdued and generally uninterested. It’s my defense mechanism and it works for me. Whatever. But the more I thought about leaving the proverbial port of remission and setting sail in the sea of cancer therapy, I actually have found myself a bit relieved. You see, you never really stop living with cancer. It’s something that lives in the back of your mind and quietly dictates much of the important decisions you make in your life. This is fine when you’re in therapy and have a constant idea of what your progression and prognosis look like so you can react accordingly, but when the growth stops and you begin waiting for it to return, I’ve found that the waiting was far more difficult than the fight. In reality, fear is simply the reaction to facing something unknown or unexplained. You don’t know how a new situation may affect you, so you get scared. And the fear from simply hoping you catch the cancer re-growing before it’s too late is far more difficult to cope with than the fear of fighting the disease. The waiting is always the hardest part. So in this way, I’m elated to be back to fighting cancer, because now at least I know where I stand. So that’s really all I’ve got for today, stay tuned for an update when I find out about my clinical trial, hopefully I get a cute nurse like last time (shhh nobody tell Sydney!! [oh yeah, I got a girlfriend since my last blog as well]). I kid. But as was the case before, please refrain from texting me about details because this is all I know and I’m not dying to talk about cancer all the time. Only thing I’m dying of is a severe case of the handsomes, but that’ a chronic issue that there’s no medicine for baby.