I am writing this post after a break of many weeks ... weeks in which I have steadily been getting better and healthier. It had been weird, after having six weeks of radiation with my calendar filled by medical appointments, suddenly I was alone and tired, in pain, and with no structure to my life. After a very deep and painful low of around ten days, two weeks after treatment had ended, things started to improve. There were definitely times when I could neither remember what it felt like to be well nor to imagine ever feeling well again. I have never been known for my patience and this slow, humbling journey has taught me many lessons of grace and calm. 

I got my referral to see Dr Abdalla (the liver specialist) and he gave me amazing good news. The lymph nodes and tumors had all responded very well to treatment. The liver lesion had shrunk from the size of a date to the size of a kernel of corn!!! He recommended a liver ablation (neither the surgery nor the radiation that I had so feared) where an interventional radiologist would go into my liver with long needles, directed with a CT scanner, and either freeze or burn away the lesion and surrounding tissue. Dr Abdalla also told me that I should give Dr Schertzer a big hug next time I saw her because she had been fighting so hard for me to get cured ... apparently the ablation is typically only used when the liver tumor is the main site not a metastasis.  

As has has been the case all through my treatment, I quickly got an appointment with Dr Levy(interventional radiologist) who detailed the procedure and possible side effects. Surgery on your liver can be dodgy because of the density of blood vessels causing possible bleeding and also the lesion was so high that he was concerned he might have to partially collapse my lung to get to it, with all the possible problems involved in that! 

The day of my treatment (midterm election day!) I was delighted to spend half an hour in the waiting room with my pastor, Rodrigo Cruz. He came to pray with me and we sat and solved all the world’s problems together! I then went for my pre-op where I met some fabulous people ... listened in to a tutorial on the new electronic charting system with a nurse who’d been on vacation the week before when it was debuted, learned about traveling nurses (do you know what they do?? I was astounded!), and met with Dr Levy who went over the details and told me I’d probably have to stay the night because of the awkward lung thing. 

After 90 minutes of surgery, half of which was apparently used to tape my ample bosom (😬) out of the way, the doctor told me that he had removed all of the tumor without having to deflate my lung but merely having to stop my breathing periodically so the movement of my diaphragm didn’t affect the needles’ progress. There was little pain and I was home by 5.30 in the evening. My recovery was quick and painless and there were only three band aids to show for my surgery!

So now the liver is ‘off the table’, according to Dr Abdalla, they are confident that the treatment has been successful and, if there is a recurrence in any of the affected lymph nodes, they will remove them surgically. This sounded like a confident prognosis but I wasn’t sure if I could shout out loud that I was cured, for fear of jinxing everything. 

I also saw Dr Schertzer for a follow up visit and she was very pleased to tell me that my anal tumor was gone!! Not shrunk, not reduced, but GONE! She was so happy for me and I told her how she had been the one to get me through this by not only fighting for the very best and most current treatments  but for giving me hope and encouragement that I wasn’t in the wilderness alone. I have always been a bossy and self-sufficient momma but being thrown into a life threatening world of cancer has been terrifying because suddenly my life was literally in the hands of others ... and to avoid insanity I had to trust them. Dr Schertzer made it very easy to trust her ... she was confident and hopeful while maintaining honesty and a feeling of walking alongside me and my treatment rather than conferring it from on high. I owe her my life. 

Six weeks post-radiation I also had an appointment with Dr Williams (radiation oncologist) and he too was very happy with how I had tolerated the treatment and how well it had worked. I thanked him for his honesty (he had warned me on numerous occasions how painful the post-treatment would be and he didn’t lie!) and I was able to thank some of his staff who had helped me through the hard days and laughed with on the easier days. I can’t imagine how wonderful it must be to have a job where you are saving people’s lives every day. 

Today I am feeling very well ... back to nagging the kids and helping with homework 😳, grocery shopping, and all the other fabulous things that fill a momma’s life! I get tired easily and my muscles ache, due to all the inactivity over the summer, but I am starting to go walking with the kids and I am getting more exercise.

My final big appointment will be December 10 when I get my exit PET scan that will check that everything has indeed gone away. When I get those results THEN I will celebrate my recovery and Christmas will be amazing this year! Talking of Christmas, Paul was telling me how well he has done to save a sizable chunk of change to buy presents this year and then we both realized that it was actually me who had saved the money, through drug induced sleeping instead of Starbucks induced trips to Target!!

Thank you to everyone who has supported me and my family through this hard season ... I didn’t know how much I was loved or how little I was in control of anything. I especially thank Pam Wildes and Mel Salcedo who cared for us through the best practical ways possible. I will be forever changed by cancer but, whatever happens, I will never be defeated. God bless you all and I hope your Thanksgiving holiday will be as full of thanks as our will! 🌈❤️🌈❤️🌈❤️🌈❤️🌈❤️🌈