Officially Cured of Cancer

In so many ways, I was never prepared for this moment of my life, and it’s nothing like how I pictured it.

10 years ago, if you had told me that I would be writing a blog post in 2020 about being cured of cancer, I would probably have been grateful, but also slightly horrified about the future developments in store for me.

Five years ago, if you had told me that I would be celebrating my officially being cured of cancer by doing basically nothing because of a global pandemic, I would have thought you were writing some sort of dystopian fan fiction about my life.

When I finished chemo and learned that five years of remission was my new mission, I was convinced that we would celebrate my eventual cure by going out for a big steak dinner like we did when I first received the joyous “No Evidence of Disease” proclamation. We would invite family and friends to join us for the summer backyard party of the century. We would continue the celebration with a trip to Hawaii or some other exotic locale we hadn’t experienced yet.

But none of this is happening. And it doesn’t even matter…Today is a day of joy and gratitude. The wait is over. I am blessed beyond measure. Time to buy some life insurance!

In a way, it’s fitting that the reality of my “cured date” would be as surreal as everything else about the experience of being diagnosed with and treated for cancer. I’ve written elsewhere about how so much of the pandemic social distancing/shelter in place protocols are reminiscent of the lifestyle of a cancer patient. Why shouldn’t this journey toward cured end as strangely as it began?

It’s also fitting that the pandemic has allowed me to spend the majority of my time savoring the greatest blessings of my life–my wife and children–that I am only enjoying because God and modern medicine swooped in to save me from a fatal disease.

There is certainly uncertainty and stress in our day-to-day lives right now, but we are dealing mostly with mere inconveniences and have thus far been spared any real tragedy connected to the pandemic. I am fortunate to be able to work from home (just like when I had cancer!) and we are blessed to be sheltering in our comfortable home and using this time to survive, thrive, and establish the culture of our family with three children aged four and below.

The operative word in the paragraph above is spared. While not the word I embraced when I was first diagnosed or at any of the rougher moments of my treatment, I freely embrace it now, every time I hear about a new cancer patient or the tragic outcome of another cancer victim. I was spared in so many ways with a fully treatable form of lymphoma, stable financial and adaptable occupational situations that were not disrupted by cancerous medical costs, a top-rated oncologist guiding my treatment, few serious side effects, and the ability to have children after chemo–even though my doctor told me it was highly unlikely.

In fact, I was so spared in my cancer experience that the survivor guilt sometimes rides higher than it should. Rather than asking “why me?” as I did at the outset of this rollercoaster, I can find myself asking “why not me?” Why should I have been spared when others with the same disease are not so fortunate? Why should I have been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma instead of a deadlier form of cancer? I was somehow unaware of this statistic until I saw it on Wikipedia just now, but Hodgkin’s Lymphoma accounts for just 10 percent of all lymphoma cases. 90 percent of cases are the deadlier and more complicated to treat non-Hodgkin’s variety.

These questions are at best useless and at worst self-defeating. And yet they have persisted. Even five years after fighting cancer and being spared, the psychological trauma of facing your impending doom and embarking on a mandatory self-poisoning road to recovery will rear its ugly head in the strangest of ways.

For me, it forces existential questions like the ones posed above. But it also has sewn a disconcerting distrust between my body and my brain. Fool me once, shame on you. Give me cancer, shame on everybody. My brain feels betrayed by my body. What’s stopping that from happening again? My pre-existing hypochondriac condition was aided and abetted by my cancer experience. I have lost count of the number of times I have stress-Googled and diagnosed myself with various maladies, always checking to see if Hodgkin’s survivors are at a greater risk for these perceived new conditions that I’m so sure I’ve contracted.

The freshest–and somewhat laughable–occurrence came at my most recent visit to my oncologist. Since I have been dealing more frequently with bouts of Raynaud Syndrome (this one isn’t in my head…my fingers turn as deadly white as this), my doctor wanted to collect copious amounts of my blood and run a battery of tests for various autoimmune diseases and arthritis. In the few days between the blood draw and the follow-up appointment, I had firmly convinced myself that I would be diagnosed with lupus. You like #DownWithLumpy? You’ll love #DownWithLupus.

I was so dreading the actual test results that they took my blood pressure three times to see if it was really as high as what the machine was showing. It was. When the doctor came in, it might shock you to learn that I did not, in fact, have lupus or any other autoimmune disease. I am in good health and got to hear my oncologist’s (and my) favorite refrain once again: You’re more likely to get hit by a car than to have your cancer come back. That’s music to my ears and the rest of my lupus-free body.

But this is a celebratory post, and as I’ve reiterated in many of my cancer-versary-type posts over the years, the trauma of facing cancer has left many more positives than negatives in my life, so much so that I actually find myself grateful for the experience.

Just so this post can be even more ridiculously long, I’ll close things out with 5 positive outcomes and lessons from my cancer experience.

1. Empathy is important.
   I have an empathy for cancer patients, survivors and their families that can only come with firsthand experience. When someone tells you that they are undergoing chemo, for example, there’s no way for someone who hasn’t experienced that to understand what they will be going through. Even for people with far worse cancers and treatment experiences than me, I have a better glimpse of what their journey looks like. This makes me want to eradicate cancer from the earth and support cancer patients in any way that I can. One way I do so is by raising money for cancer organizations like Imerman Angels and the Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation. Click here to make a donation to my current fundraiser in celebration of my cured status. Thanks to those who have already donated or have donated to previous fundraisers over the years. I am truly grateful.
   
2. Sharing my story was vital.
   This blog was a vital way for me to capture and process my emotions throughout the battle. By meticulously cataloging my experiences, I have also left a raw/emotional/hopefully humorous/complete record for future Hodgkin’s patients to discover as they Google the disease in disbelief and fear after being diagnosed. My blog traffic report frequently shows a small number of visitors viewing a large number of posts–which always means another Hodgkin’s diagnosis has gotten its wings. I could not find a comprehensive account when I was in that position myself, and I have been gratified by those who have read my story and reached out in gratitude. I hope that I have inspired others to be more open about what they’re going through to the extent that they are comfortable with that. I certainly felt more supported and loved by sharing my story. Plus, five years later, I finally found something to host a podcast about!
   
3. Cancer defines me now. I need to let it.
   I will always be a cancer survivor, and that’s never going away. It will always take me longer than you to fill out a medical history form. While I take great pride in being a survivor, there’s also a perpetual awkwardness about how and when to let other people know about this essential detail of my existence. Whenever I make a new friend or coworker, this piece of my puzzle inevitably comes up, and I have to figure out how to present it in a way that doesn’t make them question my current constitution (“No! I’m cured! Don’t look at me like that!”) but also represents the monumental effect this experience had on my life. I’m still working on this.
   
4. Cancer doesn’t define me now. I don’t need to let it.
   Despite all of the above, five years cancer-free sometimes feels like a lifetime. Some of my memories of that time are easily recalled, but in other ways, cancer was an out-of-body experience that feels disconnected from my current stage of life. It helped make me the person that I am today, but it’s not something that I dwell on every day, nor should it be. There should be no guilt associated with getting on with your life–even when that sometimes means that you aren’t being as grateful or compassionate as you should, or that you’re taking things for granted that you swore you never would in the chemo-ridden moments five years ago. Cancer is a touchstone that I can use to reground myself and continually recognize the blessings in my life. I’m still working on this, too.
   
5. Keep paying it forward.
   Five years later, everything about this experience seems so perfectly ordained by God to direct me toward a less selfish, more grateful, more compassionate way of life. These are the greatest lessons of cancer that I never want to forget, no matter how far the experience gets in the rearview mirror. Everyone is fighting a “cancer” of some sort in their life–how can we show up for them and help them with their struggle in same way that so many people willingly showed up for me? It’s OK to ask for help when you need it, it’s OK to accept help when you need it, and it’s absolutely essential to offer help when you can give it. And that can be as simple as a text message, a phone call or a funny meme shared on Facebook. When the stakes are high, the acts of kindness can be simple, and the effects can still be profound. I’m working on this one most of all.

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Thank you for supporting me over the last five years. I am so grateful to have reached this milestone and for the people with whom I get to share my wonderful life.

I’M DONE WITH LUMPY!

On Two Years of Remission

They need to invent a new tense for talking about cancer.

Tense is a good word for it. It’s a tense tense. It’s an intense tense. It’s a past tense and a present tense. It’s an imperfect tense.

I had cancer. It’s gone now, by the grace of God. No evidence of disease. That’s the past tense.

But it’s never forgotten. Every time I get out of the shower, I see the fading scars on my chest and neck, and I remember. Every time something is out of the ordinary with my health—an innocuous cyst on my face or a prolonged mouth sore or an enlarged gland in my neck—I feel a creeping uncertainty and fear. Every time I hear a story about someone else who is receiving treatment or has lost the battle, I feel an overwhelming gratitude for the blessing of my continued life and my two years of remission.

That’s all present tense. This is how I live with cancer even after the cancer is gone: I remember the past. I value the present. And sometimes I fear for the future. No matter how much time goes by, a part of me will always be living cancer.

Cancer is an epic disruption. It disrupts your immune system and your plans. It disrupts your appetite and your mood. It disrupts your work and your play. It disrupts your priorities and your prayers. It disrupts the lives of everyone around you. It disrupted my life as a newlywed—first haunting me on my honeymoon and ultimately shaping the first year of my marriage.

It’s still disrupting me. First every three months, then every six months and now once a year, cancer bursts on the scene in the form of a CT scan. As I enter the machine, I’m instructed to hold my breath in order to get a clear reading. I don’t fully exhale until I get the results back days later, and I can be assured that the cancer itself remains in the past tense.

Getting a fully clear scan seems to be a struggle for me, as tiny ambiguities always seem to pop up, pulling me back into present tense. One time it was mysterious activity in my throat that could have been a cold or could have been something else. It was a cold. Another time it was an enlarged spleen that could have been something else but turned out to just be my larger-than-average spleen. For my most recent annual scan, the ambiguity still remains too tensely ambiguous for my tastes. A couple lymph nodes in my neck measured at 3.1 mm instead of within the safety of the 3.0 mark. One-tenth of a millimeter is enough to potentially blur the lines between past and present tense.

It was hard not to think about that while I waited for the doctor’s call with the results. When it comes to getting results from a doctor, voicemail is the enemy of good news. I missed his first call—both on my cell phone and my office phone—and he left a voicemail saying that he wanted to discuss my results. No rush, just wanted to chat about them. I missed his second call and had to wait a full 24 hours before I would hear from him again. Those 24 hours were spent in frenzied future tense, playing out terrifying scenarios in my mind and rhetorically asking questions of “what if?” and “what then?” and “why me?” and “how come?”

My doctor assures me that everything is fine, that my blood work is pristine and that the one-tenth of a millimeter could have numerous non-cancerous causes. I’m choosing to believe him. I recently had the aforementioned innocuous cyst removed from the side of my head. The lymph nodes could be reacting to that. I don’t feel like I’ve had a cold or illness, but my oncologist said I could be fighting something off and the lymph nodes were helping. He also said that if it was cancer, I would have other symptoms and the nodes probably would have grown a lot more than one-tenth of a millimeter in the year’s time between my scans. He said he will order another scan of my neck region when I see him for my usual checkup in four months, and we’ll see what that shows.

But today is the anniversary of my remission and there is still technically no evidence of disease. So I want to celebrate in the present tense. Cancer made me a better person. It made me more empathetic to the suffering of others—especially the invisible suffering that the stranger next to you might be experiencing before their hair falls out from chemo. I’m more attuned to the physical suffering that comes with side effects from treatment as well as the mental and emotional suffering that comes from being diagnosed with a terrible disease and all the side effects of uncertainty. I proudly wear the banner of a cancer survivor, but I know that so many others have endured or succumbed to so much worse.

I am grateful every day for the fact that post-cancer life has returned me not just to normalcy but frequently to unqualified bliss. I’m married to a beautiful woman who lifted me up and made me smile during the most difficult moments of my life. We together conquered a challenge that most newly married couples cannot imagine, and

enduring that experience together has reduced many of the usual mountains of marriage to mere molehills.  We are now blessed with a beautiful daughter who is changing our lives in new ways every day and who represents a future for our family that is filled with boundless love and endless possibility.

Cancer will always be a part of my history and reality. But despite the wounds of the past and occasional fears for the future, the greatest takeaway from my cancer experience will always be a better understanding of the gift of the present.

One Year of Remissioning

It was one year ago today that I got the news I had been waiting six months to hear. My cancer was in remission. While I won’t be considered by the medical community to be “cured” until August 2020, hearing that there was “no evidence of disease” still meant to me that I had conquered the most grueling personal challenge I had ever faced. It meant an end to weekly doctor’s appointments and blood tests. It meant a return to work and exercise and ramping back up to full strength. It meant getting my eyebrows back and at least a little more hair on my head. It meant that I was meant to face down cancer and live, when so many others were not so blessed.

It’s only one year later, but the world looks so much different to me today. The experience of fighting cancer changed me irrevocably and tremendously, but I didn’t expect my life to change all over again in my first year of remission.

Remission.

Now I’m no linguistic scholar, but I don’t think the parts of that word sound like they have anything to do with overcoming an illness. Nevertheless, it’s a rather apt word for how I’ve spent much of the past year.

I’ve been re-missioning.

In fact, I’m on a completely new and wonderful mission now–a life change that was almost as unexpected as my initial cancer diagnosis, but a billion times more joyful.

As I type this post, my daughter Madeline is lying next to me in her rock ‘n play sleeper, baby-grunting and beginning to stir as she prepares to wake up for her eighth meal of the day. She turned three weeks old yesterday, and she’s the most perfect creation I’ve ever seen.

I can’t help but consider her to be a miracle–and I know that all children are miracles–but Maddie counts doubly so. Before I embarked on my treatment journey, three different doctors told me that chemotherapy had rendered greater men than me sterile, so I should probably make plans for my future fertility (and defy Catholic teaching on the subject). Theresa and I forged ahead in faith–trusting God’s plan for our family, even if that meant that Lumpy would make us a permanent party of two. When I received my remission news last year, the oncologist told us that even if we could get pregnant, we most likely wouldn’t be able to do so for a year and shouldn’t really even try until then. I guess that would be right now.

But just as God surprised us by making 2015 the Year of the Lump, he surprised us again by making 2016 the Year of the Bump. With that positive pregnancy test last December, we were instantly re-missioned.

I won’t pretend that Lumpy didn’t make a few cameo appearances in the past year. He came back like clockwork every three months when it was time for another scan and randomly haunted my psyche with worst-case scenarios: What if the cancer came back? What if I got sick after the baby came? What if the baby was sick? Is that another lump in my neck?

Fortunately none of these dramas ever played out in reality. My latest scan last week appears to be my cleanest yet. I’ve found a new oncologist who actually seems to care a lot about my health and who understands the importance of bedside manner when you’re dealing with cancer. Theresa gave birth to Maddie with no complications (read the epic tale!) and Maddie is as healthy as can be.

This entire pregnancy and year of remission has been filled with “What did I do to deserve this?” moments of gratitude–spawned from an experience that normally poses that question in the other direction. I know that I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t been there, so I can’t help but look back at the marvelous timing of all these staggering life events with wonder and gratitude.

Perhaps it’s fitting that this is my 100th post on this blog–a blog that I started simply to chronicle the experience of my 30s and all the big moments I presumed would be heading my way in that decade. If I could send these 100 posts to my 29-year-old self, I wonder what he would make of it. Would he be afraid? Proud? Shocked? Perhaps he’d be most surprised that I actually kept it up.

As I turn 34 in three months, it would be tempting to hope that the latter half of my 30s is more predictable than the former. But these years have taught me the value of change, the importance of faith and the rewards of following a path that sometimes isn’t clear until you’re looking back at where you came from–and suddenly you’re happier than you’ve ever been before.

 

Is it Time to Find a New Oncologist?

As I type this tonight–about two months from my one-year No Evidence of Disease remission anniversary–I find the thought almost comical: Why would I switch oncologists now? After all, I’ve already endured 12 rounds of chemo on my current doctor’s watch, put up with his idiosyncratic bedside manner, his maddening lack of clarity and availability, some mistakes in treatment and his Groundhog Day-like inability to remember the details of my case between visits.

After reading that last sentence, perhaps you’re wondering why I stuck with him in the first place. Well, the answer is largely because the hospital was conveniently located minutes from my house and my oncologist was supposed to be administering chemotherapy according to the marching orders of a highly respected lymphoma doctor at the University of Chicago who provided my second opinion and course of treatment. That doctor assured me that chemotherapy is chemotherapy no matter where you get it, and it seemed a lot smarter to get it five minutes from my house than to brave rush hour traffic to-and-from Hyde Park once a week for chemo sessions or checkups.

But I’m assuming that while the ABVD chemotherapy poisons are the same everywhere, the level of care from your oncologist can differ greatly from practice to practice. And in that department, my oncologist could surely use some…practice.

So what was the straw that broke the camel’s back? It happened earlier today. My wife and I had recently been chatting about how I am due for another PET or CT scan, as my oncologist had said he wanted me to get one every three months for the first year. For each of these scans, we have had to call his office to see if he still wanted me to get one and had to connect with him in order to get the scan ordered. (Is this normal? Or is the office supposed to call you to schedule your scans? I have no frame of reference for this beyond my dentist and my eye doctor, who always call or send a postcard when I’m due for some maintenance. Fellow cancer patients and caregivers: what has been your experience?)

Completing these scans is always a stressful experience for me–both because I hate getting stuck with needles and also because I always have a fear in the back of my mind that the scan won’t be clear and I’ll need more chemo or radiation or some other form of cancer-fighting torture. At the appointments to get the results of my three-month and six-month scans, it was clear that my oncologist had not even looked at the results before entering the room, which left my wife and I quivering in fear as he read them over in our presence. After the first scan, there was some ambiguity in my throat that required me to go back to the ENT who originally diagnosed my cancer. But my doc hadn’t seen this before I was in the room, so we got to watch him process it and ask me questions about my general health before he told us what was going on. It was terrible.

After my six-month scan, he reacted incredibly positively to the completely clear scan as he read it for the first time in front of us…because he thought this was my first scan after remission. When I complained about having to drink a disgusting contrast liquid before the scan, he told me that they didn’t need an abdominal scan because my lymphoma was in my neck, so I wouldn’t have to do that for any future scans. That’s nice, but we still got charged for the unnecessary abdominal scan that was clearly ordered because he wasn’t paying enough attention and didn’t bother to examine the details of my case.

But the back-breaking straw came today, when my wife once again called his office to find out if he still wanted me to get a nine-month scan and to get it scheduled. The office left a voicemail saying that we were supposed to have come back for a checkup after two months (which was never suggested to us on our last visit and had not previously been the protocol) and that my doc wanted me to get a scan of my chest, abdomen and pelvis.

Even casual readers of my cancer adventure will remember that my cancer presented as an enlarged lymph node in my neck. SO WHY IS HE NOW REQUESTING A SCAN OF EVERY LOCATION EXCEPT THE PLACE WHERE THE CANCER WAS?

I’m sorry. I’ll calm down. And turn off caps lock.

A quick scan of his waiting room tells me that he sees a lot of patients and that some of his patients probably have lymphoma. But I also know that I am probably one of the only ones who is under 35 and therefore perhaps a little more memorable than a lot of the older cancer patients he sees. But even if he couldn’t exactly remember the details of my case, shouldn’t he look at my chart a bit more carefully before ordering incredibly expensive scans that are meant to ensure that the cancer hasn’t returned?

So this is why I kind of want a new oncologist now. But I’m not sure that’s even an option for me. Do oncologists take on patients who are in remission and just come in for tuneup scans?

In the 17 months since Lumpy first entered my life, I have tried to be a resource for anyone who is dealing with similar health issues. I’ve tried to meticulously catalog my experiences in the hopes that it could bring comfort or knowledge or solidarity to others who find themselves fighting their own Lumpy.

But tonight I find myself somewhat frustrated and in need of advice. If you are reading this and have any experience with professional medicine or cancer treatment, I would love your feedback. Leave a comment or send me a message (roundingthirty at gmail dot com), and I would be very grateful for your insights.

Despite my frustration, I remain in good health–although perhaps gaining a bit too much pregnancy weight in solidarity with my pregnant wife–and richly blessed beyond measure. My oncologist and his staff did take good care of me throughout my treatment, but this latest development just feels like a logical breaking point, if it’s possible to switch to another doctor. Regardless of any of this, I feel so sure that all of the experiences that came from my cancer battle were oddly dressed blessings from God that fit perfectly into His plan and have prepared me for new and exciting challenges to come. Thank you for reading this and for all of your support!

Six Months in the Clear

I’m not sure it’s possible for someone who has battled cancer to ever visit their oncologist without a little trepidation. Since the end of my chemotherapy regiment last July, I’ve been on a once-every-three-months-for-the-first-year schedule of follow-up scans.

Both times that this scan has approached, I’ve been filled with a sense of impending dread about what the scan might find. Last time, I was given relatively good news and needed only to follow up with my ENT to confirm that the “activity” picked up by the PET scan was just a simple cold. It turned out to be a simple cold that lasted about four weeks, but nevertheless, it wasn’t cancer and remission continued!

I thought the pre-scan jitters might be lessened the second time around, but they really were not. First of all, my insurance company (which has been fantastic about covering the majority of my medical bills…truly an unsung hero in all of this) rejected my claim for a PET scan. I don’t want to get too political here, but this was an honest-to-goodness #thanksobama moment, as my oncologist explained that insurance companies are not approving PET scans for sick people who need them because of the effects of Obamacare. PET scans are expensive and apparently many healthy people eligible for Obamacare would rather pay the penalty to not be insured than pay monthly for insurance itself. This leaves insurance companies with a higher ratio of sick-to-healthy people using their coverage than before, making them less money and causing them to deny the expensive PET procedure in many cases to make up the difference in their bottom line. Editor’s note: The point of this post is to give an update on my cancer remission, not engage in a debate on healthcare. I’m simply reporting what was told to me by my oncologist. Let’s move on.

So I had to get a CT scan instead of a PET scan this time. “Oh, great!” I thought. “Now I won’t have to avoid sugar for 24 hours or get injected with radioactive glucose and sit in the dark for an hour before the scan!”

That is a true statement, but I didn’t count on the different brand of fun that a CT scan would offer me. When I made the appointment, I was told that I had to come pick up a special contrast drink that would light up my innards in place of radioactive glucose. I would drink one the night before the scan and one an hour before the scan. Upon receiving the two 450 milliliter bottles of “berry smoothie,” I knew I was in for a real treat.

Choking down the first dose was a little like drinking Elmer’s glue with a slight berry flavor and some weird chunks in it. The flavor wasn’t as problematic for me as the disgusting texture of the “smoothie”–and the fact that there was just so dang much of it. Theresa, being the sleep-craving second trimester pregnant lady that she is, was long asleep by the time I was holding my nose, forcing it down my throat and hoping my gag reflex wouldn’t bring it back up. I went to sleep for about six hours and then woke up to repeat the exercise before we headed to the hospital for the scan.

I met a tech that I had not previously worked with in my various radiology department travails, and something about his demeanor told me that this was not going to be a quick and easy appointment.

He asked if I drank the stuff and I expressed my opinion on the experience and my fervent hope that it meant I would avoid needing an IV for the scan. I had forgotten the first rule of the hospital–if you’re here as a patient, we’re sticking you with a needle. If you’re name is Matt, you’re probably going to get stuck multiple times.

That policy was in full effect for my CT scan. The contrast I had ingested was apparently only for my abdomen and colon. An iodine IV was necessary to scan all the important areas where, you know, I actually once had cancer. The tech set about the process of finding a vein. As always, I told him about my vasovagal ways and that most people have better luck striking a vein in my right arm. He ignored this advice and gave punny meaning to the phrase “trying in vain” to find one there. He then moved on to my left arm, where he found a vein but failed to properly pierce it. He gave me a test injection, which I could taste in my mouth, and asked me if my arm hurt. It did, so he let out an expletive and informed me that the needle wasn’t all the way in my vein. He tried one more test injection that simply yielded more pain and another expletive (and one in my head, too). He moved on to my hand, poking it three different times and failing each time.

“For a young guy, you sure have terrible veins,” he sighed. For an old guy, you’re sure terrible at your job, I thought. He called over a colleague who “taught me everything I know” (Is that reassuring?) and he was able to get the IV into my right arm successfully and without any pain whatsoever. Four pricks for a simple IV is definitely a new record for me though. I’m sure my certificate is in the mail.

The CT scan proceeded normally from there. It’s very similar to a PET scan, except that the warm iodine is injected into the vein at certain points, which gives a warming sensation all over your body and leaves you with the sensation that you are on the verge of or already have wet your pants.

After the scan, life went back to normal, but my appointment to get the results wasn’t for another week, which gives the former cancer patient’s brain plenty of time to ruminate on what might be invisibly growing in their neck or on their spine or in their chest. I start examining my neck in the mirror more frequently and looking for lumps anywhere else. I console myself with the fact that I don’t seem to have any other lymphoma-like side effects, that there’s definitely not a lump and that I’ve gained weight recently. Theresa is particularly good at helping me chase away these horribly negative thoughts that tend to haunt me whenever I’m going to sleep.

With her pregnancy, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about how terribly inconvenient it would be to have to once again go through what we just finished up six months ago–especially when a pregnant woman with her own nauseous issues and compromised immune system would be forced to become my primary caretaker. The whole scenario frustrates me and becomes all too realistic in my brain sometimes. I trust that God has a plan for me and I am intensely aware of all the good that came from my cancer fight…I would just also love to find out that God hates reruns and we won’t have to do it again.

We had our doctor’s appointment today, so I was working from home. When Theresa picked me up, we were both suddenly very nervous about what we might be about to find out. Everything went incredibly smoothly when we got to the hospital though: The staff was happy to see us and the nurse took my blood without incident and told me she had seen me in the newspaper. We miraculously didn’t even have to wait that long to see the doctor. When we did, he didn’t beat around the bush: My scan was incredibly clear and didn’t even show any scar tissue anymore! Everything is perfect! Praise God! I honestly found myself fighting back tears of happiness and a huge burden was immediately lifted.

I’ve officially been in remission for six months, we’re finding out our baby’s gender in five days, and we’re heading to Arizona in 9 days. God continues to hold us in the palm of His hand, no matter how easy it is for me to doubt that sometimes. Life is good!