This isn’t working out

I want to apologize for not writing this sooner. I had a visit with the oncologist on December 21. The purpose of the appointment was to let me know the best course of action regarding my cancer treatment; if I needed to do chemotherapy. The doctor was quite thorough in explaining why or why not she might want to use chemo to treat my cancer.

So the oncologist had, I'd say, 90% of the information she needed to make a complete confident recommendation. If you've been keeping up, she wanted the results of the Guardant Reveal test. Gardant is the test that measures the circulating cancer DNA that might be present in my blood. It takes that information and compares my blood to their database of genetic cancer markers.

Based on the pathology of the tumor and the blood test results, she did not recommend any chemotherapy! She said that since the pathology was stage two and that the Guardant test does not show any evidence of circulating cancer DNA in my blood, there was no need to abuse my body further with more treatment. Also helpful is that the tumor was fast-growing, which helped to keep everything in a compact package.

That is that! The cancer treatment is over and shifts into follow-up appointments and testing. To say that I'm relieved is an understatement! This process didn't work out the way I thought it would! But, I am very grateful that it worked out the way it has so far! I'm very thankful for the team of doctors and nurses working to keep me healthy; I'm grateful for my family, especially Karen, who held the ship together (and does most of the time) while I was healing. Finally, I'm thankful to my friends and extended family, who helped contribute to my speedy recovery through their thoughts and prayers.

I again apologize for the delay in updating this blog. The holidays at home and a hectic holiday season at work make it a challenge to keep on top of this blog. However, I won't stop updating everyone. I have lots to process about my second fight with cancer.

Thanks for reading, and please keep the prayers and thoughts coming.