clear skies

I recieved my all clear at my first post-treatment check-up with my oncologist yesterday! Hopefully the first of many all clears.

I have had many people ask what the "plan" is now, and thought this is a good place to put it out there. I am on a three month check up schedule right now. Once I make 2 years past my diagnosis (still clear) I will wean down to every six months until I hit five years. Then it's once a year for life. Chances of recurrence are the highest the first two years, hence the close follow up. We are basically waiting to see if "the horse is out of the barn" as my doc referred to it. Not to be pessimistic, but this is our new reality. Unfortunately lung cancer likes to metastasize very quickly. Though they removed the tumor in my lung, there is a possibility that it had already made it to the bloodstream (which is why I did chemo). And if after all of that anything was left behind, we basically have to wait for it to multiply large enough to be found by CT or Xray (pea size is what I understand). For a benchmark, it takes about a million lc cells to make up a pencil sized dot that is basically "untraceable". There is a common terminology of NED, No Evidence of Disease, meaning if it is there, we can't find it. So we go with the happy pressumption that all is well until proven otherwise, and every scan that confirms it is a welcome relief. =)

I spent last week back "home" in the Quad-Cities visiting family. It was a good trip, and even the drive went pretty well (which is saying a lot for spending 8 hours on the road with four kids by myself). I was reminded of a brutal trip the kids and I made last year about this time when all four kids came down with the stomach flu on the way home. It seemed like an endless journey and all I could do was laugh (it was laugh or cry!) as all four were throwing up before we had made it half way home. This trip was much more uneventful. Yeah!