Thursday, September 29, 2011

Relapse

I have not written in a while because we have been very busy trying to get things ready for the move to Oklahoma City. We went down there twice for several days looking for homes. I also went down to Austin, TX to see the BYU vs. Texas football game. Needless to say all of that driving, standing, and the long days were pretty hard on me. I have continued to recover slowly from the bone marrow transplant. The nausea is much better (although occasionally rears its ugly head) and my taste is pretty much back to normal. I have still not had much energy or stamina and am having some fairly significant nerve pain in my arms and legs. This is all supposed to get better with time......... There's just one thing. At the end of last week I noticed soreness right around the area I found my last relapse and upon examing felt like I could possibly feel some lymph nodes. I saw my Doc and he said it would un, un, un, unlikely that it would recur this fast after the doses of chemo and transplant I received. However, a PET/CT scan today showed several new areas of uptake suggestive of recurrence. So........... I get to start the whole process over again for the third time in almost exactly one year. They will do a biopsy of one of the nodes at the beginning of next week to confirm the diagnosis before I start treatment (chemo, drugs, another transplant etc.) once again. Needless to say, there will be no moving to Oklahoma, I will, almost certainly, not be starting my residency in January, and since we have already sold our home here (and we have no income) we will most likely be moving in with one of our parents. Not to mention this is definitely not a good sign for my prognosis. Yep, somehow my cancer did not get the memo that it is supposed to be "Not only highly treatable, but highly curable" especially for someone with all of the positive prognostic indicators I have. It is definitely part of me, it is persistent! I'll post more when I know more. It's hard having a large obstacle in your life like this that cannot be overcome by just working as hard as you can to resolve it. I am not used to that and don't know that I ever will be. I am still far from dead, though, and am grateful for what I have. It could still be much worse. Maybe it will be, I don't know, but we'll cross those bridges when we come to them.