Happy May 1st! I'm nine days out from surgery, and getting a little stronger every day. Today I had some follow up appointments with Dr. Colson and Dr. B as well as an X-ray to check on my lungs and talk about what comes next for treatment. According to the Drs and the X-ray, my left lung and I are recovering very well. My incision sites are healing and my lung is almost back to full capacity inflation. They encouraged me to increase my activity level and get more exercise as I continue to heal. "It's ok to hurt a little bit, but stop before you hurt a lot" they said. Naturally, my competitive side hears that as a challenge: how much activity and pain can I endure before it qualifies as "a lot"? I'll keep you posted.
As for the three cancer-spots in my right lung, we agreed that since I am not hindered by their presence, and they have not shown significant growth recently, there is no need to jump into another surgery right away. So, we scheduled a CT scan and more meetings with Dr. C and Dr. B for the first week in June, and have deferred any future treatment plans until then. That means - drum roll please - I will not be engaging in any kind of treatment for an entire month! Whohoo! This may seem a bit trivial, but really this means a full month without the drive to Dana Farber, without navigating the monstrosity that is Brigham and Women's Hospital, without machines with mysterious acronyms whirring around me to take a peek inside, without slamming my body with slightly terrifying drugs. Granted, most of this month I will be getting my mobility and strength back from the previous eleven months of treatment, but I am still pretty excited. So excited, in fact, I tried to convince Tom to book a cruise that leaves this Saturday. Apparently my argument of "let's be impulsive" does not trump his "I have important things at work to do that I can't change, and I care about doing my job well" argument. But I digress...
At this point in my story, folks may have the reaction: "That's great! And?" It's a logical next question; there are a lot of concerns left to address. There is still cancer in me; will I have more surgery to remove the known spots? Will I have more chemo? What about that low-dose pill I keep talking about? They can do targeted radiation, have I asked about that? Will I be able to travel this summer, and go on that cruise I keep talking about? How will this affect my ability to go back to school in September? And - the question many people want to ask, but often don't because you don't want to make me answer it - what about having kids? Tom and I have those same questions, the same concerns. However, the nature of my cancer - and really, cancer in general - is that we don't know. So, the answer to all those questions is "I don't know."
For those of us who are planners (I say us because I am oh-so-included in this group), and like to think and prepare for the future - whether immediate or distant - "I don't know" is our worst enemy. So we defend ourselves against it as best we can. To help ourselves prepare, we will take all the information we know about a situation and play out scenarios. We will weigh the options, the potential outcomes; we will predict. But here's the problem: you can't predict cancer. Even my brilliant doctors and the best and brightest researchers cannot and will not be able to tell me what will happen in a couple months, where I'll be, and what my cancer will look like. Because of this, they are extremely careful with the words they use when we bring up some of the aforementioned questions. They know that in the face of uncertainty, most people yearn for some small suggestion, a little nugget of clarity to hold onto, to give them insight into what the future might hold. The danger arises when we take that tiny piece and run it through our situations and scenarios to create a prediction, and in our desperation for understanding, we twist this prediction into "fact". Just because we have an idea, a feeling, or a guess as to what might happen, doesn't mean we know.
So that is where I am now. I don't know what will be expected of me beyond this next month. But really, that's where I've been all along. Two months ago I didn't know I was going to do surgery on my left lung. Six months ago I didn't know I was going to need to have a port implanted in my chest. Nine months ago I didn't know when I was going to have knee surgery. And twelve months ago, I didn't even know I had cancer.
And if we're honest with ourselves, none of us really know what will be happening or where we'll be in a month from now; we can make a prediction based on the information we have at hand right now, but we don't really know. It's like planning an outdoor wedding in the spring in New England: you don't know whether it's going to be a beautiful sunny day, or windy and raining, but even if it snows (this is New England after all) you're not going to call off the wedding just because of the weather.* So you make contingency plans for whatever might be thrown at you, and you celebrate all the same. Which is how we've gotten through the past year, and how we will continue to get through the next. I am still hoping we can have kids some day, I am planning on going back to school next year, and I am excitedly looking up flights for summer travel. Because, dammit, I am going on that freakin' cruise.
(*For more on the accuracy of weather and/or climate prediction, please contact my father-in-law, or my brother-in-law, or my husband. Just... make sure to set aside some time.)
There are cruises leaving the following week too....
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