Another hurdle to clear

Well, after speaking with a third doctor yesterday about the removal of some lymph nodes in my neck, I have decided to go ahead and do it. It will be next Tuesday morning June 2nd. My E.N.T. doctor communicated with the other two docs, and they all concluded that they would be happy with either choice I made. Leaving them in is perfectly O.K., so getting them removed is more of a piece of mind sort of thing for me. My goal is to get as close to zero percent chance of re-occurrence of this cancer that I can get to. Even this procedure might only slightly be doing that, but it is a chance that I am willing to take. The surgery takes about 2-3 hours and could require a one night stay in the hospital, depending on how I recover. It will leave about a 3 inch scar that will become less visible over the years. They will remove about 5 lymph nodes and they will be biopsied to check for cancer once removed. They do not suspect to find any, but you never know. To me, I want them out so they are not providing a refuge for any remaining cancer cells to reappear in the coming years. The chance of that is small I am told, but my piece of mind will of more important to me then anything right now. I would not wish my treatment for this on anyone. It has been a helluva ordeal these last 5 months, and I can not wait for it to become a distant memory. Besides, I have the time off from work and should do it while I've got the time to take care of it. It should take about a week to fully recover afterward, but I hope to get cleared and hopefully back to work(light duty) by July 13 th. That is my goal anyway.Hope all is well with everybody and I will keep on posting when I have something to at least post about.

The 21st on the 21st.

Life is for living, so I am ready to get back to doing some of it. Most of everybody knows by now, that my PET scan results came back clean on the 18th and that I am now officially cancer free. The phrase remission is also used in this situation as well, but I like cancer free better. I had a CT scan on Monday the 18th as well that will be used as base line for my future scans. I will be scanned every 3 months for a year to make sure there are no more cancer cells trying to build something in that same area again. I received those results today and it was mostly good news except that I do have a lymph node that did not shrink to under one centimeter as the doctors had hoped. The size of it is right on the cusp of requiring it to be removed surgically(it's size in 1.077). I meet with my E.N.T. next week to get his opinion as to whether I should go ahead and take it out and be done with it. My thought is that if there in any chance that taking it out will decrease the chances of the cancer reappearing, I will not hesitate removing it and schedule the surgery that same day. Leaving the node in may be leaving a additional place for cancer cells to grow and reproduce and I don't want that. It is not to complex a surgery and does not require a nights stay in the hospital. So I will let you know how that conversation goes next week. It has been a crazy week for Andrea and I. The news on Monday took a while to sink in for us and it was almost unreal. We called our families first and the tears of joy began to flow. After calling as many people we could get a hold of, I e-mailed other folks and even posted a status on facebook. I wanted to tell everyone I knew personally that I was cancer free, but soon realized that was going to be impossible. It was quite a relief at last to know that my life was not going to be cut short by this disease. So many thoughts and what ifs were going through my head at the time we got the news, that when the doctor finally came in to give us the news so calmly, I thought there was a chance he was joking with us. When I realized that this was not a good idea for him, I just did not know what to say. A sense of relief flowed through my body like nothing ever before. Andreas looked at me and said "see, I told you so". I personally thanked him for the good work he had done with my case, which I know was not a easy one for him. He tried to deflect the attention to others in a modest way, but I know that the radiation treatments he administered played a big part in riding me of this. I am thankful to all the people at Piedmont who worked to diligently over the last 5 months in getting me to this point in my recovery. I still have little way to go to get back to my normal self, but with there help and my loving family and friends, I know I will make it back to living the full life I did before all this happen.

Just the 20th post.

When I decided to write this blog about my treatments, I never thought I would only be at number 20 at this point in time. I was diagnosed just over 4 months ago and thought I would at least be to number 50 by now. I guess my tendency to over explain things with run on sentences has made each entry a little longer that it should have been. I could have keep them short at times, but I just had to much to say after a week or so had past, so I just keep on typing. Most of the time I was dealing with the side effects of the treatments and the desire to write anything just was not there. At times, I would not even mention something about my condition, because it just got to be a little to much.(i.e. I was in the hospital for a procedure three hours before my grandmothers memorial service.) Anyhow, all is well as we head into this final week before my PET scan on Friday. I was well enough to attend Andrea's sister graduation ceremony yesterday. Marcia Christine Gomez graduated from the Goizueta Business School at Emory and received her MBA degree. Her whole family is here to celebrate, and we are all very proud of her. She is now off to Columbus, Oh for work and we will miss her very much after the two years she had spent here. We got used to seeing her around, but I think Isabella will miss her the most. I will post number 21 next week with my test results. I wanted again to thank everybody again for their help over these last few months. Whither it was with a ride, giving food, having a conversation, sending prayers and or good thoughts my way, whatever it was, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. Maybe with all the help and support I have gotten, next weeks post can be the last one. We can then call it lucky number 21. I let you know then.