My Survivalship Story Revised- and an Update

An update about this week

[A lot has happened this month. My last post discussed the timing of my needed urgent surgery. I was told that because of insurance reasons I would not know until the day before the surgery but they would go ahead and schedule it. So the surgery was scheduled for Tuesday, December 29th. Because insurance offices were already closed for the holidays, we would not know officially until Monday December 28th if it would be approved (even though it’s an urgent surgery I supposed their protocols require attention since the surgery would be before the end-of-the year). Well, I got the call and the surgery is on for tomorrow. The next time you see a picture of me, my hair will be a lot shorter. Tomorrow at 9am I report to the hospital for another craniotomy to remove the dead brain tissue. It’s been a difficult month and the anticipation leading up to this surgery has been brutal. The drugs I’ve been on to keep my brain swelling in check have worked well for my brain but my body is ready to surrender to the needed recovery that will have to take place over this next week. There has been a lot of anxiety, shaking, crying, and insomnia. It’s been hard to bare that during Christmas. I’m looking forward to getting this done, getting back home and recovering and starting to feel like myself again.

Paige is going into full caretaker-mode and will be my visitor during my hospital stay. We still don’t know yet how that fully works and won’t until tomorrow. I have some family driving up to see me but with COVID protocols it’s all a mess so we all just have to wait and see. It’s a lot of impossible situations.

Thank you all for your support and prayers. If you’d like to do something for me or my family during my recovery, please wait until I get home from the hospital and I’ll get the word out about what can be done (meals, etc.).

I plan on blogging during my recovery. From what I understand, my limitations and restrictions will be the same as before. So we’ll just have to see.]

Some news about the direction of the blog

I haven’t posted in a while. It’s not because I haven’t been writing. It’s because since the seizure I’ve been thinking a great deal about what I want this blog to be and some goals that I have in mind.

After a lot of thought and discussion with Paige, the wisest one in the household, I’d like this blog to start featuring survivialship stories. I believe there is a critical need for positive survival stories for those facing cancer or those who have a loved one facing cancer. I sought those out when I underwent my treatment and I clung to those stories like rosary beads. Even with my limited reintroduction to the world, I’ve heard other success stories in my own community and want to share them. I don’t want to focus on figures that can take private jets to the most advanced medical centers in the world for the best treatment. Rather, I’d like to focus on people and families you and I would come across in our daily lives. And there are so many stories. Cancer is not going away. But we keep surviving and it’s import to keep reminding ourselves of that. Our stories not only contain the heavy pathos and revelations that only those who’ve stood next to death can feel. But these stories contain details– details that may help you, or someone in your family who may be affected by cancer. If there’s even a chance that it helps only one person then let’s keep sharing these stories.

While thinking about where to start it became starkly apparent that my story had many holes in it to fill in. If you’ve read my blog since I start writing it in May 2019 and you read my original ‘My Journey’ page, then you read my experiences right up to the point of my first PET scan. I did not even yet know where the cancer was in my body and what my treatment might be. In the last couple months I’ve been working to fill in the gaps of the story. To tell my survivorship story from going to work as usual on a Thursday morning, discovering a malignant brain tumor later that day, to finding my tests results in late August that my brain and body were clear of any detectable signs of cancer. So it the most natural place to start was my own story.
I know many of you read the original post. This one is much longer and contains a lot more detail– but I promise you, this will help you or someone you love that has to deal with cancer and that’s going to happen to you at some point in your life. I’m sorry, but that is a reality.

And to be clear, my struggles are not over. But like chapters in a book, the revised Stage 4 Cancer Survivalship Story page is the story of my cancer survivialship, not my struggles with immunotherapy-induced hepatitis or my ongoing struggles with necrosis. But at 26,000+ words I had to break somewhere. And, many struggles with cancer end up being with side-effects of the treatment itself, which I feel deserves its own attention due to the detailed nature of what goes on in our mysterious bodies after we receive these amazing but still yet still nebulous treatments. As an expert melanoma doctor at Duke Cancer Center once said, “Sometimes, I fee like we’re still in the dark ages with these treatments.”

So here is my story again. It’s Rebooted. There are more details. Some dates have been corrected. Some original memories righted. Memory is a funny thing. I wrote what I remembered but it’s only after talking to family and reflecting on it more that I could recall that what I wrote was not actually what happened sometimes. For instance, my family wasn’t there in the ICU to see me wake up post-surgery. That’s crazy. Family wouldn’t be allowed in until I was awake, conscious, and stable. My mother didn’t leave my side while I dreamed I was dying and had an out-of-body experience. She was sitting right next to me because no one else was with me at the time. So, this revising my own survivorship story let me reflect on those details, and piece together our insane calendar of events that was the summer of 2019.

I’m eager to start gather more survivorship stories. Unfortunately, I think I’ll have to wait until I can sit next to someone at a restaurant and talk about their experience with cancer intimately for multiple hours. COVID times are not the best of times for cancer close talk.

I still intend to publish posts about my spiritual ponderings. I’ve added some categories (as if that matters to readers) for book reviews, reflections, survivorship stories, and updates. I still have yet to decide what to do with the “updates” section. I’d like to keep everyone who wants to be up-to-date with my health but I don’t want to overwhelm anyone or have redundant posts. Please reply with a suggestions.