Most of the writing I publish in my Blog has a process. I work on something, edit it, put it down for a few hours, pick it back up, tweak it a little, find an image that fits with it, copy and paste from Word to the Website, give it one last review and hit publish. Sometimes this process takes a day. Sometimes it happens over a couple of days. This one is different. It’s different because the thoughts are in my head, and I feel like they need to be published with an urgent deadline.
The other thing that’s different about this entry is that I titled it before I started writing. Most of the time that happens after it’s done. Not today. The title “Being Positive” is important today. Yes, it ties into attitude as that has been my mantra since I started writing about the situation last year. But there’s another positive we’re dealing with right now. And it’s not the kind you want.
At the beginning of the month, we saw the oncologist and had our typical visit with one big change. She had moved to a new building. Same organization, just a new facility a few miles up the road. It was about the same distance for us, so it was not an issue going to the new location. Everything else about the appointment was standard – they took blood for the normal tests, we had our visit, talked about the next steps, I got a shot that I receive every four weeks and we were on our way. The one difference, and I can only assume that it has to do with the move, is that my test results never showed up in my online portal. I didn’t think a whole lot about it, but one of the tests was a Signatera Test. That’s the one that looks for circulating tumor DNA in my blood. I’ve had several going back to July of last year and all have come back negative. Last Friday, I sent the doctor an email stating that nothing from my visit with her at the new facility had shown up in the portal and that we were curious about the results of the Signatera. Later that afternoon we got a call from a nurse. She said she was asked to call by the doctor to go over results. She started with the basic bloodwork – some of which I had already seen because I could see it in the lab portal. I finally said the Signatera was the one we were interested in. She then said that because she is not the doctor that she cannot try to explain the results or get into values or anything like that. She could only tell us that it came back positive.
To be clear, we have no idea what that means. It might not mean much. But with all the others being negative, this is the one time you probably don’t want to be positive.
So here is where we are at. As I write this, it’s about 5:00pm on Tuesday May 28th. Last Friday the 24th is when we got the call (late in the afternoon). Our next appointment with the oncologist is tomorrow morning. Additionally, I was already scheduled for and had a PET scan this morning. If you’re wondering why I haven’t been on the phone trying to get more answers, it’s because any information before tomorrow morning would be incomplete anyway, so there was no point to make anyone stop what they were doing to answer my questions when they would be better answered at the scheduled appointment anyway.
So right now, at this moment that I’m writing, I’ve been in a limbo for around 4 days. And there are a lot of things going through my head. The initial feelings were disappointment, but they were quickly replaced by reminders that we’ve been through this already and that we can handle anything thrown at us. We are reminded that this was never supposed to be easy and up until this point, it hasn’t been overly difficult. My words to my wife were that there is only so much that I have control over, but I will do what I can to control it. So, the mindset is still (and always will be) positive.
When we received the cancer diagnosis last year, the world kind of stopped. I’ve mentioned that I’m self-employed, and I was able to do basically the bare minimum to keep things moving along. I had put moving in the direction that I wanted to take my career on hold. For the past few months, I’ve been ramping that back up and the thoughts cross my mind that we might be gearing up to fight again and the things that I’m working toward may have to be paused again.
So that’s why I’m writing this entry right now and publishing it today. Because I’m making promises to myself, and my family while we’re in this state of uncertainty. We’ll call this part, “No Matter What.”
No matter what we find out tomorrow, I will continue to do the things that I know can have a positive effect on my health and fighting cancer. That includes diet, supplementation, treatments prescribed by my doctor and more.
No matter what, I will continue to exercise to the extent that my strength allows.
No matter what, I will continue working towards my professional goals of coaching, writing and speaking. I allowed it to slow me down last year. Looking back, there was more that I could have done, but I didn’t. No matter what, I will do what I am capable of doing and not allow excuses to slow me down.
No matter what, I will live for the moment and be grateful for all that I have.
No matter what, I will never give up.
It’s important to me to make these statements and make them public. I have to get this out there before the appointment tomorrow morning. At that point, we could find out that there’s not much to worry about. In that case, I move forward the best I can according to what I just wrote. We could also find out that treatment, including chemotherapy, is necessary to resume. If that’s the case, I move forward the best I can according to what I just wrote. We could find out things are much worse. If that’s the case, I move forward the best I can according to what I just wrote.
To Be Continued…
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