(This picture is from last summer. My hair has since grown back, but Sam loves this picture of us, says I ‘look good bald,’ so at least I know she’ll still love me when I’m an old, balding man)
I figured the results would come back clear. After all, my health has been just fine and I haven’t felt any lumps growing on my neck. But on the drive to Cancer Care of York, I did start entertaining those thoughts of ‘What if the cancer did come back?’ Now, I’m not a ‘what if’ question kind of guy. I heard a saying somewhere that ‘what if’ questions usually end negatively – for example, it’s rare you hear ‘What if I played the lottery and won a million dollars?’ or ‘What if I got the perfect job, got married and we lived happily ever after?’
But if the doctor did say I had cancer again, I wouldn’t have much worried about going through treatment a second time. I went through it last summer and handled it just fine, so I could do it over again if that’s what had to happen. Of course, there’s the worry about one of the chemo drugs, where if you have enough of the drug there comes a point where it could cause Leukemia. And there’s always the possibility of treatment being different a second time around, perhaps radiation, which would cause many side effects and likely lead to needing time off work to recuperate – something I was blessed with not having to do last year, as I think I missed maybe only a day or two of work (I suppose I could’ve milked that illness pay for all it’s worth, but at the time I was more about not letting the cancer slow down my life).
But really the true frustration would have come in the other areas of life, such as having to put plans on hold to buy a house and start trying to build a family, goals that Sam and I have been working toward for many years now – and goals which we hope God will allow us to reach in the near future.
Fortunately, we don’t have to worry about any of the above. This month was my six-month checkup since I finished chemo last August or September (can’t remember what date the final day of treatment was). It basically consists of me getting bloodwork done (having a vial of blood withdrawn from my arm) and then a couple days later following it up with a CT scan of my head and neck (since that’s where the cancer was this time last year). And then today going over the results of the blood work and scan with my oncologist, who gave us the good news that I’m still in the clear and everything looks good. He also informed us that I’ll be getting these six month check-ups in regularity for the next two to three years, at which point it would then go down to a once-a-year checkup for the rest of my life, the reason being that the type of cancer I had is one that could either never come back or could come back in a year, or three, or 10 or 20.
You might be thinking that’s a scary prospect to live with, but I know so many folks who unfortunately have it much worse. There’s an older gentleman at my church who still takes a chemo pill after earlier bouts with cancer. There’s a woman I know who battled breast cancer last year and is now on a chemo pill for the next 10 years of her life. There’s a boy at a local high school I know who is battling Leukemia and has to be on a chemo pill for the next three years of his life while also getting once-a-month treatments at Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital. There’s a seven-year-old boy I recently met who had a brain tumor removed and is taking medication in hopes to shrink the other two brain tumors. And there’s a former high school classmate of mine who has Multiple Sclerosis and Crohn’s disease, two medical conditions that aren’t cancerous but are not fun to deal with and ones that he’ll likely have to live with the rest of his life. So you can trust me when I say I’m not worrying about my health prospects.
Instead, Sam and I are continuing to work towards what is hopefully a bright future. One where we continue to grow in our walk together with God, in fellowship with our supportive community of church friends, and enjoy the comfort of knowing we are surrounded by such loving and caring family members.
(Sam and I having fun at the Cape May Zoo last summer)
johnwalkwithme 