"Today is the Day"
Mel Fisher, the famous treasure hunter, used to greet each day with the phrase, "Today's the day"; and that is exactly how I feel! You see, yesterday was THE DAY when I FINALLY got treatment for the 11 x 8 x 11 mm tumor that had planted itself on my cerebellum. We ZAPPED it so good with Cyberknife that it only took ONE 30-min session. The waiting to get there took 6 wk -- and remember, brain mets has a prognosis of 4-6 wk without treatment. It gets to be a real white-knuckler story around here sometimes!
Cyberknife reminds me of the Pixar lamp.I love it; it makes it possible for me to forgo brain surgery!
This is what the doctor and the physicist are doingwhile I'm lying on the table behind thick doors.
I get to lie on the table and look at the pretty sky ceiling above me...sure beats brain surgery!
And boy, I could tell those invisible beams were stirring up a hornet's nest in there -- the entire time I was under the mask pinned to the table, my IAC was hurtin'! It eased up afterwards, though.
They had some good news for me, too: the specialized MRI done 3 wk after the brain MRI that revealed the new spot shows that it has not increased in size; and the spot on my spinal cord that we zapped last November is continuing to decrease even more. So we continue this "whack-a-mole" approach, but it's working.
I was SO HAPPY to have gotten treatment that we went to our favorite restaurant, Asian Garden in Duarte, for a celebratory meal. Then we headed to Glendora to Herbalenium to pick up more concentrated brown seaweed to get me through the next 6-8 wk before more imaging. I also did an ionic foot bath while I was there; it was the worst the water has ever been. (That stuff still boggles my mind; even if you attribute the colors to mineral changes, where the HECK does all the particulate matter come from? The foot bath looked like a very stagnant pond when my session was done.)
Since it was not much after noon and we still had hours of daylight, I convinced my chauffeur to drive up to the top of Mt. San Antonio (Baldy to we OC'ans) so we could "get high" hikingforhope style!
Mt. San Antonio.
End of the road.Of course, I got out and walked at the end of the road...I can't wait to start feeling better and reclaiming my life! But it's still too early to push; I've got 6 wk of recovery ahead of me. So I picked out a tree up-slope on a tractor trail and walked to it before turning around. That was enough!
Tractor trail heading UP.
This tree and no further!
You can hardly tell the grade in this pic! Sheesh!
Cool Upland ruins we saw on the way home.Anyone know about the history?
I have been stuck on the sofa, waiting for treatment and afraid to push my body too hard until I get treated, but guess what? TODAY IS THE DAY that the rebuilding begins!
And not only that, TODAY IS THE DAY that I had only a 5% prognosis of ever seeing...five years ago today, my doctor delivered the news that the cancer was back and spread throughout my body. I wasn't expected to make 6 months back then, let alone 5 years. And for those of you keeping count, this is THE FOURTH TIME I have fought metastasis to the brain!
The MRIs still show the LM on the Vth cerebral nerve, but it remains stable and untreatable with Cyberknife in its current diffuse state. Meanwhile, each day that I live is a day closer to the cure, like this recent news:
I hope, like me, you will greet each day with the certainty that one of these days will be THE day...the day my hearing is restored, the day my face is restored, the day when the cure is known to us, the day when we know we never ever have to fight cancer again.
2 comments:
well i am really really happy for u.. i pray for u and my mom everyday and check ur blog almost everyday in the hope that you have posted any updates on ur health. i am really inspired by u and u give me the hope that my mom might survive too with these ugly brain and leptomeningeal mets. its been 4 years since her stage 4 diagnosis and almost a year since LM mets..i wanted to ask u that do u still get methotrexate treatment and wht other chemotherapies or treatments u r having now or have had for brain and LM mets? are you hormone positive or negative?
No, I don't get MTX; I use a monoclonal antibody. Hormone negative.
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