A little story

How does one celebrate getting their life back? How can you even start to thank those who gave it back to you? I guess exactly how we did it, by saying "Thank you."

September 16th 2004 has gone down into the books as one of our longest days. After spending the prior 11 days wondering how Dion would raise the girls alone, wondering what would be nice for a funeral, desperately searching for my life insurance policy, calling some friends and asking them to help Dion out any way they could when I was gone, talking to my best friend knowing that she meant every word that she said when she said she would tell my girls all about me and they'd know me through her. It is almost surreal. We were off to Mayo to get a second opinion, and we had decided that maybe they could treat me with different drugs than my then current doctor was going to do. That's how we mentally prepared for that trip to Rochester.

To say that there was a lot of waiting is an understatement. It seemed like no matter where we went we had to wait and wait and wait, but I remember thinking to myself, "If it means that I could have a different outcome, I will wait and wait and wait." I will never forgot my first visit with my oncologist. I remember thinking that he was pretty young and he had a sparkle in his eye. And I loved that at one point when he was on the computer he was sitting on his legs. There he was, an oncologist, typing at the computer looking like a little kid. I liked him from the moment I met him. Then he said something that made me doubt him. He looked right at us and said, "I just don't think it's cancer. I've seen all of your scans and read your files and I am not convinced that it is cancer." Dion and I looked at each other. What do you say at this moment? We were told that I would have to do more chemo and if that worked I had 3-5 years. If chemo didn't work, I had 6 months to a year to live. How could he sit there and say that he didn't think it was cancer when that is all that we knew? He advised us to meet with the Thorasic surgeon and go from there.

We did. We sat in that office until about 7 PM that night. He told us the only way to be sure that it was not cancer was to do a medialstynal biopsy. I asked when he could do that, and he said tomorrow, I said, "Do it." Basically it was a biopsy of the chest nodes that my previous oncologist said had cancer in them. A simple incision at the base of the neck, sore, yes, but nothing I couldn't handle.

We called family and told them that we were staying another night in Rochester to have this test done, and what my oncologist had said. You could feel the prayers that night. We went to St Mary's bright and early and ended up waiting until I think after 5 PM before I even went into the O.R. It's amazing how patient a person can be when it means life or death. I remember the tube being pulled out of my throat, and then I remember being told it was negative. No cancer. I remember crying, and then falling back asleep. Dion had the job of calling family and some friends to tell them the news. I can't being to imagine how he felt doing that job. That was September 17th, 2004.

Now here we are a year later. I thought a lot of my new oncologist on Saturday. I thought about how I have been given another chance, how he was right on the mark when he said that he didn't believe it was cancer. It was in fact, an inflammatory disease called Sarcoidosis. Within 3 months my lungs and chest nodes had returned to normal, along with my tumor markers.

Life can be a pretty wild ride. You have to hold on tight so you don't fall off or hurt yourself in the process. I am still hanging on, and no matter what is thrown my way, I will just keep tightening that grip.

Happy 1st 2nd Chance Anniversary to me.