Survivor. For the majority of my life, this word has had a singular meaning. That meaning, of course, was a reality television show that aired prime-time on CBS. Now, as I near my last two weeks of radiation and thus my last two weeks of treatment all together, it acquires a much different and significantly more important meaning to me. For the last seven months, I have been battling for my life. Though that reality never actually hit me while undergoing chemo, its true. For some strange reason, starting from my diagnosis, I never thought of my condition as truly "life-threatening" or even under the scope of "cancer" really. I mean, yes, I understood that I was an oncology patient and I went through the motions of a "cancer patient" and there were moments that I wallowed in the severe isolation of my condition, but even then, there seemed to be something synthetic about it, like it was all simply a bad dream that I was taking far too long to wake up from. In any case, it was real and it most definitely happened and unsurprisingly, I am a new person because of it.
For those whom I have been unable to contact directly, I finished chemotherapy one month ago. There was a slight hiccup in the form of some lung toxicity thanks to one of my chemo drugs, bleomycin, but nothing a little prednisone couldn't resolve. My final PET scan came back with pretty promising results. There was a small area of my initial tumor that was still slightly positive, but not by much. If I may express it in unnecessary medical vernacular- not that these numbers mean anything to most of you- the tumor had a Standard Uptake Value of 2.3 while the surrounding mediastinal blood pool was about 2.0. (For reference, the initial uptake was about 18) In layman's terms: really close. Next step: radiation. I was told early on that I would only need 3 weeks, but after in depth review of my case and risk factors, another week was added for precautionary measures. I had the little mask made and got my little dot tattoos done and I've currently chugged through 2 weeks of my 4 week dose. Lying there for 10 minutes everyday isn't nearly as bad as getting 4 hours worth of chemo and so having an additional week added to my dose didn't really upset me.
I realize its been a while since I've written a blog post, but quite honestly, I've been busy living my life. I finally have stable enough of a white blood count to go to the movies and eat sushi and go to public places. This pleases me immensely - especially the sushi part. The idea of transitioning to being a "cancer survivor" is somewhat daunting but simultaneously exciting. Finally returning to Vassar really excites me especially since the concept of school seemed so far away for so much of treatment. My hair is growing back pretty quickly and quite thickly...although the same cannot be said about my eyebrows...I guess they are just a little shy. I'm working on losing some of my "steroid puffiness" and I'm really enjoying being able to exercise and run and jump and be a teenager again.
Am I scared of what comes next? Sure. Am I scared of a relapse? HELL yes. I think a lot of times people equate beating cancer to beating fear which is definitely untrue, but I do think that facing cancer opens up a receptor to understanding fear and dealing with it instead of running away. Cancer took a lot away from me, but it also brought me a lot too. I became closer with my family, I found ways to express myself, I learned a lot about relating to others, and I found a new academic passion. Jumping from having doctors and family members and friends supporting you 24/7 to being on your own again is definitely daunting, but I am excited to continue on my journey as a newly crowned survivor. I'm a survivor. I get to say that now and not sound like I'm ironically quoting Destiny's Child. Well, here's to whats to come...whatever it may be.
