About six weeks ago, I didn’t think I would be able to live out the year. I learned that I have at least two more metastases in my cerebellum, in the balance & coordination area.
Then I suddenly began throwing up and couldn’t stand upright. I drove to the oncologist for rehydration, and they wheeled me right over to the hospital and checked me in.
There is no cancer showing up in my body now, only in my cerebellum. It’s unusual enough that the med team was concerned it was a new kind of cancer. They are reluctant to go through healthy brain tissue to take a biopsy, but a biopsy is the only way they’ll know what kind of cancer it really is. Because of the risks to my motor skills (vroom vroom), they are going on the data they have, which is of course colon cancer.
It seems that a tumor or else some edemic necrotic tissue (from the gamma knife surgery last year) was pressing on my cerebellum, causing the symptoms. After four days in the hospital and a high dose of steroids to reduce the swelling, I was released. Hurray.
I’ll have another brain MRI this Thursday, then meet with a second neurosurgeon the following Tuesday. After that, I will have some kind of brain procedure (probably gamma knife again) to kill the tumors.
I’ll get some time to recover from that, which may involve some PT, and then I’ll be starting some chemo. It won’t be hard and heavy chemo, as I had before (twelve rounds every two weeks for six months). This time I’ll have a couple of rounds, then be allowed to recuperate, then a couple more rounds, etc. — more sporadic. The med team thinks the cancer is lurking in my body on a microscopic (i.e., non-tumor-size) level, and they want to go after it.
All this recent news made my husband, children, and me very somber at first. I wasn’t weepy, but of course none of this is good news.
But we are working through it and treasuring our time together, and now I am feeling remarkably peaceful about it all. I am painting, cooking new recipes, hiking, doing yoga again, enjoying my family and three loving pets, and I’m even doing a little knitting, now that our golden is a year old and not such a terror with yarn.
Regardless of our circumstances, there is always so much to be grateful for. I have wept many tears on our back patio, which is sort of a sanctuary for me. But recently just standing out there and taking some deep breaths of fresh, crisp winter air feels healing to me. It seems to clear my head and give me hope.
