The Color of My Shirt

So, I’ll share this….

One of the hassles about living with a chronic form of leukemia is that it’s always there. It may lie quietly in remission showing no clinical evidence of being there…. but it is there.  You may feel strong and fit and like your old pre-cancerous self, but the monster is in there…lurking.

This time last year I was finishing up my 4^th and last round of chemo in response to a relapse that had gained momentum over the better part of 2016.  I assumed that after 4 rounds of some hard core drugs, that we wouldn’t be thinking about this for a little while. Or a long while. Yet last week I found myself sitting in the office of my favorite oncolodoc talking about the fact that my lymph nodes are again swelling and I’m having difficulty swallowing. The good news is that my blood work is great. But we now need to go through the exercise of conducting some additional testing to figure out what the rest of my lymphatic system looks like and to determine if any additional treatments step might be needed.

So 75% of me is excited to race the NYC marathon this weekend. But there’s a piece of me that’s a little bummed that we are having these conversations again. I had a CT scan last Friday and am seeing an Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist tomorrow for more talking and probing. I’ll keep ya’ll posted when I get some of these results. In the meantime, NYC… here I come for the 7^th time. (and 27^th marathon overall).

I have cancer. It doesn’t have me and it never will.