Some good news

Cacti at Missouri Botanical Garden, charcoal sketch by me

I saw my oncologist this week for a PET scan three months post-treatment. The treatment consisted of six weeks of chemotherapy (cisplatin) and seven weeks of radiotherapy (and before that, two major surgeries). I still have immunotherapy (every three weeks). I was to be honest very worried, as the tumor site is hurting a lot. I've gone back to taking pain medications, powerful opioids, and I feel like a 19th-century romantic on laudanum. Maybe I should try to write poetry.

Anyway, I would hear if treatment was working and was, to be honest, terrified. My oncologist, however, gave good news, or rather, the next best news after “cancer free". Previous PET scan had indicated the cancer had spread to more distant lymph nodes, which makes it hard to cure (stage 4)—retrospective odds for my type of cancer show about 20% survival rates over 5 years, so not good. But the treatment seems to have resolved this spread, so my prognosis is considerably improved (over 50%, would go even more up if the secondary tumor can finally be defeated). The tumor has grown and causes me pain, but it's a lot less virulent (from severe to moderate) so that is also good news. Now we have to wait and see if immunotherapy can shrink it.

At his office, I breathed such a sigh of relief, and I still feel a big sense of relief today. But, I'm also still in considerable pain. It could be an inflammatory response to the immunotherapy (which would be good); we don't know. The idea that I have a much better chance of beating this cancer, or at the very least, of living several more years, is very inspiring and appealing to me. I wrote a bit at my book proposal this morning (first time in a long time), because I have good hopes now the book will eventually appear.

I don't have much philosophical to add. Cancer really sucks and thinking of death is very exhausting and limiting. I am hoping I will be well enough to teach this spring (online). It would be an intro course, and I'm toying with the idea to put in a unit about death. I've thought a lot about it, but I am not sure if I have any more insights to give to this very difficult, mysterious topic that we so desperately avoid (even as it stares us in the face). But maybe, because my students will all be confronted with it, it's still an important topic to discuss.