Today I finished up my last radiation appointment. I am so happy to be done with it, but sad that I wont be seeing the people that have become such a huge part of my life for the past two months. I feel almost bad for the radiation therapists I see every day. Normally I would say that I am sad for them because they dont get to see my sparkling smile every day, but they are happy when they dont have to see us patients anymore. It means that we are done and moving on to the next phase of our lives. I am guessing that outside of probably only me, people are not usually happy to see the radiation therapists and are usually not in a good mood to get therapy. That has to be hard on these people because they are doing Gods work in my opinion. They are not there to hurt us, but to help cure us, and they have to watch people who sometimes come in looking normal in the beginning, degrade in front of them as they go through therapy. It is sad, because people the people that I worked with at Landmark Cancer Center of Northwest Arkansas could not have been any better at what they do, or nicer to work with. I can only imagine how hard it must be on them mentally sometimes, and I hope they know that even though a lot of people dont say it, we are all thankful for what they do to help us get better. They invest their time and vocation into us in the hopes that they are giving us a longer life, and in my circumstance they also helped to keep my spirits up daily. On my last appointment today they even got me pastries for me and my family from Ricks Bakery and I got a certificate of completion. Every bit of those things were handed to me with a smile and heartfelt care that I live a long good life. You cannot ask for any more than that. So as of today my neck is cancer free. I am not going to jinx myself right now and say that I am cancer free, because that might be putting the cart before the horse. I played a somewhat high level of baseball at one point in my life, and there is no one more superstitious than a baseball player. So with that being said I still have one more test I have to do. I have to have a node in my lung biopsied. It did show non-cancerous in my PET CT scan, but the doctors want to get at it, and test it to make sure. So I just dont want to jinx that. Either way I am excited because I finally get to figure out what my new normal is. I have been in surgery, and then recovering, then radiation, and now I just get to figure out what my body feels like and build it back up again to be better than it was before. Like the $6 Million Dollar Man I am hoping to be Better than I was before. Better...stronger...faster. I have been asked if I am going to keep up on my blog since I am done with radiation. I still have a couple things that I am working on that I want to share, and honestly I am not done with my journey. This is not something that I can just put behind me and move on like it never happened. I have a recurring cancer that kills almost everyone who has it over time. Therefore now that I have beaten the beast back my main goal is to make sure that it doesnt come back. There is no known cause for Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma and the best info I can get on it so far is from the rare disease database and that is still almost nothing because I dont have the squamous cell version. True ACC is extremely rare, with only a few cases reported in the medical literature. Fanfriggingtastic, thanks for the help. So everything that is knows to cause cancer (bad diet, stress, being overweight, not enough exercise) I need to work on and with that comes total life changes. Not to say that I am going to be great at it, but I am going to do my damnedest to live a long healthy life. I want it really bad. It is also not like I can just switch off this time period like it never happened. As I have said in the past cancer is a thief that steals pieces of you. In my case it stole in the form of my throat and my voice. I didnt have a tracheotomy, I had a laryngectomy. My throat will never heal, I will never breath out of my nose or mouth ever again. I will always have my vocal prosthetic that gets switched out about every six months. I will always have medical supplies showing up to my house regularly and I will have to see doctors on a pretty regular basis as well, for scans and maintenance. My life is going to come with challenges, but I am more than up for the task. I have a support system second to none in my family and friends and I wish I could thank each and every person that has helped me and my family during this time. I can only promise you all that I will make a difference somehow in this world and pay it all forward in some way. Have a great one my friends and never stop fighting for a better life.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 22:35:02 +0000
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