December 2020: What a year

December 27, 2020

This is it, this is the week where it all began. How on earth did 365 days come and go already? How can it be that last week, last year I thought I was "invincible"? On December 19, 2019 I was fine and on Dec 20 I was not.  In 365 days I got sick, was hospitalized twice for critical sodium levels, made two trips to MN, had surgery, chemo, radiation and have completed two rounds of post treatment scans. The wise old Winnie the Pooh says that "Life is a journey to be experienced, not a problem to be solved" so over the last six months of these 365 days I focused a lot of my emotions on my this journey we call life.  I returned to work, regained my strength, and completed three virtual races (two 8K’s and a 10k). I am back to living as normal of a life as I can as a cancer warrior. We treasure every day as a gift.

Going back to work was healing in a lot of ways.
I have been humbled by the number of patients that were genuinely concerned and happy to see me in the office again. It was a little funny how many people I ended up having to comfort while I filled them in on all I went through. (Seriously, I had to hand a couple people tissues. LOL). It was a terribly slow return, both mentally and physically. My schedule was a little wonky at first since I would tire very easily. I am now up to about 18 hours a week which is just a few shy of where I was last year. My mental alertness is improved, and I relate that to getting a lot of rest and adequate exercise. Exercising has continued to be therapeutic. My full-time job is keeping this cancer away so I run about 20 miles a week and swim a mile twice a week. Exercising has helped my aches and pains as well as improve my stamina, heart health, emotional health, and keeps my lungs fully oxygenated and as healthy as possible so no new cancer cells can find a home in them.  

December held a lot of emotions. There is no book on how to process a year like we have had. Just putting up decorations and trying to remember certain things from last Christmas was a struggle. There are certainly personal items and Christmas decorations that were left behind on the cruise ship. I did not even know I was sick before vacation and yet there is a lot I can not easily recall the days prior to leaving. Makes me wonder just how low my sodium was before boarding the ship?  The reality of it all comes in waves and December was like a tsunami! There were many days I thought to myself "I need to sit down and write about this", because despite the array of emotions I was feeling I knew I would want to look back and remember them. ......But December is a busy time of year and now that I have the opportunity to finally put it all down on paper and out of my head- I am at a loss. (I suppose it is like childbirth.......Even though it hurts going through it, you kind of forget about it when its over.) 

As the “anniversary” week approached, I also had my six-month post treatment scans. Yup! Six month The first set of scans were in September and consisted of a dotatate PET and MRI of the brain. The PET took a very long time. It was scheduled at the cancer center in Norfolk at 7am, the dotatate was coming from Chesapeake (about 30 minutes away) and could not be mixed and transferred to the imaging center until I was checked in. The scan cannot be done until an hour after being injected with it, and the images take about 25 minutes. So the PET alone took close to 3 hours. The nuclear medicine staff were all surprised to administer dotatate, and it was a learning experience for some of the students that were there. The MRI of the brain was also done that day which was just a typical scan with and without contrast. The results were sent to my local oncologist within a couple days but it took another week or so to get Mayo the images, have radiology look at them, get the reports to Dr Oliver (radiation oncologist) and set up a video follow up. All was clear! My bloodwork was good too with the exception of my Ferritin level (Iron stores). Turns out chemo and radiation depleted my storage of iron so in October I had a single iron infusion with no complications (YEAH). The burst of iron was also helpful for the 10K I ran the following week. The second round of scans did not include the PET but rather a CT of the chest and MRI of the brain and they were both normal again. A far as scans go……2 down, 18 to go! I spoke with Dr Oliver just before Christmas and he thinks that maybe after 2 years we can do MRI of the brain every 6 months instead of every 3 which would be great! Right now I do not have a date for the third round but it is supposed to be mid March and will include another PET (if approved by insurance). In the mean time, tomorrow is a New Year! I saw a gif that said "The look on my face when I realized that the next year is literally 2020 WON!" All I can say is, No it did not!