From Part VI
To start from the beginning, click here for Part I
When I had Hodgkin's Lymphoma, it helped to talk to other people to know I was not alone. When I went into remission, other people starting their journey were helped simply by talking to me. I was amazed by that. The internet is full of information. I hope in that cybersea, I can somehow be of help.
So now the experience seems to be getting behind me. It’s like ship passengers who see the land slowly disappearing behind them.
My checkups went first from six weeks to three months to six months and to a year. At first there’d be CT scans, then just chest x-rays. I can remember being nervous during those more frequent office visits. I remember that in other parts of my life there was the thought, “this is not as bad as it gets.” When I went into the doctor’s office, I was confronted with the idea of how bad things can get. It’s a humbling experience, actually.
I'd have a lot of false alarms. For some reason, many of these would occur right after the checkup. Regardless of the timing, they included a few things. The main one was weight. If I'd lose just a few pounds I'd start panicking. Today I accept such a weight loss gracefully like so many others. But at this period weight loss was still a cause of concern. There was one time where I thought my lymph nodes were acting up again. The doctor examines me and said that was "lumpy fat." He also informed me that I "flunked lymph nodes 101." So much for my intuition, at least for now.
On one of my follow-ups, I finally found out what remission means. We hear it all the time, and we probably each have our own ideas as to the definition. What my doctor said was remission means that they can't find any signs of the disease no matter what tests they run. I asked him, "so far so good?" He replied, "So far, excellent."
Rather harmless reminders of my then-recent past also occurred. John was really instrumental in some of these. Once, we were at a Suns game. I went into a loud, lengthy but benign coughing fit. John says, "Let's see, dry hacking cough...", as if he was starting to go through the symptoms. It was nice that I got to a point where we could joke about it.
The specter of recurrence is known in many a survivors’ circle as the sword of Damocles. For those not familiar with this story related by Cicero, Damocles was a brown-noser in the court of the Syracuse King Dionysus II. Damocles was just kissing up to Dionysus about how good it must be to be the king. The king offered to switch places with Damocles so that he could feel what it was like to be king. So Damocles is sitting on the king’s throne enjoying himself until he looks up and finds a sword hanging by a single strand of horsehair.
And that’s what every cancer survivor I’ve ever encountered feels: that sword suspended precariously over you. But meanwhile life goes on. And it did. I went back to school, having to go through the process of re-admission. And I finally graduated in the fall of 1992. My brother graduated the previous summer, and I was having a hard time keeping things in perspective because my younger brother wasn’t supposed to graduate ahead of me. But it wasn’t like I kept flunking classes, changing majors, or doing anything else that would sabotage the process. I was out for a whole year for pretty good reasons. It seems like such a silly thing to be upset over, but I still was young and had that young person’s perspective of "right now." Now I can say it didn’t make any difference when I graduated. The important things is that I made it to the point where I could graduate.
Time had been arranged with me regarding talking to some people who were just starting their way through Hodgkin’s. There was one young lady that I was talking to over the phone. She was not much younger than I and she was going through the tests. She just had her bone marrow biopsy (poor thing) where she was also told “a little pressure.” I wasn’t far removed from the whole experience, so I ended up relating many of the negative things about it. She said, “David, is there anything positive to come out of this.” I think I did say something positive, although I can’t remember what it was. But when we finished the conversation, she felt a lot better, and that came from knowing that she was not alone.
The second was a young man that had just started chemo. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but it was such a relief to him and his family. Maybe me just being there and being healthy helped.
Our family did three presentations: two in Georgia and one in Phoenix. It was entitled “Combating Cancer as a Family.” I would like to think we helped people. I could see in the audience as we were speaking that people were absorbing what was being said.
So like I said before, the visits went to one year, around December. I even made arrangements to come back and see my oncologist when I was living in New Jersey in 1996. But in 1997, I’d have to be seeing him a little early.
Part VIII: It’s back?
No comments:
Post a Comment