What's Normal Anyway?

Livin' life.

Each time a cancer treatment is complete, friends, family & acquaintances approach the subject with a "well at least that is over" attitude. We all go about our business as if that is it. Life will now go on as if cancer had never entered it, even though we know it has changed us tremendously, deeply. For those of us that it affected the most closely, we live differently - love more deeply, approach life more thoughtfully, with more respect than before, appreciate it more. We now try to prioritize daily activities even while taking responsibilities and deadlines seriously as if that little blip didn't happen, because our expectations must return to normal, too - gotta pay the bills. But in our minds we know we need to do more to take time with those we love, hold friendships more dear, draw lines in the sand more clearly than we did before because now we know just how precious life is, even if those that didn't walk every step with us don't know that yet - we know that any moment that cancer could return and take all of the important things away again. 

What so many people don't realize is that families who've battled cancer fear every cough, every sore throat, every odd feeling. We second guess the normalcy life may bring and place cancer in the forefront of our minds every time we have a funny feeling in the place that cancer took hold in the body. We especially allow "scanxiety" to take over our minds every three months, when a PET or CT scan glows red on the calendar. 

MD Anderson waiting room.

Because even if we lived life normally for a number months after Jason's radiation treatments - a treatment that seemed to work, a treatment that showed quite positive results and reduced the size and activity of the lymph node in his lung, a treatment that gave us almost 15 months of life without cancer treatments, when Jason's PET scans started to show increased activity we actually felt blindsided, kicked in the gut and undeniably heartbroken that cancer would dare return to this house, this family. 

Life was normal again for that time, almost a year and a half. Maddy had gone through one whole grade level and started another without a cancer treatment overshadowing her successes. We'd gone almost one whole school year where we had focused on her -she was loving second grade, we were working with a great allergist to desensitize her peanut allergy, helping her with reading, and just loving her up. Finally focusing on just her. Now, as we headed into the spring, here I was walking into talk to her teacher again to discuss her dad's medical issues at home. How many teachers would that be? How many times would it be that we had to discuss how she might be affected by her dad's medical treatments?

This time, Jason had another spot on his lung. A lymph node again was burning brightly in his left lung, way up in a spot that was probably not, according to his oncologist, in an operative position. She allowed us, though, to begin talking to a surgeon in the area to get his opinion, which we did. And immediately after that, we sought out a second opinion because we did not like the answer we heard nor the options we had been given - to simply live with cancer was not something we wanted for Jason and given that at a very young 35 years old with a 7 year old at home the risks were too great. 

View from the top.

So, we headed to U of M and Dr. Chin for his opinion, where we saw his PA and nurse practitioner who explained to us the procedure - Jason's history & scans would be considered and information would all be given to Dr. Chin and their team would present Jason's case to the tumor board, who'd then determine if Jason would be a good candidate for surgery. At this point we all knew that Jason's tumor was in an odd position, close to the center of his lung, and in order to remove the tumor, the entire left lung would need to be removed. And we were hoping for surgery.

Jason was three months into his third round of chemotherapy, he'd had radiation, he'd already had two lung surgeries, and had started out this whole nightmare with colon surgery. We knew that even if the chemo shrunk the new tumor, there was a very good possibility that it could spread from this lymph node if it hadn't already. He was responding very well from the current chemotherapy - the tumor had shrunk some, but as we soon found out, tumors respond the best in the first three months of chemo, more shrinkage wasn't likely. Surgery was the best option. 

Weeks later, Dr. Chin's PA called to let us know that though he wasn't opposed to surgery entirely, he didn't feel he should do the surgery, and recommended we see who he considered the best - Dr. Swisher out of MD Anderson. From that, our local oncologist got the ball rolling, and by July we were sitting in Dr. Swisher's office hoping and praying he'd take Jason on as a patient. 

Removing this lung would be the chance we had at removing this cancer from our lives forever. Our opportunity for getting normal life back. We learned, of course, that for us, this life is our normal for now. And living with cancer may just be what we have to do for a while, but we also know we sure as hell don't plan to do it forever.