Right Here Right Now

I've had lots of scans and I have received lots of scan results. 

Only two of those results have been bad news. The first ultrasound, which told me I had multiple heterogenous masses - not good - and the first MRI which confirmed they were metastases. 

After that, every scan result was positive.

The first full-body CT told me that I had bowel cancer, not pancreatic/ovarian/oesophageal/bad bad bad cancer, and I had no metastases anywhere else.
The next CT/MRI combo showed that I had responded well to the chemo.
The PET scan after my SIRT showed that my liver disease was now about a fifth of what it had been.
The scan after my bowel resection showed that I no longer had any cancer in my bowel, and still just the same few bits in my liver. 
The MRI ten days after my liver resection showed that the liver had already started regenerating and giving me pristine clean cancer-free livery bits. 
The scan after my next chemo showed just the last, stubborn, calcified, probable-cancer. 

The scans I had ten days ago showed the same little probable-cancer bit, but all fuzzy from the stereotactic radiotherapy, and realistically downgraded to possible-cancer, or maybe even zapped-out-of-its-box-cancer.

No new disease, no metastases anywhere else, nothing untoward at all really. Just my last little remnant that could be dead, could be half-breathing. It is quietly lying there, either about to expire or about to make one last gasp attempt to make a name for itself.
(I don't think it has it in it. I think it's a goner).

So I have decided that this result, out of all of them, is the Good News one. This is the one that merited the bottle of fizz. (And wine. And beer. Ouch my head).

What does it really mean? 

It means that right here, right now, I am as close to cancer-free as I have been in thirty months. 

It means that for the moment, there is no active plan for more chemotherapy or radiotherapy or immunotherapy or let's-chance-this-it-might-work-(if it doesn't kill her first)-therapy.

I can tootle off about my business, all like "Who? Me? Cancer?" for a while. 


Yay!!

Another Oasis of Giggles in the Desert of "Don't!"

We have completed another very successful girls' weekend away in a beautiful European city. We ate every hour or so, drank tropical drinks out of hand-thrown pottery cups, bumped into old classmates (cos, like, we're Irish) and travelled on the train without a valid ticket (wild, we were. Wild.)

The recharging is vital. The reclaiming of the sense of self. 

The conversations that don't include "NO CYCLING IN THE HOUSE!" or "I think it's the uriney traction I have, Doctor."

The last few weeks have been hard on the heart. Two funerals, two of the world's best men no longer with us. True gentle men. Warm and kind. There really aren't that many people in the world who are truly, simply, good. They were brothers, and it made me think that their parents must have been truly good too. I'm sorry I never met my grandparents. I hope the strong vein of humanity that runs through their children will run through their grandchildren and great-grandchildren too.

There are scans and all that to come this week. I'd rather suck old socks.