Cancer notes...how things are going...
... occasional letters from Myron Street

History...

Spring, 1999: Diagnosis, prostate cancer; surgery.
Spring, 2001: Prostate cancer came back; radiation therapy. Subsequently, the PSA was immeasurable.

January, 2010: Diagnosis of lung cancer, not small cell; surgery not be an option.

Spring, 2010: Radiation and chemo therapy. The last chemo treatments were in April.

Spring, 2011: Another CT scan, no sign of cancer! Hooray!

Oct. 13, 2011, CT scan showed no difference from the last one. Meaning, no tumor showed in my lungs. This is the best possible result we could have hoped for. Maybe I'll buy a few green bananas now and then.

May 13, 2012, CT scan showed no difference from the last one. Again, that's good news. I'm two years out of treatment, and no recurrence! Gardening, singing, cooking, photography, working on a web site now and then... Once in a while I even read a book!

October, 2012. No evidence of tumor activity in my lungs.

May, 2013. CT Scan. No evidence of tumor activity in my lungs. Hooray! It's great to be seeing another spring. The garden is looking fine!

May, 2014. CT scan. Ditto, ditto, ditto. Four years out and counting. The garden is coming up green, especially the weeds, so I get out there and go after them. We're off the charts here. The doctor talks about 15% survival rate for lung cancer. Turns out I had stage 3b four years ago. There are four stages, so I wasn't far from the last stage. Every day is a gift! There must be some heavy-duty praying people in my church.

May, 2015. They were ready to pronounce me "cured", since it's been over five years since I was treated for lung cancer. The recent scan in May 2015 showed a small (2 mm) spot on my lower right lung. We don't know if that's cancer or not. So that's a wait and see. The next scan will be in the spring of 2016. In the meantime, I'll carry on and do the good stuff I'm able to do, like music, kayaking, gardening, keeping up this and other websites, and so forth. Incidentally, they still measure my PSA level, and it continues to be immeasurable. Interesting. I guess, even after all this time, the prostate could recur.

A change on plans: my next scan will be in early December.

The "early December" scan happened. The 2mm tumor was described as "stable". Turns out that they didn't see that spot in the December scan.. So we'll do it all over again, probably in May. Meantime, stay cool, enojy life, do good stuff!

I've had the May scan, but am awaiting news. It seems to be hard to get the physivcians office to return my calls and give me the information. I mean thay saw a spot a year ago, then six months later they didn't see it. So I want to know if they saw it or not in the May 2016 scan. I'll call them again!

December, 2016. What a ride! Good news from the scan earlier in the month: no signs of the two "spots" they saw sixmonths ago. So I'll keep truckin' along at 81 years, at more than six years since my last cancer treatment, I'm already looking forward to getting that light-weight canoe up on the car and heading for Santanoni or the Boreas Ponds.

May, 2017. Getting the next scan soon. In the meantime, the two apple trees which I planted last year have come through the winter in good shape, as has the plum tree. The pear trees are loaded, but the squirrels will get most of them. The blackberries and raspberries look good, as do the two goosberry plants I just put in. Ain't spring great!

May, 2017 Report on the recent CT scan: everything OK! That means they didn't see anything worth worrying about, all the way from my guggle to my zatch! Let's consider that good news!

January, 2018 More than seven years, so they don't even want to do scans any more. Nobody says "You're cured" or anything, but more than seven years is a milestone. Here in the middle of a blistering cold winter, it's good to think about spring coming, all those trees, canes, out in the garden, all filled with buds waiting for spring. Me too.