My life now

 Have you ever heard of the Baader Meinhof illusion? It’s the phenomenon where once you are aware of something it seems like it’s ubiquitous. You’re thinking about buying a blue car, and it starts to seem like the streets are overflowing with blue cars. That's my feeling with cancer lately. I swear every book, movie, tv series, short story, tv commercial, bad joke and even one of my favorite podcasts has cancer in it. It’s like every writer has gotten lazy and there’s a huge cancer switch they pull when the storyline needs a good shot of tragedy. “We need a way to explain why this girl seems so sad and emotionally detached...I got it! Her mom died of cancer when she was little.” Or the reason why the cute female lead in a fluff Christmas movie can’t find love is because she’s too devoted to her job as a pediatric oncologist. I literally watched three cheesy Christmas movies with cancer in them. Being so new and raw in my own reality of cancer, sometimes I can brush it off and laugh...

  I had my appointment with the Mayo surgeon today. My hope was that he would have the results from my PET scan last Thursday, and I was a little disappointed when he didn’t lead with that. He hadn’t seen it yet. After a little searching in my file, he was able to find the PET scan report. I think we were both a little nervous as he read it to me live, neither of us knowing if it was going to be good or bad. It was all good!!!! The report said I had outstanding metabolic results and that all previous areas of cancer have been resolved. He said I’m what they call a super responder. I’m usually pretty happy when someone calls me super or outstanding, but today those words mean more than anything. I think I’m in shock that cancer could come and go in and out of my life so quickly. I know cancer and I aren’t done with each other; we’ll likely be life long adversaries, but this is a huge triumph! As for surgery decisions, he recommended against rushing into aggressive surgery options fo...