Since learning I have some cancer in my body I have met people who do not want others to know. There are lots of reasons they want to keep the information private. Shame, guilt, fear of losing their job/friends/social status and perhaps the fact that if they share or speak it out it makes it real. These are all valid reasons for choosing to keep it secret, on the other hand I have found that I do like to share. It is something that I did from the get-go. And I’m glad I did. Last spring, before the virus SARS-CoV-2 when hugging and visiting were common I embraced every one I met, at times I had to practically book visiting times here on the hill to allow me the time to cook, juice and nap, I became a voracious hugger. And I was extremely grateful for everyone who came. Visiting and hugging are things that I believe contributed to my survival. For me, by giving words and a voice to my healing I believe it also makes it real.
Where does that leave me now? In these times when we are being encouraged to isolate and avoid visiting altogether I, like most people are complying with the recommendation to stay home surrounded by immediate family. Im not overdoing the distancing but I am really coming up short on visits and hugging. I do get regular hugs from family and the occasional close friend but its way below what I would love to give and take.
This brings me to the reason for this post. As part of my ongoing healing I want to share with everyone who takes the time to view my updates my ups and downs. I’d like to be public and share not only the day to day events, but also the medical terminology, oncological terms and treatments, naturopathic options, diet and lifestyle options and the invisible things which we are surrounded by such as prayer, meditation and basic hope. With all that said the data and graph here are my cancer antigen numbers from April 2019 to Nov 2020. If you don’t know anything about these blood tests, they are not useful for diagnosis for most cancers as other things can affect them but they are useful once diagnosed for the tracking of tumour growth and remission of cancerous cells. These tests can show change in microscopic tumours too small for a CT or PET scan. Even a 1mm tumour (too small to see on a scan) will have 100 000 cells. Another reason I am sharing this data is that Id like to see other peoples numbers, I know there are plenty of people who have overcome Stage 4 disease, but I don’t know how long it took, were there sporadic periods of disease surge, are 300 and 64 large numbers? If you or someone you know would be willing to share this kind of information please let me know, either publicly or privately.
Although nothing like real contact, I hope that by sharing I can keep you updated with my own journey during my cancer and covid struggles and successes. Pray for those you miss and love the ones you’re with.
