good news & fireflies

The last couple of weeks of recovery have been somewhat more challenging than I expected.  It has been a steep learning curve adjusting to my ileostomy bag and not such a steep curve in terms of the rate at which my energy level is returning.  But I am feeling better and more energetic day by day.

But all of this quickly faded yesterday when Robbie and I made another trip down to the Brigham. This time not only was the trip planned (in contrast to our recent emergency room visit) but we got some great news!

We met with my surgeon Dr. Bleday who was pleased to share with us the results of my pathology report which had just come in.  The pathology report shows there were NO SIGNS OF CANCER
left in any of the tissue they removed during surgery.  The type of surgery I had was called LAR, lower anterior resection.  There were many tissue samples taken during surgery that were submitted for testing-including a host of lymph nodes, pieces of my rectosigmoid colon, my ovaries and fallopian tubes and my favorite-a "distal donut".   (For those of you who may remember I was initially told I had not had a "complete clinical response" to radiation at our appointment 2 weeks before surgery-this is still the case, but either the tissue they could see was scar tissue or possibly the remainder of the tumor that then continued to shrink to nothing in the 2 weeks between that appointment and my surgery.)

In the part of my rectosigmoid colon that was removed all that remained where the tumor had been was scar tissue. This is literally the best possible result and best possible news we could have gotten. I had heard that in a very small number of cases patients can have a complete clinical response to the initial round of chemo and radiation that I had prior to surgery.  While I did of course hope and dream that this could happen for me, I had also been hesitant to set my sights on it knowing that this happens in only 5-10% of all cases. Additionally a complete response such as mine also predicts an even better prognosis in terms of the cancer returning, or never returning as the case will likely be.

Because of my response, Dr. Bleday plans to reverse my temporary ileostomy sooner rather than later, as in next month.  This is a huge relief even though it will mean another surgery and another hospital stay in the near future. I knew this "reversal" surgery would take place in the next 8 months or so, but I didn't know it could take place this soon. It will be an immense relief to have my colon reconnected and functioning again as usual.

Next week I will meet with my oncologist to discuss what type of chemo I will do as my "clean-up" chemo. Apparently in Europe, for patients who have a complete response to radiation and chemo before surgery, there is no further treatment (among other benefits of living of Europe!).  As I do not live in Europe, while I will have the option to end my treatments now, I will almost certainly continue with my original plan of 4 months of clean-up chemo.  I may however, opt to leave out the most toxic and damaging component of the chemo regime I was planning for-the oxaliplatin. This will likely make the remaining 4 months of chemo quite tolerable.

Regardless of what comes next I feel as if a dark cloud that had been overhead has now blown aside to make way for some much welcome warm rays of bright sunshine.

For the first time since last summer, fireflies bumped up against our windows with their flashing yellow tails as we got into bed last night.  I like to think they were there to help us celebrate one of the best days I've had in a very long time, so I opened the window and let one in.