Three Years

Let's do a quick recap on the last three years, shall we? In December of 2008, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma, stage 4, and pretty far along in the process of dying with tumors, some of them quite large, throughout my innards.

Six months of ABVD killed most of the tumors, except for several in my groin and one in my neck.

I did three months of rear-guard ESHAP chemotherapy to keep the tumors from going completely out of control again while I was preparing for a tandem bone marrow transplant.

The first bone marrow transplant toward the end of 2009. It was successful in that the transplant "took" and my bone marrow starting growing replacement blood cells, but the tumors were still there.

The second bone marrow transplant was in January 2010, a fantastically unpleasant experience, but I guess it could have been worse. This scorched-earth chemo killed the tumor in my neck and all but two of the ones in my groin.

Then I did radiation treatments through the spring and summer of 2010, concentrating on the two stubborn tumors in my groin.

And now, three years after my original diagnosis, where am I?

It's been roughly two years since I had any tumors showing any appreciable sign of life in PET scans, and for the last eighteen months, my tumors have all been dead and cold and slowly shrinking.

So today I got my final PET scan results. I say "final" because my oncologist believes that my cancer is dead and that there's nothing further to be gained from expensive and highly radioactive tests. I am in complete remission, a remission that seems likely to hold.

As of today, I'm no longer a cancer patient. I'm just a regular dude, getting on with things.

And it's pretty groovy.