The Past Year

My journey began in March 2008 when I discovered (quite surprisingly!!) that I was pregnant with our third child. Having been practicing "family planning" I was quite shocked to discover that we were having another child. It's not like my husband and I were young and inexperienced. LOL. I had an uneventful pregnancy and was scheduled for a c-section on November 4, 2008. After our daughter was born and on her way to the nursery with my husband the attending surgeon was "feeling" around the abdominal area and felt a suspicious lymph node outside the colon. She called for an immediate biopsy by an oncological surgeon who came in and took 2 samples of the node. Being asymptomatic I would not have discovered the cancer until much later. My daughter is truly my "angel."

The next few days in the hospital were a blur of tears and fears as I googled CEA (my CEA was over 230), tumor markers, colon cancer and other terms. I would stay up each night until the wee hours as I could not sleep. I had a CT scan while still in for c-section recovery and between all the tests and so forth I was disappointed that I was unable to nurse our daughter. My husband had planned on going to a tax conference the week after our daughter's birth (I never like him to miss a golf opportunity) but of course he canceled his trip. On November 10 (my 39th birthday) I had a colonscopy and found that I had a 2 cm tumor. I also got the CT results from the GI doctor who confirmed that I had metastatic cancer with mets to my liver (5) that were bilobar in nature (in 3 different spots).

On November 12 I had my first appointment with a local oncologist who told me I was terminally ill and would have about 2 years. He said I was inoperable and would start me on a course of 12 FOLFOX infusions with a scan at 6 months. I had already scheduled an appointment with an oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering for November 17 so when I told him that he was a bit dismissive with his comments and said the oncologist from whom I would get another opinion was "that pump lady."

November 17, 2008 and I met my current oncologist at MSK. She told me that she could not give me a prognosis as everyone responds differently to treatments but that we would be aggressive in our approach. She said we would do 2 rounds (4 treatments) of FOLFOX with no Avastin and then scan at 2 months time. November 23 (Sunday) I went to a healing session which I describe on my home page). November 24 (Monday) I go to my first FOLFOX infusion. I told my husband at that infusion that in November 2009 we would go to the yearly tax conference and would celebrate my being NED.

I will skip the rest of the details as they are on my homepage but I had my liver resection, colon resection and HAI pump implantation on 2/20/09. I had a great recovery and felt fantastic a couple weeks after surgery. My liver surgeon and oncologist declared me NED on the day of surgery.

Last Monday I had my 9 month scan and I got the results today. This is my 4th NED scan and I am so grateful that my prayers and the prayers of my family have been answered. I know that at any time things could change and I could have a recurrence but for now I will live the next 3 months and not worry too much about the future. My husband always reminds me that all any of us ever have is today and I think about that a lot.

Between getting the scan last week and finding out the results today, however, my husband and I were busy. We spent 5 days in California at his tax conference and I thoroughly enjoyed the time we had there and I kept my promise to him that we would celebrate. We had a lot to celebrate including the 1 year birthday of our daughter, our 10th anniversary on 11/6, my husband's birthday on 11/8 and my own 40th birthday on 11/10. We like to call this time of year our own "festivus" and those familiar with Seinfeld will know that reference. To top it all off I won the longest drive contest (women) at the golf scramble!

I know that there have been some postings recently that have been challenging and I hesitated to post. I decided I would, however, as I remember that in the first days of my diagnosis I found so much hope on this board that there could be a long life after a Stage IV diagnosis. My wish is that my post can be helpful to someone else who is also on this journey.

My love to all,
Amy