Because of my high risk of recurrence I get a cancer surveillance scan every 3 months - alternating between a CT only and a PET / CT. I’ve only ever really trusted the PET scans because CT’s failed to pick up my liver metastases when I was first diagnosed. So in my mind I get ‘real’ scan results every 6 months. I did a PET / CT last Friday and I just got the results.
100% clear. Not even a little ‘hot spot’.
This is exciting because it’s now two years since my last recurrence, and three and half years since my initial diagnosis. When I was diagnosed stage 4 in August 2017 the statistics indicated I had just a 13% chance of surviving the next five years, so to still be here - alive and cancer free - after three and half years…well, I’m feeling pretty bloody lucky. Yes - I’m still statistically at high risk until I make it to 5 years cancer free - but I’m pretty stoked to have made it this far!
I hate the anxiety that comes with these scans but they do serve a useful purpose. Every three months I’m forced to have very real thoughts about life and death. Am I living life the right way ? Am I being an arsehole to anyone ? What should I be doing given I might only have limited time ? The scans - when the results are good - are also great markers for gratitude. When I got my results this morning I walked out of the oncology centre feeling so grateful. Most of the ‘cancer buddies’ I met along the way, with similar diagnoses, have since died and for some reason I’m lucky enough to still be here. That really makes you reflect on everything you have to be grateful for.
I know I’ve done it before but I really want to say thank you to everyone who has got me this far, and who makes my life the very lucky life I think it is.
Thanks Madé for being an amazing wife and mother
Thanks (if you read this in the future) kids, for just being awesome
Thanks mum and dad, for everything
Thanks extended family
Thanks friends
Thanks to my amazing liver and bowel surgeons - Prof Cartmill, Dr Andrew Gilmore, Dr Sameer Mihrshahi
Thanks to my oncologists - Dr Pirooz Poursoltan and Dr Josie Rutowitz
Thanks to all the ward nurses, stoma nurses, techs, specialists etc etc who got me through both brief and very long hospital stays
Thanks to my GP - Dr Geoffrey Heise. If he hadn’t been ultra cautious I would never have been diagnosed.
Thanks Google for being an amazing & understanding employer (and provider of my life and health insurance)
Thanks to everyone I work with for forgiving my chemo brain memory failures, time out for cancer ‘stuff’, and my occasional confusion about how to balance professional life with stage 4 cancer (I’m talking to you Mel Silva and Jeremy Butteriss)
Thanks to all my cancer buddies - those who’ve passed, and those still fighting
Thanks to the 30,000 people so far who have signed our NSW assisted dying petition
…I could go on and on. Really, thank you. It’s great to (still) be alive !