Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - I was starting to feel bad because every time I check in with you each week, it’s always about me, me, me!
I hope you’re doing well and 2009 brings joy and happiness in ways you never expected and a year from now we’re all down at Roseland celebrating all the things we never dreamed possible.
It’s hard to believe 23 years ago this week, Rebecca Webb and I began The Morning Show. We just had lunch a couple of weeks ago and she really is going to Graduate School at PSU getting her Master’s Degree in Political Science and seems very happy with herself and that makes me happy and it should make you happy, too!
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That’s probably been the hardest thing to let go of because it meant so much to me and I can’t tell you how many times, in those dark hours, at 3am when I read the messages and responses from listeners, over the years that just lifts my heart, even the ones from Mom. It doesn’t have to be on that scale but you would be amazed at how far a little praise can go to help someone out. They used to do that in the 20th Century.
What's Ahead?
As for my metastatic melanoma malignant cancer. Metastatic is the key word now, because the cancer’s spread, but this is kind of an exciting time for me because it’s the last week of this experimental chemo drug therapy program. After this week, we take a break, do complete body scans and see if it’s worked in these last 8 weeks... There’s two goals: one, to stop it from spreading and two: shrink the tumors that were there to begin with.
Price to Pay
But even if it worked, partially or completely, there’s been a price to pay. The treatment itself has overshadowed the cancer itself. For the last 8 weeks I had chemo and drug treatment that caused side effects that were difficult to endure forming skin rashes that made me look like a burn victim and they’ve really never went away for these past 8 weeks.
So the obvious concern is that since this would be a lifelong cancer treatment plan, even if it completely removes all the cancers in my body, is it worth putting myself through that weekly ordeal and a quality of life with risks of skin infections, etc. or do we consider Plan 2.
Plan 2
One of the first things I learned since being diagnosed with cancer, the more plans, the better, because when you run out of plans, that’s, pretty much, the end of the road. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, Plan 2 is Interleukin 2, a powerful drug that has been highly successful in treating other forms of cancer and was recently FDA approved in the treatment of melanoma cancer.
Good news: it apparently works. Bad news: I’m in and out of the hospital for the next 4-6 months receiving treatments but, and this is the big but...when it’s over, it’s over and I’m through with treatments after 6 months and can enjoy the rest of my life with a quality like I had before.
So this is the little dilemma we face next week when the new scans reveal what effect the experimental drug therapy had on knocking back the cancer. What would you do?
There are so many things I want to do, so many places I want to see so many wonderful people I have yet to meet. This kind of fight is an acquired taste and I wouldn’t want to do it every year but as long as there’s hope, there’s an escape and until that escape is blocked off, I’ve come too far to quit now.
~ Les
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