I’m one week post-surgery, officially POD8, and sitting in the sun on a Saturday afternoon. I was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday and, if I’m being honest, this recovery has been something of a roller coaster. You never know until you’ve been through the treatment how your body will absorb the trauma, and mine has some strong opinions, it turns out.
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Let’s make a hard pivot
I was just getting into the headspace of starting immunotherapy this coming week when my phone rang at the end of the day last Thursday. It didn’t have call display, so I debated whether to even answer. Who would be calling me that wasn’t already in my contacts? I’m glad I picked it up.
It was a colleague of my medical oncologist, calling to tell me that the tumor board had met. Instead of moving ahead with immunotherapy, the new plan was to proceed directly to surgery. The rationale was that the lesion in my colon is small, and my other CT findings are unrelated to the bowel tumor. A successful resection should complete treatment. Good news, right?
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Sitting with what comes next
I wish that title were tongue-in-cheek, but I tweaked my right knee last week, and for the last few days I’ve been resting my legs while the swelling goes down. It’s feeling better, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to run again by the weekend, but in the meantime, I’m feeling proud of myself for not running through an injury, however mild it might be.
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Everything comes in pairs
I really wanted to be boring for a while. But oh well.
A few weeks ago, while waiting on pathology, I was musing about my colonoscopy results being ‘the other cancer shoe.’ Well, shoes do come in pairs, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when my doctor confirmed my colon lesion was malignant. To be precise: “Invasive poorly differentiated colorectal adenocarcinoma, BRAF Positive, dMMR, MSI-high.”
Two primaries. One body. Zero chill from my cells, apparently.
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Is this the other shoe?
When I was first diagnosed, I was going through a detailed mammogram diagnostic process as well. Mine was the 1 in 10 pulled for recall, and the tomosynthesis showed cysts, prompting a recommendation for an additional ultrasound. In the end, it was all summarized as ‘bilateral simple and complex cysts, benign.’ A relief, but in the moment, it definitely felt like waiting for the other cancer shoe to drop. I’m learning that a CLS diagnosis is a little bit like déjà vu.
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So this is what “normal” looks like.
I’m not sure where the last six months went. Well, I do know, but it surprises me that I’ve been less inclined to update here. For the year ahead, I’m setting the intention to keep this journal more current.
So what’s new? Both my Hereditary Cancer Predisposition Panel and Developmental Disorders Panel returned a ‘clean’ status on all counts. My most recent blood draw saw all my markers in the ‘normal’ range for the first time in two years, including iron and ferritin—two important markers for anyone training for longer distance races. These results are enough for my medical geneticist to want to investigate further—my clinical presentation doesn’t match my genetic profile, and that piques the interest of any researcher.
What this all means for my running is mostly good.
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Piecing together survivorship
Frustration … that’s what the last few weeks have felt like. On the one hand, my last thyroid biopsy came back benign, … breathe. My March CT scan was clear, … breathe. My genetics testing is in process and likely to confirm I have the PTEN mutation, one more piece of the puzzle falling into place … breathe.
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Genetics … the missing puzzle piece?
It turns out that even a routine referral to your periodontist can loop back to your cancer journey. Who knew? The interesting thing is that it may connect some dots. I have a ‘cobblestone’ pattern on my gums—tiny little clusters of bumps I’ve had forever—that my new dentist thought were worth evaluating ‘just to make sure.’ Cue the referral to an oral pathologist.
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On anniversaries, monitoring, and more waiting …
I’m discovering that anniversaries bring up interesting emotions. I expected to be writing about my 5k race for this post, but didn’t realize just how many feels it would create, falling as it did almost exactly a year after starting chemotherapy. And because I’ve been busy, since race day I also had my six month monitoring appointment for my thyroid nodules, with mixed results. So yeah, all the feels.
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Running from hysteria 