Good News, Bad news

 My daughter found a lump in her breast.

That's the bad news.

I can hardly say it.  Then she found another.  She called, had it checked out at the health center -- she's in college -- and they said it was probably nothing and to have it looked at over Thanksgiving, some three weeks away. THREE WEEKS.  So even if its cystic, and not cancer, she has to think "maybe I have cancer" for three weeks!  She's freaked out, naturally, and (to state the obvious) more sensitized to this situation because of MY cancer...my death sentence.

Though, really, any woman would be worried, any of us, all of us suffer the ... the what? The feeling that our body holds an alien invader?  That we are mortal? That we are now engaged in a fight for our lives with the medical profession as our allies, as our saviors, as our tormentors, as a mediator between us and our future, our happiness, that we are no longer care-free, independent. ANY woman would feel that. It is a terrible feeling.

When I walk through the Women's Center at my Cancer hospital, I can see these worries etched on the faces of the women and men there.  I try to stride, purposefully, as though the bounce in my step can signal them: "Look, I'm doing OK.  You can be OK, too."  I have the energy to care, now.

I didn't used to.


So I remember how it felt to be so bone tired, to not care about being seen in public with hair un-combed, outfit mismatched but comfortable. I see the bravery in the make-up.  I told my daughter to be brave.  And she is.  Just getting out of bed, and going to class, and practice, and "trying not to worry", going through the motions of her day-to-day life and "trying not to worry".  But it is impossible not to worry.  My brilliant pain Doctor said that he could not necessarily relieve all my pain, but he COULD give me the information that would relieve my suffering. I understand him now. Because even if it all checks out OK for her, and is a common benign "mass", in some ways she will have spent three weeks suffering from cancer.

As for me....

CEA = 41.4 !!

Forty-one point four!

That's the good news.

From what I understand, the CEA is a specific chemical marker for colon cancer -- something the tumors actually give off that can be measured.  Less is better.  People with no cancer have practically none, and normal ranges from 0.1 to about three.

My CEA was 1450 at first, and has gone down, and then up...
and now down again.

Last time it was 88.  Now its 41.4.
That's still double digits, but coming  down, more and more.

I don't want my child on this cancer roller-coaster with me ... I'd give anything to have it not be so.