False Summits

Sorry guys, I thought Pam had posted something here recently. It's been a very strange week.

Tonight's topic is from a mountaineering metaphor, something known as a "false summit." When climbing a mountain, it's common to see only the shoulder of the mountain and think that it's the summit (the actual summit is hidden from view behind the shoulder.) It's hard for the climber once the actual peak comes to view to learn that the journey will be just a little bit longer. Even so, steady perseverance overcomes such mental setbacks and wins the prize.

Medically speaking the liver surgery was my biggest hurdle. If that hadn't had the somewhat unexpected outcome of complete success none of the other stuff would have mattered. Now that is over and working great, but there is still a lot of hill left to climb. I'm in week three of the radiation treatment, and feeling the side effects now. They include diarrhea, burned or tender skin, fatigue, and falling blood platelet counts. Three more weeks of radiation to go and then it should be behind me. It's no fun, but not all that bad so far.

Last Monday I met with the surgeon who will do my colon resection. He wants to wait for a period of a few weeks for me to recover a bit after radiation before doing his thing, which ought to happen about the first part of May. Though we'd hoped for a relatively easy procedure, it turns out that this one might be more than just a walk in the park. He won't know until he's in there and actually hands-on, but he spoke of things like having to reconstruct a pouch out of intestine to simulate a colon, the possibility of nerve damage affecting sexual function, having a temporary (but hopefully not permanent) colostomy bag, and several weeks of recovery before things get back to normal. I suppose that is "relatively" easy compared to the dire things that are associated with a massive liver resection.

But wait! There's more! After all of that, the oncologist wants to give me seven more weeks of intense chemo "just to be sure". That's the heavy dose kind, like I had before, with the effects such as cold sensitivity, long-lasting numbness in hands and feet, horrible-tasting mouth, and a grey, death-like pallor. Lovely.

With all of that, the goal here is a once-and-for-all cure, and that is what keeps me going. They said that this would be long and hard. Even with this latest extension in the treatment, I'd much rather do it once and do it now than to have this come back at some later time. That's the attitude I have when I tell them to "bring it on" and let's beat this thing and put it down for good.

Thank you all for your attention and support. It means the world to me.