I like how times of our lives are sometimes described as seasons. There are things to enjoy in each one, things to learn... and when one comes to an end, another one begins. It seems that the season is changing for us again. We've been in an almost 5 year season of blissfully "normal" cancer-free life. After radiation and a "sprinkle" of chemo treatment (as described by my oncologist) 5 years ago, we've enjoyed what we believe is God's miraculous healing, pushing my cancer into remission and making the slow re-emergence of it easily detectible, and without any damaging effects... but alas, it has returned. A slow and steady increase in my detectable kappa light chain proteins over the past two years was the indicator that something was going on, but the low levels and slow climb allowed for us to be ready, and take our time making decisions about what to do. I've had many interesting thoughts over the past two years, yet looking back (hindsight being 20/20) it's pretty obvious that it was slowly growing in my bones again. Every month or two, when I got my bloodwork done and we would be waiting for the results, I would look ahead with hope at all the possibilities. Would the numbers level off and remain low and steady forever? Would they turn and decline to zero? Would they miraculously disappear again, going back to normal unexpectedly? Given my history and our belief in healing miracles, any of these outcomes would not have surprised us. We were also faced with another question... What's a bad number or a dangerous number? Compared to the levels detected when I had my bone lesion/tumor 5 years ago, they are pretty low at the moment (with a normal range of 2-20, I have crept up to about 300, compared to between 7,000 and 14,000 long ago), though nobody can really say when the damage or dangerous turn is going to happen. After a bone marrow biopsy that showed absolutely nothing two years ago when my numbers has started climbing outside of the normal range, we've done another recently that showed the cancer had in fact returned... and now, we are ready for the fight. Our decision to stop treatment and see what God's mighty hand had done 5 years ago was a step out... in faith maybe you would say, but that doesn't quite capture it. It was really an offering to God, trying to be a living sacrifice (as the Bible describes in Romans 12) and to live my life in a way that doesn't make sense unless I be completely 100% absolutely confident that the God I belong to is as real as the nose on my face. I must admit, I don't live like that every day, but we were faced with a time when we had an opportunity to let the world know that no matter how ridiculous or absurd it may have seemed, if God healed... if He did something, I wanted Him to get the credit... the glory for it. For the small spattering of chemo I was treated with, I far exceeded what remission any doctor expected for me... and that's just one of the many miraculous ways He has intervened in my life. Add up all those times, and look back over how He's taken care of me and my family, and you'd understand why we can walk into this next season without fear. So what's this next season look like? Well, we have a general idea, but I don't think anyone can ever understand until you walk through it... Here's what we know...
Talking with our oncologist specialist, the options were much better than we expected. Our best option, given that our feeling now is that we're ready hit this cancer with all we've got, is to do the Bone Marrow Transplant (side note: it involves no surgery; it is a high dose chemo shock, with a re-introduction of your own blood stem cells to essentially restart your bone marrow blood and immune system from scratch). To our surprise, given my previous response to treatment, the early detection, the slow growth, and a bit of expert experience, our oncologist specialist suggested no chemo prep for the transplant, and no maintenance regiment afterwards. Our hope would be another long (long, long, long) stint of symptom-free cancer-free "normal" life. The transplant is a pretty harsh treatment, and it is going to suck for a few weeks, and I'll be pretty isolated from the world for a few months, but after recovery, I should be right back at it.
I know many of you have faithfully prayed for me over the last 5 years, and I am eternally grateful for you. The prayers of friends, family, and those around the world that I have never met, have lifted me up, upheld the strength of my family, encouraged us, and prepared us with the faith to be ready for the recent news. We appreciate your continued prayers through this time, and I especially covet your prayers for my wife and kids as they will need support as I go through this. So many of you have already offered to help with anything we may need, and I can't express my gratitude enough.
October 3rd is the big day, the day I check in to the hospital and get my mega-dose of chemo. After that will be my stem cell re-introduction on the 5th, and then my immune system will bottom out and begin to recover. I'll be in the hospital for a few weeks, and then confined to a minimum security isolation room at home for another few weeks until my immune system has recovered enough for me to fight off the typical onslaught of germs. I hope to keep up with my blog throughout the process.