CANCER -- WAITING FOR THE REPORT

     It's a tightness in the chest that is only known only by those who have waited to hear if they have cancer or if it has come back and they are no longer in remission.  You are shown to the little room where you sit and wait for the doctor to come in.  The seconds become like minutes and the minutes like an hour.  Then he comes in, greets you and begins to look at the report from the radiologist.  That's when your chest gets really tight.  Then he finally says . . . .  


     Susan and I sat there this morning.  I could count back through my journals to 1988 and total up how many dozens of times we have waited.  Just before Christmas that year we got the original diagnosis.  Susan had been trying to lose some weight that summer and fall but her clothing still fit tighter and tighter around the waist.  She went in to our regular doctor in December for a routine physical to renew her school bus drivers license.  Even though she was a teacher she found it quite useful to have that license.  The doctor checked her abdomen and was quite alarmed.  "You have a tumor".  He sent her straight to the hospital for a CT scan.  When he got the report he called me at the school.  I was called out of a chapel with the words, "The doctor wants to talk to you on the phone".


     "Russell, Susan has lymphoma".  I went to a dictionary but that didn't help much.  In the following weeks I would get a medical school level education about lymphoma and, in particular, malignant lymphoma.  Hers was an abdominal lymphoma about the size of a grapefruit.  Lymphoma is any swelling of a lymph node in your body.  It can happen when you have an infection, and then the lymph node will return to normal.  When you have cancer of the lymph system it is malignant lymphoma.  I found out how ignorant even some doctors are about the subject.  A close relative told us that his brother-in-law, a physician, told him that this enlarged lymph node in Susan came from cancer somewhere else in the body.  I reported this to Susan's oncologist (cancer specialist) and he politely told me in so many words that someone did not know what they are talking about.  You can have, he explained, all kinds of cancer picked up and transported by and in the lymph system but Susan had cancer  of  the lymph system; i.e. malignant lymphoma.  So much for the misinformed relative of ours and his less than an expert brother-in-law.


     Next came surgical biopsy of the tumor itself and of the bone marrow.  I found out that it does no good to surgically remove a lymphoma tumor.  It is a systemic disease.  Chemotherapy or radiation are the only options.   This is when we started to get good news.  Bad news would have been that Susan had "T cell" lymphoma.  Hers was "B cell".  Then, a friend whose son was undergoing treatment for leukemia at Columbus Children's Hospital told his son's oncologist about Susan's diagnosis and asked "what are her chances"?  The reply:  "Well, if you have to pick a cancer you might as well pick that one because we are getting some good results in treating that one."   Every day seemed to bring encouragements of this sort.  In the years since then the type of cancer cells that Susan has have been called "good players".


     We soon found out that people everywhere, some as far away as Asia,  were imploring our merciful Heavenly Father to deliver Susan.   After two months of chemotherapy the tumor was more than half gone.  The oncologist said he would have been happy if it had just not grown.  And so the good news kept coming.  Susan returned to teaching in the fall and slowly regained strength.  But the massive chemotherapy left some effects that are still felt to this day.  In 1990 the CT scans were clear.  In 1991 the devastating news came that the CT scan revealed an enlarge lymph node.  Susan was given an oral drug with the trade name 'Lukaran' (sp?).  It worked.


    So, year after year she had the CT scans and we waited to hear the results.  In the 1990's it came back again and the oral drug was used successfully again.   In 2001 a lymph node became enlarged in the groin and for the first and only time radiation was used.   Then nearly eight years went by and we thought we might be "home free".  But an enlarged lymph node appeared on the CT scan in the chest area.  A biopsy was taken by inserting a long needle through the back and the lung.  More good news . . . the cell type of the lymphoma had not changed over all the intervening years.  Expert predictions that it would change into a more aggressive type of cancer did not come true.  More good news.  A new drug was available:  "Rituxin".  It is not a chemotherapy drug; it is a monoclonal antibody.  Your hair does not fall out and it does not make you sick.  It attacks Susan's particular type of cancer cells directly. Perhaps the day will come when something like this will make treating most cancers as routine as penicillin made the treatment of infections.


     The first infusion of Rituxin dissolved the small tumor so quickly that Susan nearly went into shock because her body could not absorbed the dead cancer cells quickly enough.  At six month intervals from the fall of 2011 until the spring of 2013 Susan had four rounds of Rituxin infusions.  The three extra rounds have proved, in lymphoma treatment, to prevent a relapse.   So every December since 2013 she has a CT scan and we await the results.  Just like we did this morning.  Oh, I almost forgot.  You want to know those results.  "The scan is all clear and your blood work is fine.  Go and enjoy Christmas with your family."  Those tears you see are tears of joy.


     Now, something practical for you the reader because Susan and I care about you.  If people would alter their diets the cancer rate would plummet to unheard of lows.  Fresh fruits from apples to blueberries; plenty of dark green vegetables;  yellow and orange vegetables; green tea and black tea both; reduce red meat and fats; more fish and poultry;  more whole grains; and cut those calories and get rid of that big gut!  There!  Have a blessed Christmas!