Appreciate all the well wishes and support in the comments section Tuesday's post inspired. I received a number of private messages via my regular e-mail that were very helpful, too--as one would expect, the one from my therapist was a beaut.
Was particularly glad to hear from my cheering section after I read an article from the April 12 NYTs, "Cancer Survival Demands Steady Progress," by Jane E. Brody (pardon the lack of link; I always have trouble with NYT links). After reading it, it slowly dawned on me that of the two kinds of myeloma, regular and aggressive, I have the aggressive variety (reserved for just 25% of the population).
NOW I'm aggressive? This little irony bothered me almost as much as the relatively dire prognosis for people in this category. Okay, not as much, but really--if I must get my aggression on, why now, with a disease, instead of in my being when I lived in NYC and it would have been handy? Had to contend with a heckler while doing standup? Had to enter the "murderous merge" outside the Alewife T station in Boston?
Oh well. No one's said a peep about life being fair in my earshot for decades, so I am not surprised.
Should tell you that the article did raise some concerns that I shared with a member of my team at MGH, and this person was kind enough to offer some information to help me feel a bit better about things. The first being that a lot of the data referred to in the article was based on old drugs; the new drugs (many of which I've been on) have not been studied in sufficient depth as of yet. Secondly, my relative youth (snicker if you must, whippersnappers) and health (ditto), as well as my attitude and support network (thank you) make me a candidate for success. And lastly, I have already been through a mill, and did manage to bounce back (I feel as though I had a splat or two, but didn't want to quibble), which bodes well.
We shall see.
Between the kind commentary from a rep of the MGH crew and my therapist, I feel a little less freaked about it all. A heightened sense of mortality does put this gal's head in a spin, I must tell you.
But I, my MGH team and my friends and family are doing everything they can to help me make it through to a nice remission (or several), so I am going to try to keep my "spins" to a minimum. That's today's plan, anyway....
Love from me (at home!) and the starving Bombshell (dinner is due in 7 minutes, 5:00 EST), A
4 comments:
Perhaps a handy snack of milk and toast will help calm things down? :)
Ha! Holly, I was going to make a milquetoast reference myself. You beat me to it.
Ann, I was going to say that being everyone's favorite milquetoast-y friend surely adds to your candidacy for success as well.
The same joke second time around = not quite as funny. I'll try harder next time.
We enjoy your posts so much here in the D and glad to hear you are staying the course and doing all you can to beat this.
Hope you didn't watch dateline on Sunday regarding Detroit because then u will never visit your sister here in the Motor City.
Keep your spirits up, we enjoy your posts.
http://tinyurl.com/6uzy3
A sane and very helpful article on cancer and statistics. Well worth a read.
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