Saturday, March 14, 2009

The 'cure'

I've been mulling this one around for a while in my head. Several friends have said to me basically that aren't they cured of cancer once they are through treatment? Actually I don't think they are - that's the whole point. There is no cure for cancer. They treat it where it is found and then give systemic treatments as prevention. So I had surgery and then radiation to treat it where it was. Then systemically I had chemo and am on Tamoxifen. But am I cured? No. They got what they could of my cancer but do they know if it is gone for sure? No. Also, once you are in the lucky group to have cancer, you are considered to be more likely to get 'lucky' again and have another cancer or just a return or recurrence of your previous cancer.

So the goal of the elusive cancer cure still goes on. I personally am hoping for the Star Trek version of life where they talk about how they cured cancer back in the 21st century... But I'm still waiting.

Enough moaning and being maudlin for this morning. Its a beautiful spring morning but still a bit chilly. My tulips and crocuses are starting to come up. Perhaps I will see flowers outside sometime soon. That would be very nice. The snow drifts are melting dramatically and parking lots are returning to their summertime sizes. I went for a walk in some conservation land yesterday and it alternated between mud and ice with a little slush in the middle. But I am being optimistic and going to look for containers for my garden this morning.

Last night, we even went out for the evening and had fun. We went to dinner and then saw a Celtic music concert. It was a lot of fun. Fun is a word that has been absent from my vocabulary for a long time. I am going to attempt to return it to my life more frequently in the coming months.

I survived my overscheduled day yesterday and even ended up with a new pedicure of bright pink with green striped. Today I am less over scheduled but am still busy. I am meeting friends, doing a little shopping, going for a walk, writing a press release for American Cancer Society volunteer work (if I write this down I might remember to actually do it instead of just procrastinating), maybe even some work from home, and the highlight of it all will be doing laundry. Some how I need to fit that key ingredient of fun in here... That would be the meeting friends part I guess.

2 comments:

Merida Grace said...

This was great. There's more of us out there with this thought wave than most think. I am in remisson, yes, but cured no. One day hopefully we will here those words, right?
C

Debby said...

I keep wondering how to phrase it. I have cancer? I had cancer? I'm dealing with cancer? I don't know. I imagine that it will come clearer when the treatment is done.

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