Another Bad Email
People have said cancer is a marathon. Well, it’s not. I’ve run marathons before. They’re 26.2 miles. They have a start and a finish. They have a route. You choose to run one. Cancer has none of those qualities. But unfortunately I have no better analogy for cancer because this is like nothing I’ve ever experienced in the past and nothing I ever hope to experience in the future.
Last week, on a Friday night, I was heading home from work and Eric called me. Eric almost never calls me so I knew something was up. He asked, “Sara, where are you?” I was in an Uber. Eric proceeded to tell me that his slides and tissue samples were sent to Stanford to run additional pathology and they had emailed him the results without any explanation. This time they discovered something new. They wrote that there was the possibility his Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma (DLBCL) could have originated from Follicular Lymphoma (FL), a different type of cancer.
According to The Internet, FL is incurable. I actually already knew this because I spent the last month learning everything the internet had to offer about lymphoma. Not only is FL thought to be incurable, but it’s also thought that when it transforms to DLBCL, (as was being suggested in this new pathology report), the prognosis is not good. So, as I was riding home in my Uber, ready to enjoy the weekend, I learned the news that my husband may have an incurable form of cancer and only a limited number of years left to live.
Anyway, I’ll make a lot story short to save all the readers the agony of what we experienced that weekend. It turns out, it’s very unlikely that Eric’s DLBCL originated from FL and they did not detect any amount of FL in the sample. The doctors, who we were able to speak to the following week, actually used the words “extremely low chance” and explained that the pathologists put that line in the report as a philosophical discussion rather than anything that affects the diagnosis or prognosis. And in the very off chance it did originate from FL, there’s reason to believe even FL can be cured with the new treatments available. Most of the stuff on the internet about FL is outdated and patients treated with newer drugs have shown MUCH BETTER results and just have not been studied over a long enough timeline.
Everything is going to be ok
Boy is this journey intense. Life has its highs and lows, but usually those highs and lows aren’t about whether you will live or die. This is truly new territory for us and we are trying to accept that this process requires not just persistence, but also patience. Sometimes you get seemingly bad news on a Friday and you just have to wait until the following week (or month, or year) to find out that everything is going to be ok. And even when it seems ok, there are no guarantees.
Now that everything is back on track, we are feeling extremely positive and hopeful once again. Eric will start his third treatment on Monday and he is feeling strong. Bryn is happy and healthy and recently celebrated her first birthday. My company, Winnie, is growing like crazy and parents are starting to tell us we are making a real impact on their lives. Even with cancer, life goes on and we are living it. Thank you everyone who is on this journey with us.
