I Hate Cancer

Seriously.

I'll never forget just about 19 years ago sitting in the kitchen of our apartment on 99th St. and 90th Ave. in Edmonton when Ken got off the phone with the news that his sister had cancer. It was a shock, to say the least. She was (what were you Christy?) like 22 years old, had her first baby only months earlier - not the usual demographic. It was a melanoma in her eye, and the best advice was to remove the eye, and with it, the cancer.

On medical advice Christy and Bruce delayed growing their family for a bit while doctors followed up with blood tests and cancer screens, but eventually Christy was pronounced clear and more babies came.

The artificial eye is so good. I mean, it looks real, it moves like it's real - it doesn't provide any vision, but I forget it's there all the time.

A little over two years ago lesions were found in Christy's abdomen. She went in for surgery, which ended up being purely exploratory, and since then the doctors have scanned and watched and waited for change. And like the eye I mostly didn't notice or think about it because Christy isn't sick. But the most recent scan showed tumour multiplication and growth, so now it is time to fight. Christy went in for a consultation a week ago and wound up staying for chemo that very day (so much for the slow socialist health care and long waiting periods for treatment - not in this case anyway). But we know chemotherapy doesn't really work on melanoma, and that's what this is: a metastasis from 19 years ago.

And it's just as shocking as it was the first time.

This week Christy is essentially quarantined at home (if she's being a good girl) while her white blood cells fall and then regenerate following the chemotherapy, which in other circumstances would sound pretty great to lock yourself up at home and actually get something done for a change (speaking for myself here). Once she flushes the chemo meds out of her system it's on to investigatory medications / drug trials, which for some people are having very good, excellent even, results. Our prayers are that Christy will be another patient with success in these trials ("medical" is where I was going with that - she's already a spiriual/emotional/example success of trials in general).

I feel a little silly blogging about this since she hasn't blogged about it herself. But this blog is about what matters to me, and Christy does.