For those who don't know, Neil was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer April of 2017. Our life was immediately turned upside down and people started looking at us as if he'd already died--somewhat justifiably. The numbers don't favor someone with inoperable Stage III Pancreatic Cancer being around for very much longer. I very intentionally never asked what kind of life expectancy we were looking at. There were things I didn't want to know and that was one of them. He fought like he had forever to live at the end of the fight and I prayed like it was true. The tumor had shrunk away from the involved vein/artery enough that after 8 rounds of Folfirnox his inoperable tumor was now operable and we spent a week in Murray at IMC for a distal pancreatectomy and splenectomy followed by 8 more rounds of Folfirnox. Life on Folfirnox is a post all of itself, but for this one we will sum it up by saying it wasn't easy.
Fast forward to January 2018 and we received great news! There was no sign of cancer anywhere. Not in his blood work, CT scans, or PET scans -- NED was our new favorite word. What I didn't realize through any of this was that from this day forward we would be handed life in small chunks. 3 months at a time to be specific. Things look good for now, we will scan you again in 3 months and see how it looks then may as well be rephrased as "here is 3 more months, go live it and we will see if you get 3 more at the end " Life started being broken up into 3 month chunks between Oncology appointments. We've still been making long term plans but they come with an unspoken "if" If things are still going well. If the cancer doesn't come back. If, if, if.
The risk of recurrence before 2 years is crazy high, so we continue to plug along with time marked of in 3 month chunks as if it was the time signature for the ballad of our life. We are 9 months or so away from graduating to 6 month chunks and having his port removed. We're planning a party January of 2020. If.
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