Cancer Free

Yesterday Cliff had his much anticipated pet scan to determine if he had any active cancer cells or not. We got the results back this morning and they showed that Cliff has no living cancer cells anywhere in his body! Needless to say he is CANCER FREE!!!!! He will still have radiation in January and have frequent checkups, but we will start 2013 without cancer! The amount of joy that I have is overwhelming. It took me back to the day that they told me he had cancer after his biopsy surgery and how heartbroken I was. I feel like a load has been lifted off of both of us. Today marks the first day of moving on to brighter things.

Cliff doesn’t have cancer anymore…he had cancer and survived.

 

 

Dear Cliff,

Let me start off by saying how much I love you. Our love was strong before cancer, but even stronger now.

The first week in the hospital I cried when you slept. I would bury my head in the pillow and think that this isn’t going to be end to our love story. I know now that this isn’t going to be the end. We will have many more years together of me breaking and spilling things!  You have always made sure I was doing okay. You have brought out strength in me that I didn’t know that I had. I love being your wife and couldn’t be more proud of you. We have cried, argued, and laughed in the last six months. I know that I have been overbearing at times, but that was only because I love you.

You are an incredible father. You have been focused on Coy and Gabriella to make this as easy as possible for them. When you got diagnosed you were scared about how Coy was going to handle your physical changes. He has done amazing because you have made it a point to put on a happy face even when you weren’t feeling well.  You made it to his baseball games even when you felt bad. He’ll always remember that. After you got out of surgery from your biopsy one of the first things you said is that Gabriella wasn’t going to remember you if you died. That little girl adores her Dada! I believe that she has been a big part of your fight with cancer. She doesn’t know what’s going on and that’s the beauty of it. She has been the joy we all needed to get through this. The kids are the greatest thing you have ever done. They are lucky to have you just as much as you are lucky to have them.

Now that you know how much I love you let me tell you something…

You have mastered making everyone think you are feeling and doing great even when you weren’t. You make hard things look easy Lewis. This has been harder on you then it has on all of us. I know that some days it hurt to walk. I have seen you crawl from the restroom because you couldn’t walk back to the bedroom. I have seen you be in the worst pain from your first spinal tap. I watched you not eat for days because you couldn’t keep anything down. What you have gone through sucks. It is hard seeing you in pain and discomfort, but my pain in nothing in comparison to yours. You have been poked to many times to count. You have been though two spinal taps that were scary and painful. You have been through eight rounds of INTENSE chemotherapy. You had to come to terms with your cancer, and in some aspects I think that was the most challenging part for you. You have done amazing and I’m so proud to call you my husband. You are my hero and my inspiration to make the best out of every day. This would have broken some people, but you didn’t allow it. Be proud of yourself!  

Finally, I know that just because chemo is over it doesn’t mean that this is over. I know that you need the pet scan to be clear before radiation can start.  I know that we are both hesitant on what radiation will bring, but I know we’ll make it though it like we did everything else. Important decisions still have to be made about medications after radiation. I know that you will be tested frequently to make sure the cancer isn’t back. I don’t know what our future holds, but I know that we will always be able to face it head on together.   

I love you.

Delayed Chemo and Walks

We thought Cliff would start chemo on Monday, but because of his low platelet counts he wasn’t able to. He is scheduled to start tomorrow evening…fingers crossed! I was initially worried when I heard this, but Dr. Turner assured us that this is completely normal at this stage of treatment. He even said that most of the time this happens in the middle of treatment so Cliff has been recovering from treatment very well. It’s because he’s amazing ;)

 

We had the joy of participating in the Light the Night Walk for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society for the past two weekends. I initially didn’t want us to participate in this because I was scared of what I would see. Seeing other families that are experiencing what we are makes me really sad. I said that we would get involved with charities after Cliff was in remission. I talked with a sweet friend and she said the perfect thing to make me realize I was crazy.

 

 

I’m so glad we did these walks. You are with a ton of people that understand what you are feeling. They are there for the same fight and carrying a balloon for someone they care about. The white balloon means you are a survivor or currently in treatment. A red balloon means you are walking for someone. A gold balloon means you walking for someone who passed away. As people were in line getting their gold balloons my heart broke for them, but when I saw a now healthy child ask for their white balloon I smiled.

 

I don’t know if it’s the inner child in me, but the balloons were amazing! They offered the hope I needed to get us through the last two treatments and radiation. At the Dallas walk they asked everyone to lower their balloons. They then asked everyone who was holding a gold balloon to raise it, then the white, then the red. When I looked at Cliff holding his white balloon I have never been so proud. I loved Cliff way before cancer happened, but what it has done for our relationship and our family over the last four months is remarkable. What mattered before doesn’t now. I wouldn’t consider us lucky to have experienced this, but we are lucky for what it has shown us.

 For everyone that donated for Team Cliff…THANK YOU!

 

Busy Busy Busy

Wow! Things have been extremely busy this past month!

Cliff was scheduled to have his 6^th round of chemo the first week of October, but because of how busy I was at work and Coy’s 10^th birthday we decided to postpone his chemo until the second week. He did extremely well! His body isn’t recovering as fast as before so he has had two platelet transfusions since he got out of the hospital. As you can imagine it’s very annoying to get pricked and poked all the time, but he’s handling it well. If things stay on schedule Cliff will be done with chemo on November 21^st which happens to be Gabriella’s first birthday! It will be very special day for our family! He will still have radiation after, but that won’t happen for a month or so after his last chemo round.

Cliff will start his 7^thround chemo tomorrow. This will be his last "A" treatment! The “A”treatments are supposed to be the easier of the two, but for some reason they have been more difficult for him. I think it’s the hiccups that make it so bad. When Cliff is nauseous it usually stems from having the hiccups. The medicine to control them is an anti-depressant and has the opposite side effect on him. He’s a complete grump! He will deny this, but I have witnesses to back me up!

It’s a strange feeling to be getting to the end and have the emotions that I have. I’m excited and scared. We’ve had a plan for how Cliff was going to be treated, but we don’t have a plan for after radiation yet. This is the scary unknown part all over again! I know that Dr. Turner and his colleagues will help us make the best decision for Cliff, but we aren’t to that point yet. This is why research is so important!

On a different note Cliff and I got married a little over a week ago! When Cliff proposed he basically had our wedding planned. We were going to get married on 12/12/12 and it was going to be a destination wedding. Little did we know he would be diagnosed with cancer and starting chemo 15 days after our engagement? After we found out he was sick we were planning on keeping our date and having a small dinner with our family. The pressure was starting to build so I asked him on a Thursday night if he wanted to get married after I got off the next day. I didn’t know we were really going to do this until about noon on Friday. I didn’t have a dress, pictures, cake, flowers, bridal or bachelorette party, but I got to marry my best friend!

 

Statistics

Cliff did something a few weekends ago that you should never do when you are sick. He researched his cancer, which gave him statistics. I really hate statistics because they aren’t a guarantee on what your final outcome will be. Most people offer us encouraging stories about others they know that are survivors of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. What most people don’t realize is that Cliff has Non-Hodgkin’s T-Cell Lymphoblastic Lymphoma. This only affects 2% of patients that have Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. The 5 year survival rate of this cancer is 40%-50%.

We are getting to the point in Cliff’s cancer treatment that we start talking about life after treatment. We have to decide if Cliff needs to take the prevention meds after radiation. Most of you are thinking yes you take the medicine because its prevention and you don’t want the cancer to come back. The problem with the medicines is the laundry list of side effects and the long term damage it causes. Dr. Turner told us that he and his colleges simply don’t know what Cliff should do. The last time his doctor treated someone with this cancer was 15 years ago, and before that one other guy 5 years before. This was also treated on a different type of chemo. There isn’t enough research to say yes you need the meds or no you don’t with this early stage of lymphoblastic lymphoma. Because of the rarity of his cancer you can’t get enough patients to do a study to find this answer out.

When Cliff is in the hospital he is surrounded by death. He is with other cancer patients who have been battling for awhile and it’s time to accept that nothing else can be done.  We watch their families stand outside their rooms discussing how to make them comfortable. One week I watched this patient sleeping and his wife and daughter looked completely exhausted, but still reading the bible to him. They stood by his side the whole week until he finally passed away. I wondered how they felt. I can only imagine that they are relived, sad, and angry.  This last stay in the hospital a lady was passing away in the room behind Cliff. Her family was in and out of the hospital the whole week and eventually made it to Cliff’s room to talk. I think he talked with everyone in her immediate family. Her husband walked by one night and I was lying in bed with Cliff. He told us that he’s so happy to see us in bed and fighting this together. It was like he wished he could crawl in bed with his wife and lay there with her, but he couldn’t. He had so much sadness in his eyes. He didn’t know what to do with himself. The lady eventually went to hospice and we found out last week that she did pass away.

This leaves me with what my greatest fear since this begun. What if it comes back? The doctor can’t make any guarantees if the cancer will come back or not. However, he reminded us that Cliff has something if he ever needs it….a sibling bone marrow match. The chances of his sister being a match were 1 in 4. When I got the news she was a match all I could do was cry. When I asked Cliff how he feels about her being a match he says fortunate. She is our hope if the cancer comes back.

I think about the statistics and the dying patients and they do scare me. You can’t go through this journey and not think about death. However, I truly believe that Cliff will be okay. Cliff is a fighter and even on his worst pain days he is doing the best he can to put a smile on his face for all of us. I don’t think Cliff will ever know what an inspiration he is to everyone that is on this cancer journey with us.

Chemo Round 5/Hospital Stay 6!

Today Cliff will start his fifth round of chemo! It’s exciting to be at the half way done point. Some of you saw that I posted on Facebook that his mass is practically gone! That’s exciting news because we know the chemo is working. His blood and platelet counts are becoming slow to recover, but that’s to be expected the further he gets into treatment. (Remember to donate at Carter Blood Care if you can/willing)

So from the last time he had chemo this is what Cliff has been up too…

·         Losing his eyebrows (Sensitive subject)

·         Throwing the ball with Coy

·         Playing/Crawling with Gabriella

·         Giving me a hard time.

·         Tired (Because of all of that and low blood/platelet counts)

As we were checking in the hospital I noticed how routine/comfortable this is becoming. We walk to the admissions desk and they know us. We walk upstairs and the nurses and techs are lining up to say hi and comment on his weight gain. The dining clerk asked what Cliff wanted for breakfast and remembered that he wouldn’t eat last time.  After we got to Cliff’s room he went next door to talk with a patient that was here last time too. The billing guy came around the corner to say hi and not give us a bill! Lupe with housekeeping cries almost every time she sees Cliff. She says that he will be okay because God told her to touch his toes and she did when he was sleeping one day. They care and inspire us with their stories of themselves or family member’s being cancer survivors. I feel at ease when I’m working knowing that he’s in good hands.

The goal is for him to get discharged on Friday!

Cliff Update!

Once again it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I’m busy/tired!  

Cliff’s “evil” B treatment wasn’t so evil. The new group of nausea meds the doctor gave him must have done the trick. It was a big relief not to experience what we did with his first B treatment…that was awful!  He will have his 5^th chemo treatment next Monday.  We’ve decided not to have any expectations when we go in for treatments because you never know how his body is going to react.

Overall he has been doing well since his last chemo. The main thing is that he’s tired. Every time he leaves the hospital he has a new chemo symptom. This time it’s a rash on his bald head. He had a platelet transfusion last Friday and he’ll get a blood transfusion tomorrow. After the blood transfusion his energy level will increase. It’s always something so we just go with the flow!

September is Leukemia/Lymphoma awareness month! The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society is a great resource if you want to learn more about blood cancers or if you would like to donate towards research. This is an organization that Cliff and I will heavily be involved with after the New Year.

Click here to Donate Now!