Diagnosis: Afterparty

I had a video visit with my oncologist today, and formally heard it straight from his mouth to my ears:

No more chemotherapy. Not even clean-up chemo. The pathology from both the colon tumor and the liver tumors was convincing enough that, according to my oncologist, there would be no benefit to doing any more. There’s nothing left to do but go into surveilance mode.

So what’s next?

In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be getting a Signatera blood test, which looks for microscopic traces of my cancer’s DNA and can help monitor for recurrence even before anything might show up on a scan. I’ll be getting one of those plus a scan every three months or so for the next two years.

And if I remain cancer free, at the end of those two years, we can remove the liver pump (and subsequently my port) because by then my risk of recurrance drops DRAMATICALLY.

So while I can’t entirely close the book on this cancer thing quite yet, fingers crossed we’re nearing the end of the story. There’s still some surgery recovery that still needs to happen as well, so this blog is also far from over.

But since I got the news over essenetially a Zoom call, there was no bell to ring. So instead, Anita Ward will have to suffice: