I was in my kitchen recently with my teenagers, and I said, “Oh, I got the results back from my biopsy.”
One of them said – as if I was once again going to ask them to do the dishes- “Dad, do you have cancer again?”
The answer is “No, I don’t.” I had gotten the results of a colonoscopy and an endoscope back, and everything looked fine. Once again, we have a tumor marker going up, but no tumor. Life has many twists and turns, but this is one of the more amusing ones I’ve come across.
For my kids, it’s all normal. We’ve been through cancer three times, and it’s like getting on the bus and going to school. In fact, it’s worse: my youngest one told me recently, “Remember when you said if your cancer came back, you’d buy me six Boston Cream donuts at DD?” I’m sorry, Tim, to let you down. No cancer. Maybe I can go shopping for some good carcinogens…
So as far as I know, I’m clear of cancer, and ten years out, which is amazing. I see my oncologist on Tuesday and am interested in what he has to say. I don’t see how they could do any more tests on me; I’ve been scanned and biopsied and operated on and probed so much, I’m pickled. We can lay sheets of paper with pictures of my insides (esophagus, colon – large and small) across our kitchen table and in living color*: what could be better? But no tumor.
So, I think I’m done with tests – which is too bad for little Timmy. No donuts. Who said life is a bowl of cherries (or a cream filled donut, for that matter)?
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*After my ‘scope, they give me a printout with pictures of my esophagus in living color! What technology!
Cancer Chronicles 