lunhs cancer

�In five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes. How do you measure a year in a life?� - RENT I made it another year with metastatic lung cancer. The past 365 days have encompassed.... A Phase II clinical trial Brain surgery Brain radiation Brain swelling Months of steroids An Expanded Access clinical trial A Phase I/II clinical trial Bone radiation Countless MRIs, bones scans, PET scans, EKGs, echocardiograms, and blood tests. It was a tough year. The past 365 days have also encompassed... A road trip to Minnesota Celebrating my parent�s 50th wedding anniversary Seeing my eldest enter his final year of elementary school A family visit to the Holiday House A dreamy family vacation to California My 13th wedding anniversary Girl Scout camp with my daughters A fancy trip to New York Countless family dinners, holidays, scraped knees, homework sheets, movies, and school pick ups. Strolling through my notes from the past year left me marveling at the juxtaposition of the monument...

Clearly this cancer likes to keep me on my toes. You may recall that I finally got some good news on my April brain scan, the first good news in a year or more. My May scan focused on my heart and bones. The heart looks just fine (yay!) but a spot appeared in my left shoulder blade. Just when you think you can breathe easy for a bit. It is a spot that was seen back in 2013, but that we thought was dead for all these years. I guess it wasn�t, or it is some sort of zombie cancer that is rearing its ugly head. And I thought the pains in my shoulder were a pulled muscle from all my travel and camping fun! The good news is that I can stay in the trial, and we are treating this spot like a single mutant clone and zapping it with targeted radiation. And I can do the radiation here in Michigan. All good things. So on Monday I start three every-other-days of radiation. Not my first rodeo, as the nurse said, though my first time where I have to be aware of possible skin damage. I�m going to assu...