Light at the end of the tunnel

Well, I do my last (fingers crossed) chemo on Friday.
Which means I had my visit with the oncologist and the clinical trials nurse today.
I confess, I have been stressing about it a bit lately.

So, Elaine and I went to the cancer agency and they took their standard 3 vials of blood, and then they took 4 more, bigger vials, because I agreed to be part of a study. In fact, I agreed to be part of a couple of studies and I am not even sure which study I gave the blood for today, but that’s okay. And it’s not even the end of it. I still have 4 more vials to add on to some other blood draw at some point in the future.

They took the blood and then we had an hour and a half before the meeting with the oncologist and the nurse so we hung out in the car and read.
I have started the Harry Potter series all over again and I can’t believe that J.K.Rowling isn’t going to have her 6th book out in time for Christmas but then, as a friend of mine pointed out, she doesn’t have to care about things like having her book out in time for all the Christmas shopping because everyone who was going to buy her book will buy it no matter when she gets it out.
Still, it would have been nice.
Anyway… we sat and read and then we went and met with the medical folks.

They weighed me and then I went back into the examination room and the nurse handed me a piece of paper that had the results of all my bloodwork since I started.
After a few moments of confusion on my part, she pointed out that this piece of paper had the history of my CA125 levels and that they are at all all-time low of 2.2 !!
I was stunned and started making little cheering sounds.
I asked the doctor if the reading would ever go to zero and he said no. He said that if they measured Elaine’s blood right then, it’s possible that her score could be higher than mine.
I asked if this meant that, at this moment in time, I am cancer-free, and he said yes.
He said a bunch of other things that I seem to be blacking out. I blame the chemo drugs for that. But I recall snippets like my ‘test results were brilliant’ and how he ‘couldn’t be happier’ and I think he had a ‘spectacular’ or a ‘super’ or a ‘stupendous’ in there somewhere but, like I say, I may be making that up.

And then we asked about the future.
First of all, I will still be doing the last chemo on Friday. Good test results didn’t get me off the hook for that.
And, he will be seeing me every three months for the next 2 years, and then every 6 months until I hit a 7 year anniversary of knowing him.

Still, I am pretty stoked.
I think it is still sinking in.
And I think it is going to take a while to get over how completely stressful and intense the last 6 months have been. I expect there may be a bit of a crash at some point in the future.

But right now, like the oncologist, I couldn’t be happier.