Life Is An Emotional Rollercoaster

We go to bed every night not knowing what the next day is going to bring us. Knowing that today was going to be an emotional day one way or another I went to bed nervous to find the results from pathology. 

What I did not expect was to wake up to a phone call telling me that my Grandfather (John Gruber Jr. "Jiggs") had passed away during the night. He was 88 years old and lived a wonderful life. There will be many times that I will have memories that remind me of the good times we shared growing up and I will be forever be grateful of the relationship that we shared.  

    After I got my mind straight we headed to the Hillman Cancer Center at 9:30. On the drive down when we were an hour into the drive I got a phone call from my Medical Oncologist saying that the pathology report had not come back yet. I explained that I was already on my way down and wanted to come in anyways to talk about future scans. At this point my emotions switched from sad to angry, frustrated, and my patience is running thin. 11:30 I got to my appointment and turns out they were able to get my pathology reports! 

     They got EVERYTHING with surgery. All of the cancer, and clear margins. This means that as of now I am cancer FREE! Now my emotions have jumped from sad, angry to relieved, happy, blessed. How can I feel these emotions all in the same day? My medical oncologist said that as of now I will not be needing chemo, or radiation that it would only make me very sick, and from the reports it is not necessary. I will be returning to the Hillman Center every 3 months for the next 2 years for CT scans of my chest, abdomen, and pelvis. After that it will go to every 6 months for many years to follow. With sarcoma cancer there is less than a 50% chance of reoccurrence , so it is critical that I stay on top of scans, because the best chance of survival is through catching it fast, and surgically removing the tumor. 

    I feel that I am a pretty lucky person I found my cancer, was proactive on getting a diagnosis and surgery, and got it removed before it over took my body. I am so happy that I will be able to move forward. I truly believe that all of the prayers, positive thoughts, energy that came my way truly helped me during this time. I know my journey with cancer is not over It will always be in the back of my mind and a worry at every scan, but I feel that I have a lot of guardian angels watching over me and I just gained another one and everything will be ok.