Phasers on Full
Before we left on our road trip, Meaghan and I met with Dr. Falkson, who would be directing the final phase of my treatment, the radiation.
Throughout this whole process of course, I’d been scanned and tested a number of times. The news, according to Dr. Falkson, was good. The chemo seemed to have done its job. The areas of concern that Dr. Petsikas had tagged seemed to be gone.
However, the recommendation was that we proceed with the radiation. Those little spots had been on the pleural membrane, the sac around my lungs, and the thymoma itself had been pressing against my heart. Even just a couple of cells still hanging around could be bad news down the road. By the time they were big enough to show up on a CT scan, they’d have a pretty good root in spots I’d rather they stayed away from.
As Dr. Falkson was aware of our trip plans, he agreed that any additional treatment could be scheduled to begin after we returned.
So I was once again scanned, this time in order to determine the exact placement of four tiny tattoos that would be used for laser sightings to line up the equipment for each of the thirty treatment sessions that Dr. Falkson planned.
And then Meaghan and I hit the road. After the uncertainty of the last few months, it was wonderful to just put miles and miles behind us, and to have the opportunity to spend time not only with Meaghan but with my sons, Brian and Jeremy, my daughter-in-law Nicole, and my grandchildren. We had hoped to be there for the birth of my fourth grandchild, but he decided to hold out until after we had to leave.
Once we were back home – which was now in Kingston, a move we had planned before the illness – I checked in with Dr. Falkson’s office and was told when to show up for the first session.
Since I work primarily from home, and since radiation did not involve the side effects I’d experienced during chemotherapy, I was able to return to work. I still tired easily, but as long as I took that into account, things went along pretty well.
So each day, Monday to Friday, for six weeks, I would walk up to the hospital (which was now only about a twenty minute stroll), take off my shirt, climb onto the table, and hold still while the technicians zeroed in on my tattoos, left the room, and fired the phasers. Climb down, don shirt, have a nice day folks, walk back.
Piece of cake. (although I did get to know where every park bench was on the route.)
And then that too was over.
There will be follow ups for the rest of my life of course. I also have some peculiar aches and pains. They may be no more than the normal creaking and clanking of a body that’s a little more beat up than it was a year ago. The thing is, like someone who jumps at every shadow after being mugged, I no longer shrug off such things as easily as I used to.
Thymomas sometimes come back. Stage IV thymomas sometimes metastasize to other places. Sometimes, people who have gone through this live for decades, with nothing more lasting than a tendency to look over their shoulder frequently.
Only time will tell.
In the meantime life, as they say in the epilogue to every good story, has slowly returned to normal. And to be honest, that’s the most curious aspect of the whole experience. Shouldn’t I have emerged a “changed man”? Shouldn’t I have some profound insight into “cheating death”? Shouldn’t I at least have x-ray vision or titanium claws in my hands??
Apparently not.
Like the veteran who returns from war while so many of his mates did not, I want to honour the memory of others who have not been as fortunate as I have. I’m not quite sure how to do that. Yet. Perhaps telling my story in this way in this space is a place to start. I’m open to suggestions.
Thank you, dear reader, if you have stayed with me through this story. If you think that it may, in any small way, help someone else, I hope that you will share it.
And if you know of anyone who is going through a difficult time, be it a life-threatening illness or anything else, I hope that you will do for them what so many did for me – call, write, spend a few minutes, laugh, cry. Be there.
If there is meaning in life, and I believe that there is, it is found in how we act toward the world. And most especially, toward each other.
Thank you
David
