Happy Dance

Happy dance–that is what I was doing this week after I left the doctors office. As I stood outside, I even shed a little tear and praised God; just short of falling to my knees. Last year I was not receiving very good news from the doctors regarding my disease prognosis. When I started another new treatment regiment in March, I had mixed emotions. I fluctuated between optimism and being hopeful to grounding myself in the event the medication wasn’t working. I tend to be a realist.

Monday evening, I logged into my medical chart to review the results of my posted blood work from the previous week. I noticed my tumor marker was 75, which is high. But when compared to the marker in February, we realized it has been dropping! Down from 189. This was the first indication that I was responding to the current treatment protocol.

When the doctors came into the room, they informed me they had very good news to share. They confirmed what we expected. However, the good news went beyond my lowered tumor marker. According to my CT scan, several of the nodules have reduced in size! This far exceed the teams expectations. They said had my scans showed no progression (nodules didn’t change), they would count that as a success.

I understand the dynamics of my disease. But I will take this win now and celebrate for what it is. Faith in my Heavenly Father is all I need to keep up the fight.