Reply #14: Hi Auntie

[merci_me]

It really isn't all that bad. Just during the actual chemo months and til it all wears off. In the course of 13 years, it's really a blip. In 13 years, there have been so many great things in our lives. More grandkids, a great-grandson just fun. Jim coaches Little League, takes the grandbaby swimming, is re-landscaping the backyard and right now up in a tree installing lights. Then tonight we go off to our Progressive Populist caucus cause we have a Congress to turn BLUE.

Granted, the mental stress just before and waiting for the result of each test is nerve wracking, as you well know. The next testing will be early October.

Actually, maybe we're dumb or whistling in the dark, but chronic sounds better than acute, if they get the vaccines for them up and running. The way the doctor explained it, once it is available, it will be the same as keeping tabs on other chronic illnesses. If you take the meds, follow the rules, and get your tests as directed, they should be able to keep it at bay. I THINK they were saying that as opposed to a cancer that mets, in the chronic, the old original just takes hold again, same place, same symptoms and if you're watching that "place", you have a very good chance of heading it off.

In Jim's case, even though the recurrence was considered a stageIVB, because it was the same cancer, it was actually responding like a stageI because they went after it so quickly and very aggressively. He trusted them and let them call the shots. Though the idea of the chemo again was repulsive to him, he did it and now he's back to his regular life again.

And BTW, at 69, and after two encounters with the chemo and the radiation, today he's not on any medication for anything!!! Me? High blood pressure, fast heartbeat, fluid retention, yada yada, I take seven different prescription drugs a day. Go figure. Maybe because I read all the news and he only knows what he hears me b!tching about. LOL