December 3, 2020 – My oncologist walked into the examination room and, as he sat down, proclaimed, “Well…we have some pretty good news.”

Yes, I’m smiling.

The good news? Today’s CT scan showed that one of the tumors in my lungs had a 30 to 40 percent reduction. The other key lung tumor remained just about the same, and the tumor/blood mass around my right adrenal gland stayed pretty much the same. Yes, pretty good news indeed.

A Systematic Boost

Immunotherapy medicines, such as Keytruda, are meant to boost the body’s natural immune system in order to fight cancer–melanoma, in my case. These medicines, however, can have some serious side effects. My blood work showed that I am tolerating this new drug fairly well. That is another bit of good news!

Another Round on Me

A grumpy old man.

Today was also my fourth round of treatment (infusion). The immunotherapy infusion process is fairly quick and easy. As I stated in Science, Real Science, the preparation process takes longer than the infusion. Today, however, the West Cancer Center was on-the-ball, so we were in and out in less than four hours. 

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

While my lab work showed good tolerance of Keytruda, my body’s response has been all over the place. I have really good days – lots of energy with little pain – and I have some really bad days when I’m unable to do much without a lot of effort. Fortunately, I’ve only had a couple of “ugly” episodes. My hope is that those episodes are few and far between.

I’ll trade the fatigue, lethargy, minor pain, and everything else if it means my cancer is under-control.

On wings of hope.

New Year…New Hope?

Finally, 2020 has been a helluva year – to say the least. My hope is that everything gets better, or back to ‘normal’ or something. It’s got to be better than what we have right now.

I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and a Happy New Year. I plan to. And I plan to celebrate many more New Years to come.

Thanks, as always, for listening.