The Great Cancer Adventure Continues....

January 23, 2018

After many sessions of physical therapy from someone who not only was schooled in Orthopedic PT but also in Oncology PT, and work on my own, the Ortho Hip Doc let me out of the brace, though he did suggest I keep it nearby and still sleep with it at night to help ensure I follow the proper precautions, something to which I readily agreed, in as much as we have come too far and have too much at stake to have this go wrong. I’m still on the cane.

The PT scan originally scheduled weeks and weeks ago for this past Tuesday was re-scheduled for this morning (insurance company snafu noted earlier, or perhaps really just a cost-cutting tactic, aka a stall, on their part), after being resolved in my favor in no small measure due to Betty’s insistence. In any event, I don’t meet with the oncologist until this afternoon, rather than this past Tuesday as originally scheduled.

Well worth the wait, however, as the news could hardly have been much better. While I am NOT “in remission” per se, per the Oncology Doc, the test showed “minimum residual disease”, which is welcome news indeed and about as good as it gets. So good to have Peter with The Champ and me when we first heard that phrase.

My next test is in mid-April, which should provide ample time to recover from the dislocated artificial hip injury (6-12 weeks in a hip brace) followed by an appointment with the oncologist to see what’s next.

After a rough few months, we’ve had a couple of weeks of very welcome news. I am a most fortunate man. Wow!

I guess I need to run as a Democrat for the US House of Representatives in the Missouri 2nd District.

(I did in fact run for the Democratic nomination for the United States Congress, something I felt a calling to do. My campaign consisted of attending pretty much every function to which I was invited and making Social Media posts (rants, of course!) against the Republican incumbent but never disparaging any Democrat. Being accurately described as “a pure protest candidate”, when asked “If nominated, what would you do first?”, I responded ”Demand a recount!”. I have it on good authority (though no one confronted me with this) that some of the Party leadership wished I would simply go away, but I didn’t. I hung in there until the end and, while I came in sixth in a five-way race, likely I brought a few voters to the polls who otherwise might not have exercised their franchise, ending up with some 4-5,000 votes in my favor. More than I thought I would get. I met some amazing and wonderful people along the way, some of whom I am still in touch with.

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• The Great Cancer Adventure