Our Cancer Journey
Life has quite a way of constantly keeping you on your toes and still amazes me how just hearing a few words sends your entire existence into a tailspin. It was one year ago today we heard the words for the first time, “you have cancer.” Just thinking back to that day brings waves of fear and sadness that hits deep in my soul. We struggled to understand how this could happen, my husband was young, and we had plans, coming out of two tough years of the pandemic we were excited about the future. All of that came to a screeching halt.
Life has quite a way of constantly keeping you on your toes and still amazes me how just hearing a few words sends your entire existence into a tailspin. It was one year ago today we heard the words for the first time, “you have cancer.” Just thinking back to that day brings waves of fear and sadness that hits deep in my soul. We struggled to understand how this could happen, my husband was young, and we had plans, coming out of two tough years of the pandemic we were excited about the future. All of that came to a screeching halt.
Our world quickly became consumed with tests, doctors, and hospitals. Mark went through chemo and radiation from July through August. Then underwent massive surgery to remove what the chemo and radiation couldn’t get, two-thirds of his esophagus and one-third of his stomach. He was a warrior, so strong, and never complained through any of it. A PET scan in December showed that the cancer was completely removed from his esophagus and there was just a tiny little bit left in a lymph node they couldn’t reach. The plan was for one year of immunotherapy.
January his immunotherapy started, every two weeks. They were to rescan in March and hopefully go to once-a-month therapy. We felt so optimistic and began making plans again, thinking about the future. He was doing so well that even the doctors were optimistic. And then life kicked us back on our heels. During the three months of immunotherapy, the cancer grew and metastasized. Then we heard the most dreaded words, “you are now stage 4 and the treatment options get limited.” Cancer is a sneaky bitch, what was a tiny little bit on a lymph node spread to the liver, lungs, and more lymphs. We were devastated and pissed off.
Now we are in full fight mode, Mark is undergoing an intense regimen of chemo and immunotherapy. We have spent hours researching what else we can do to fight this beast. We hired our own Integrative Oncologist, Nutritionist, and Holistic medicine team. Mark started off-label drugs, supplements and we completely changed our diets. While the chemo regimen is taking a toll on him, we are hoping that our attack from the other side is also working on the cancer. We will not know until August whether our efforts have worked.
As we have navigated through this journey we have become more and more open about sharing what we are learning along the way. At first, we kept the news to family and close friends but as we have worked through this process we have become much more vocal in sharing our journey. It feels selfish to not help others with what we have learned.
If you have made it this far in this long post, thank you for hearing about our journey. I plan to share more about the details of what we are doing to not only fight cancer but live in a much healthier organic way. Because life is too short for anyone else to hear “you are stage 4.” Our battle is far from over but we will continue to live every day to the fullest!
