Friday, May 22, 2009

Would you want to know ?

I watched a recent episode of Scrubs, where, a man found out his mother had a terminal decease. He was told that he had a 50% of developing the same condition since it was genetic. The big question facing the man was if he wanted to be tested or not. When he decided not to, the dr. questioned why not ? His explanation stuck with me..He said that once he knew, he could never go back. It's not something that you can let out of the bag, and then expect to be able to put it nicely back where it came from.
 
I guess I see the same pattern with Leukemia, and any serious condition for that matter. Even if you follow the best possible path, of receiving log 3, and possibly even to undetectable, then can you be 100% it will never rear it's ugly head again ? I was thinking about this when I had lunch recently with Tyler, Mandy, and Cynthia a week ago. Now I don't know enough about the official status after a Bone Marrow Status, but I believe that technically Tyler may be cured. But they still have him on Tasignia, which is a 3rd generation cancer drug. So even thought he technically should be 'cured', they still keep him on cancer fighting drugs. I guess there is more to it than I understand. But the CML is out of the bag, and it's something I think we'll just have to face that will be part of our lives, for a long, long time.
 
Speaking of Tyler, it had to be the highlight since our son was born, to get to see Mandy and Tyler. It was so nice to spend some quality time, and in many ways it felt like pre-cancer days. If I had to summarize it, Tyler looked great. What was most comforting was to see that his wonderful sense of humor and spirit was coming through again. He's been through hell and back to quote an old Meatloaf song, but he's on the road of recovery and I just continue to pray that this will just be something in his rearview mirror and he moves forward. And as an added bonus, he came to watch our soccer game that night. He had a big old sub with him, so I'm thinking his appetite is back !