February 2017
Some time had passed since my round with cancer. It had become part of the past and I was moving on and eager to forget.
One morning I went to work and shortly after I arrived I had a searing pain in my right side. I tried to brush it off but coworkers insisted that it was appendicitis and it could rupture at any momement. I went to the doctor and had some scans done. The next day I sat with the nurse as she told me that there were two kidney stones stuck together and they needed to be operated on right away. Is that all, Kinsey stones I’ve got that. No big deal just give it a few days, she also very casually mentioned that there were a few lung nodules that showed up on my scans. I immediately freaked out and asked her about them. She said they were most likely from a cold but since I had a history of cancer that they’d fax them over to my oncologist. In that momement I knew it had come back. The nurse couldn’t understand why I didn’t care about the kidney stones and insisted it was a top priority. Never went back to that office again.
I visited the oncologist a few weeks later where they ran more scans but the nodules were too small. They would run more CT scans in three months for more information but there was nothing to do but wait. Three months went by, another round of CT scans showed growth and more nodules but not the 10 cm needed to biopsy. Come back in three more months and don’t worry about it they said. Three more months past and it was more of that same I had nodules ranging in size from 3-7, still too small to biopsy so no treatment. Just waiting. The waiting game takes a toll. You want to pretend it’s not there but it’s always in the back of your mind. In January another round of CT scans, it had almost been a year since the nodules were first accidently noticed while looking at my kidney stones—I believe there are no accidents. The nodules weren’t quite large enough to do a biopsy and they wanted to wait three more months. I was tired of waiting and wanted answers and to begin treatment. I opted to do a riskier needle biopsy on one of the larger nodules. I’d be wake for the incision. The oncologist said there may not be enough sample to make a determination. That didn’t matter, I wanted and needed answers.
On February 14, Valentine’s Day they stuck a needle in my lung—hows that for irony. I was home for a day then back to work anxiously awaiting the results. I hoped for the best, nodules from an old infection or cold. Somehow in my heart though I knew.
The call came as expected and confirmed Melanoma in my lungs. Based on the biopsy they said there were multiple tumors in both lungs. Doctors call them nodules instead of tumors. Maybe the thought is that it sounds not as scary. I gathered up my things from the meeting I had stepped out of, went to my office and still crying called MD Anderson for an appointment. I could have filled out a form and waited for them to call me, but there was not time to waste. This was a step I needed to take now.
In such a short period of time I had gone from stage 2B with doctors who told me to “go live my life cancer-free” to having it come back in my lungs as stage 4. What the hell happened to stage 3? Why didn’t they stop it? There was time. So many questions and I was walking a very tight rope. I had hesitations about going to MD Anderson. In 1989 my grandfather underwent treatment for cancer in Houston and passed away after a very short time. At seven years old that left a big impression on me. I wanted to stay away from that place and find my own way. Now approaching my 36th Birthday I had to make my peace by visiting my grandfather and going to see MD Anderson doctors with an open mind. The research I had found online stated stage 4 patients had a five year survival rate of less than 10%. Ten percent, what was I going to do with that. It’s unacceptable. No matter what fears I had to face or treatments I was not going to resign myself to statistics—-despite being a former AP Statistics teacher. The fear was still there but each day I faced the uncertainty determined to somehow make it through. 
Courageous Perseverance 