No. 8

This past Tuesday was my 8th infusion of pembrolizumab - 24 weeks in all. I feel good, even though I can feel old man fatigue sneaking up on me a little bit more. I'm getting to the gym at least 3 days a week, and the golf course on the other days. In between I work in the yard or on the truck or just browse the aisles of Pagano's - the local-owned bitchin hardware store with aisles so narrow only one person at a time can walk their lengths.

I'm also on a medical leave from my job. For some reason, teaching 5th grade and managing Stage 4 Melanoma didn't work out so well. I tried it for a short time, but I just became resentful for not prioritizing my healing, over teaching. I actually received my 1st infusion on the 2nd day of this school year. I was ready to go, ready to work and ready to get my meds and do it all. I was even blessed with a really sweet group of kids and thought "This ain't so bad... I can handle this 'cause I'm Mr Landers and ....."

Fuck that. I think it was the 4th day of school where I was looking out the window thinking what the hell was I doing. I know there's a lot of people on this drug that are managing it just fine and continue to work and have little to no side effects, but.... I really didn't want to work. I just wanted to take a break from it all and give myself, my body, my soul my everything every chance to heal and become well again. Even Dr Daud agreed. He's so wonderfully blunt sometimes - I like that in a person. "Take a break!" he said with his wonderfully slight Indian accent, when I first brought up the subject. So I did, and I am.

I'm cashing in all of my sick days, plus receiving another 60 from my unions catastrophic sick bank. I'm covered. I got this. I'm so very fucking lucky, and I've been lucky for most of my life, when it comes to the things that really count. I used to think my life was just too fucking hard to manage humanely, but as I got older I came to understand that my life's challenges were really my life's fortune. When you've had as much loss as I have, it's really the only way to live your life - fortunately.

The plan is to keep me on my current therapy until PET/CT scans come back 100% clear of any tumors, and then for awhile after that. His thinking is that this will take just over a year, about 20 infusions in all. I asked Dr Daud if anyone, over time, had built up a resistance to pembrolizumab, and if their positive results began to deteriorate. He said there had been a few cases like this, but their responses were nothing like mine. So here I am being lucky again, for having a "best possible response" to my therapy and moving one infusion closer to  NED, or no evidence of disease.

I want to believe that. I want to believe the scans so far and the radiologist's reports and all of the markers and comments and blood tests and smiles.... but I can't. Just like a lot of people I'm a stage 4 cancer patient and I know all too well that it will never just be "over". So I go to the gym, I play golf, I eat well and take sleep meds when I need to and pray so hard and so much and not just for me, but for all of us. Everyday.