12) Overdue Update

Hey everyone,

First off I want to say thank you for all the love and support I have been flooded with over the past few weeks. I know that I sound like a broken record but I will not stop expressing how grateful I am to all of you. Knowing that I have such a large army of people rooting for me keeps me from feeling like I'm in this alone. And gives me hope that something good will come out of all of this. Don't know what that will be but I have faith that God is going to make it big. I also want to acknowledge that as all of this is happening, everyone is going to react to my story differently. It has been a lot to process in a very short period of time. The fact that I have cancer is a complex situation because it came out of nowhere and there are a lot of things that are still unknown. But please know that you are allowed to feel however you feel. Which is something that I am still wrestling through cause there is still a lot to process.

With regards to how I am doing, considering I just had surgery I am doing really well. I am not oblivious that the fact my body still needs to heal and that that will take time. So I know that I will not be feeling the same as I did before surgery. But in the grand scheme of things I am doing really well. I do need to make sure that I am not overexerting myself which has been a struggle. Since there is so much I want to do and people I want to see.

Again, I'm trying to focus on the positives and the things I can control rather than dwell on the fact the I have cancer and it will probably end up killing me at some point. Do I believe God has the power to make me cancer free? Absolutely! And given all of the treatment options, advances, research, and so forth who knows other than God?

But I am also trying to be realistic about what is to come. I want to focus on living what Iife I have left, rather than dwelling on the fact that I am going to die. Because everyone dies eventually...and for a lot of us, we don't have the opportunity to see it coming. I have assurance in where I am going, so I know I have nothing to fear. God is good and has granted me enormous peace as I am standing at the precipice of the unknown. I am determined not to let the fact that I have cancer define who I am. Instead, I want to surrender the fact that I have cancer to God and let Him use it as He sees fit.

I apologize if it makes some people uncomfortable to read my thoughts about dying, but I see the value in being totally transparent through all of this. I want to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. I just want to say again that that is completely okay how everyone will process this journey.

On a more positive note, my appointment with my oncologist went really well on Wednesday and I am happy that I am receiving my care at Hershey. I am scheduled to start Immunotherapy next Wednesday, which will entail going to the clinic and getting an IV infusion for about 3 hr or so. Then I will go home. I will be receiving two drugs: Opdivo and Yervoy. These are the same drugs that came from the research that won the Nobel Prize earlier this week. How cool is that! The overall goal of these drugs is that they will supercharge my immune system to recognize the cancer cells and attack them. Hopefully, this will shrink the tumors I have and prevent more from forming. The immunotherapy will most likely be 4 infusions with 3 or so weeks in between. There is some debate in the medical world for what is the best sequence of treatments so this is just a rough estimate as to what my treatment will look like. However, we don't know how my body will respond to the drugs with regards to side effects so the exact course may need to be tweaked depending on how I respond. The potential side effects can be really bad or they could be fairly mild. It varies from patient to patient. Fingers crossed...I get the mild symptoms.

The other component to all of this is whether I have a BRAF mutation or not. If this is the case, I would be able to take another set of drugs that work on making the immune system even more sensitized to the tumor cells. This would give me another weapon in my arsenal to use in shrinking the tumors. This is not a replacement to the immunotherapy but could be used in conjunction to increase the odds of shrinking the tumors. Lord willing, we will know whether I have this mutation by next Tuesday.

Specific radiation treatments are still being discussed, but I know for sure that I will be having a gamma knife procedure in the next 3-4 weeks to treat the area of my brain where they removed the tumor. This is not because they did not remove all the tumor with the surgery but to make sure that the surgical bed is free from any remaining cancer cells.

Despite everything that is going on, I am still left in amazement at the amount of love that has been poured out on my family and me. Words can not express how much I appreciate and am touched by everyone's outcry of love and support. I apologize that it has taken so long for me to post a new update. And thank you for both your patience and interest in following my story.

I found a quote from Victor Hugo's Les Miserable, which as some of you know, is one of my favorites. It expresses well how I'm feeling.

" Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved."

You have definitely convinced me of this. And it is through that knowledge that I know I will get through whatever this cancer and life has in store for me.