The Final Chapter

By Dave Chavez

It’s been more than a year since we’ve made a post, titled “Looks Who’s Home”.  A lot has happened, so  here we go.

First, the tone of this entry.  Since we started this blog Dad has periodically brought up the subject of this final post.  “Do you think it’s going to have a happy ending?”, he’d ask, and we’d laugh.  I don’t think we’re the kind of family to set false expectations.  From us you won’t hear “Don’t worry, I’m sure everything is going to be okay”.  We’re a little more realistic:  “If the ending isn’t quite what you want, who gets your truck and the .45 semi-automatic?” (model 1911, US Govt Issue)

This story is a good one.  Mom and Dad are home now, both “cancer free”, settling back into their normal routines.  It’s about as simple as that.  It wasn’t easy at all.  But as they’ve lived their lives, they got through all of it without complaining, by not giving up, challenging the status quo and breaking the rules.  Remember, this is the couple who in 1962 drove from courthouse to courthouse, starting in Georgia, ending in South Carolina, to find a clerk who would look past the color difference in their skin and marry them.

Dad came home from the hospital skinny and weak, unsure if the surgeon had removed the tumor.   He had new things to manage:  16 weeks of chemo, colostomy bag, more surgery, and an air fryer.   In case you don’t remember, he was in the hospital for a couple of weeks, not allowed to eat and sipping only ice chips.  He had some long nights (without Fox News) dreaming the morning might include juice, or a few sips of clear broth.  Maybe someday he could enjoy a plate of spare ribs.  Against this commercial he was understandably defenseless.

Now home, he had to recover under the cloud of uncertainty of the surgical success.  Did they get it?  Do they need to go back in?  Had it spread?  Was it gone?

After he built up some weight and strength, Dr. Chai ordered a post surgical MRI.  The interpretation of that scan showed suspicious shadows.   A low point here.  None of us wanted to believe the report.  Dr. Chai showed us the images online, circling the whitish blurry shape.  “See?”  Well, how could we see?  None of us, including I presume Dr. Chai, had been trained to read MRI scans.   Maybe it was our skepticism, or maybe Dr. Chai didn’t believe it either, or maybe it was just good medical practice, but she referred us to two expert physicians in SF.  We’ll see what they had to say.  Good thing about two others, my Dad pointed out, was that with Dr. Chai we’d have three opinions–no chance for a tie.  Later Dad would say “doesn’t matter what they want, I get the final vote.”

So maybe he willed that blurry whitish thing away, or maybe it was nothing to worry about at all, or maybe it wasn’t anything more than scar tissue, but the other two Dr.s concluded there was nothing to worry about.  Their opinion:   no evidence of a tumor.

Since then Dad’s been through more tests just to make sure there’s no suspect activity.   Just the other day he had a routine followup visit and all looked good.   But the next day they asked him to come in for a CT scan — something in the bloodwork looked suspicious.  You can read about the CEA bloodtest, or if you are like Alexa, the details are amazingly available from memory.   It’s an indicator of cancer activity in the large intestine and rectum.

I called my Mom the other day about the results of the CT scan.  She told me Dr. Chai had just called to let them know that there was nothing to worry about.   Great news.  “Where’s Dad?”, I asked.  “Oh, he’s out at the property, shooting with his friends”.    He wasn’t waiting around for the test results.  He took the truck with his buddies, and went out to shoot his .45.

A few more thoughts

So much has been learned about cancer in the last 20 years.  Those advancements in understanding and treatment applied directly to my parents’ outcomes.   My Mom’s condition and treatment were almost routine.  Not very long ago they wouldn’t have known where to begin.

Here’s an interesting viewpoint:

Our bodies are producing cells by the millions every day, and once in a while a mistake is made.  Those cells are normally destroyed by mechanisms that are vigilantly looking for such mutations.  In that light the definition of cancer is somewhat arbitrary.   In reality, the processes are happening all the time.