The first post in our cancerblog

Man plans, God laughs.
- Anonymous

Cheryl and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary back in August. We'd just purchase a mondo home entertainment system, so we'd agreed that that was going to be our present to each other. Nonetheless, Cheryl picked up a copy of The Best of Alec Baldwin from Saturday Night Live, since we're both fans of the sickness and wrongness that is Alec Baldwin, Funnyman. Yes, it had all the classics; Canteen Boy, Schwetty Balls, but our personal favorite was a sketch where Baldwin played a clueless soap opera actor attempting to pronounce medical terms. To wit:

"I've got bad news. We think it could be the Big C: Canker! It could be benig, it could be mal-ig-NANT. We're hoping it's benig."

I realize it doesn't quite have the same humor quotient on the written page, but trust me, it's quite chuckle-worthy.

So where am I going with this?

Three years ago, Cheryl had a nasty irregular mole removed from her right shoulder, leaving her with a nifty six-inch Franken-scar on her back. The doctors removed lymph node as well and declared her cancer-free.

A couple of months ago, Cheryl started having stomach problems, early morning nausea and cramping. Antacids didn't solve the problem. Then the suggestion was maybe a gall bladder infection. Finally, Cheryl had an endoscopy and had the ol' camera-down-the-throat to get a good look in her tummy and take some biopsy samples.

A week later, we got the news, and it wasn't good. Metastatic melanoma. And, no, it was not benig.

Yeah, that week was a lot of fun. Lots of crying and sleepless nights.

A PET scan the following week brought more bad news. The cancer had spread to her right ovary and one nebulous spot in her lower GI tract.

To say we were kind of a mess would be an understatement, especially if you started looking at stats regarding metastatic melanoma on line - you get a lot of "don't take too long to get your affairs in order." Once it gets into your innards, you see, it's all but guaranteed to come back.

Okay, that's the ugly part. Now the good news.

The cancer is presently operable, and isn't anywhere really "bad", like in the bone marrow, liver, brain, lungs, or pancreas. The scalpel jockey...I mean, the surgeon... could currently operate and remove all the cancer.

Also, Cheryl was able to find a number of cancer survivor stories online, once she gathered her courage after her last foray, which were a lot more optimistic than previous reports. They're doing some amazing stuff with melanomas these days - being as melanomas are increasing considerably these days; thank you, sun worshippers.

Last week, we saw an oncologist down in Lewiston. Because we are in a small population center, cancer specialists are few and far between, so we had to wait two and a half fracking weeks to see this guy. He recommended putting off surgery, since by the time Cheryl recovered from the cutting, odds are the cancer would be back.

There's a number of treatment options, including a melanoma vaccine (!!) which he mentioned had seemingly cured some of his patients. He recommended going to either the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica or the Oregon Clinic in Portland, both of which have doctors doing a lot of cutting edge melanoma research. We thought Portland would be the best option in terms of proximity, and he would set up an appointment for us.

That, unfortunately, was a fracking week ago, and we have yet to hear back. As of Monday, we start calling every hour, on the hour, until we at least hear something. The American health care system has many positive aspects. This, unfortunately, is not one of them. (We are incredibly thankful, however, for having health insurance at this time).

All in all, we're pretty positive. Cheryl refuses to let this get her down, and I remain convinced that we're going to beat this thing. I refuse to accept any other outcome. We have too much stuff to do, least of all popping out introverted red-headed albinos who will eventually rule the world.

Rather than try to email everybody with updates, better minds than mine (thanks Jamie) suggested that we start a blog to keep people apprised of our progress and write down our thoughts of the day. We'll keep this updated as often as possible to let you all know how things progress.

- Dave