Saw my oncologist today and talked through the reasons she suggested the ribociclib. The kind of cancer I have is more likely to come back later. So after 5 years, I won't have really achieved a particular sort of milestone, I'll just be happy to have gone another 5 years. With everything I've done, my longer term risk of recurrence is still at about 20%. It's possible that the additional medication might knock that down another four or five percentage points, but as I told my doctor, I'm healthy now. I'm as healthy as I'll be now, and I don't want to lose the "feeling like myself, able to do things, not at the hospital all the time" in the pursuit of something that may or may not even help me in 10 or 20 years. If I had children, my personal calculus would be different. But I'm don't, so I'm doing this and I'm really happy with my decision.
Monitoring will be minimal, and I'm mostly going to be paying attention to new pain that persists for weeks. Or a cough. Or anything out of the ordinary.
The "cancer free" concept, while technically accurate, is a complicated thing for this kind of cancer. As far as we can tell, it's gone. But you're never really done. I'll spend the rest of my life knowing that it might come back. And if it does, I've got about 3 years past that point, if I'm lucky. Back at the beginning of this, when they thought it might be in my bones, I sat with the idea of a shorter life than I'd anticipated. I made my peace with it. That work was useful. I carry it with me.
I really do feel incredibly lucky. I'm so grateful for where I'm at and how I feel right now, and I hope things go well for me. I hope it never comes back. But regardless of the future, I'll have no regrets about the decisions I made here.
No comments:
Post a Comment