I feel good. My December colds have almost left me and I am ready for a new year building up my strengths and continuing my healing process. I already made my wish-list of ‘places to go’ as soon as my travel embargo would be released.

But although we know that the threat is always there, we were not ready for the bad news this time. Not again. Not now, when I just got back home and we finally have the feeling that we got our act together at home. Not now, when we started to have so much fun with the four of us.

My lungs have been checked for pneunemia (longontsteking), a known side-effect of the medicines I am using. The lungs appeared to be okay, but I have a huge amount of fluid around the lungs (between the pleura). Yesterday I had a punction and we found out that the color of this fluid was dark red, making it pretty likely to be a metastasize. This would be the first spot outside my bones and a sign of progression of the tumor. On Friday we get the lab-result and we know ‘for sure’.

This was right after meeting with my orthopedist who suggested that I could carefully go on a car-ride or even a short plane-ride. That means I can go out and smell the woods, breath-in sea-air and even see mountains or enjoy an early spring in the south of Europe.

Within one hour the holiday dreams were gone, and Jenn and I were in a little shock. No idea yet what the pleura-fluid means, but we were definitely scared.

For a moment I even felt mad inside myself. It is so much easier to have a symptom and you go to the doctor who can tell you what it is and how he can treat it. In my case, I do not have any symptom, I can breath normally and feel generally good, I even saw photos of my bones indicating no further development (which is great news). And then my oncologist tells us I am likely to have metastasized cells around my lungs.

No imminent actions is to be taken, we first await the lab results. But still, my head is preparing for the discussion with the oncologist. A ‘sign of cancer-progression’ is normally answered by throwing in more chemical soldiers. On the other hand, cancer is known to attack the patient at the weakest spots all the time. The new anti-immune drugs, the December colds and the antibiotics have put a lot of pressure on my lungs, so no surprise that that is seen as a weak spot by the tumor now.

Theories about resisting a cancer by chemicals or by the body’s immune-system now have to be combined and we need to find the right balance.

Balance in life. This is literally going to be my theme in the coming period. Balance between working on my healing and having fun with the family. Having a balanced diet and balanced exercise with enough rest. And now, balancing the pharmaceutical drugs in such a dose that we have enough troops to attack the bad-cells, but avoid killing our own soldiers (like this week both happened with Dutch as well as American troops in Afganistan and Irak).

Soldiers being killed by ‘friendly fire’. That is what needs to be avoided to any price.

In the meantime, I am preparing myself for my first car-ride outside Wijk bij Duurstede.

Joost

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