Out of Jail

Hi Everyone,

I'm out of the hospital and resting at the apartment. Mom and Dad and Asa and Andrea are still here. Carla left yesterday. I am feeling fine. I walk a lot and rest a lot. My appetite is getting better little by little. Asa and Andrea leave Friday. Mom and I will go to Atlanta Sunday, and Dad will go back to Wyoming.

As you know the surgery did not work out as we had hoped. In order for the surgeon to remove the cancer in my messentary, she would have had to also remove my entire stomach and what remains of my colon. But she did remove my omentum, which contained the largest mass of cancer, as well as my belly button, which I was sick and tired of looking at.

There is good and bad news in all of this.

The bad news is that this pretty much officially removes me from the "cure" category. Like Elizabeth Edwards and many, many others, I will likely struggle with this disease for the rest of my life. There is a slight chance that more chemotherapy could reduce the tumor in question to a point where it could be removed and I could be back in the "cure" category, but unlikely. So that's disappointing since a cure is what we were all hoping for.

The good news is that cancer is not what it used to be. Increasingly, many individuals live with cancer as a chronic illness, just as people live with high blood pressure and diabetes. There are all kinds of new drugs coming out all the time, and these drugs are increasingly not as poisonous as chemotherapy. I will likely be on some version of chemotherapy or biologic therapy for the rest of my life in order to keep this cancer at bay and to keep it from damaging me. But the good news is that they have had remarkable success at doing this, and that so far, as all of you know, the cancer itself has not infected any of my organs and has not affected my health in any way. The current plan of attack (subject to change) is to go on a "chemo light" plan that will enable me to do chemo while not interfering with my work and life schedule. Given what I've been through with chemo for the last 2 years, that sounds like a good plan to me!

I want to thank all of you for your support through this. Many people provided resources. Many provided love. Many provided both. I feel like the luckiest person on earth to have so many amazing friends. Thank you for all of your emails and phone calls, and thanks for supporting my parents. And thanks for keeping up on your phone tree assignments.

Hope to see all of you soon.

Love, Chet