The Good Kind of Shock This Time

A friend told me that how she dealt with her cancer journey was to plan for the worst but hope for the best. Over the last few months this is sort of the approach I have taken. I have always tried to be positive and hope for the best, but I also have thought about the worst and how I would handle these situations. After meeting with my surgeon last week and getting my amazing pathology results I was still apprehensive about celebrating and believing that everything was as we had hoped. Today I met with my oncologist to get her take on everything and hear what was going to be happening next. Basically she said that the results I have gotten were everything we had hoped for. From this doctor, who often seems to hold back on any positivity, this was awesome to hear. The term remission gets used a lot in "cancer world" and to be honest I am not really sure exactly what it mean as it is used differently by different specialists, but the term she used was "pathological remission". At least according to my pathology results I am cancer free. I know that there could still be cancer in my body and the only way to know this for sure is to wait, go for my scans and see if anything shows up. For now though what I will hold onto and celebrate is that I have already beaten some odds. I was told that it was unlikely that the cancer would be gone, and at least for now it looks like it could be gone. So what next? I meet with the radiation oncologist next Friday and radiation should be starting within a few weeks of that. Someone once described radiation to me as "the cleanup crew". In my situation the cleanup crew could be very important as there are no cells that can be seen, but could be tiny ones floating around in there. From what I hear radiation is a breeze compared to chemo and surgery. My plan is to get back to being me as much as possible during this last phase of my treatment. It's like I took a little nap for the last 6ish months, but now, without a doubt I can say that KIM IS BACK!!!