Waiting to exhale....

Figured it was probably time for an update since a couple of things have happened in the last few days.
Went in today for my CT scan and saw the token two other people trying to choke down that delectable contrast cocktail. Yum. Where's mine? Hell, that nasty stuff was on its way out to me soon enough. Slammed it like I always do....Best NOT to savor and linger too much over that less than palatable concoction. Down the hatch it went. Sit for an hour and get some reading done, now the angst ridden wait begins.

That is, if it ever truly stops in the first place. With scantime it just gets amplified to the nth power is all.

I will tell myself now, for my sanity: There is no good reason for me to believe that scan will show anything. It WILL be clear. It has now been just two weeks shy of two years that I have been dealing with in-transit melanoma recurrences. Two years since I have been a stage III melanoma patient. Not recurrence free, but two years that I haven't progressed to stage IV yet. Two years of clean CT scans....well, that isn't alltogether true. My sub-Q this past summer was found on CT, so....

NO organ mets. Not yet, and I hope like hell, not ever. We will see in that seemingly interminable amount of time it takes this local imaging place to send the results to my docs.

As far as my vaccine trial has been going....

I had a bit of a letdown on Friday. Not by any means a blow, or even anything that could be considered a setback; just a return to square one.

Wednesday I had to go back up to Philly to have the DTH placement. This whole DTH deal is where they inject you in a couple places on the same arm as the vaccine was given, but on the inner forearm. One injection is just some basic type of solution, and in my case, I only received one other injection above it: My own modified melanoma cells. The ones that have been tagged with that hapten/DNP stuff to make them look more foreign. They were hoping for a reaction. A sign that over the course of this vaccine trial, my body had mounted an immune response to those stinkin' ol' melanoma cells.

Friday I had to go back in because the result had to be read after 48 hours of the injections.

I had no reaction. Nada. Zilch. Zippo.

Damn.

Turns out all those nasty, festering boil-like sores on my arm where each injection had been given were simply from the BCG that was given at the same time. That was the expected reaction; and every patient...even those in the "control group" was at least going to get that.

Ahh, well... That's the way the cookie crumbles. That's life. Hell....I had a recurrence within two months of stopping Temodar; not even two weeks after stopping the GM-CSF. There really is no magic bullet with this shit. You just play your odds and hope for the best, cause it is all a shot in the dark, at best.

My mind ran around in circles for about an hour or two. In short, I coulda spazzed out....but I didn't go that far. I figured oh, well...I am going to pick myself up from this semi-letdown and tell myself this: Melanoma is NOT going to get me. Heheh. I can tell myself that, anyway no matter how hollow it sounds at any given time...It will be my mantra. I have to, to stay sane. In reality, we all know that ultimately, that is not truly something we have any control over. I have to let go of this need to be in control. Of this illusion that in the grand scheme of things, we have any shred of control. In the end, we just do what we can. Whatever we can do. Whatever lies within our power, however limited. We keep on fighting and take every opportunity out there to kick melanoma ass.

Now I just have to stay sane until those CT results come in. Ha ha. Easier said than done, I know....but I will try like hell not to borrow trouble and instead of thinking the worst...Hope for the best. All CLEAR. Then....it will be party time.