Gloves are off

Less than a month ago I was looking forward to this December as my two year anniversary of being bladder cancer free. A lot can happen in a few weeks. The last I knew, my small stage T1 tumor that was removed back in December of 2010 was the only cancer in my body and we had kept it in check. Regular appointments with my urologist had shown no progression in the bladder and I was doing great. What we didn't know was that some cancerous cells had given us the slip and set up shop in my retrocaval and pericaval lymph nodes. Yep, just went from stage 1 to stage 4 cancer....shitty.

The past few weeks have been a bit of a blur, half from trying to comprehend the situation and the other half of the blitz of testing and consults I have gone through. The support from my Family and Friends has been remarkable and the quickness that the medical team(s) I'm working with is astounding. I have decided that joining a clinical trial is the best shot I've got for kicking this cancer out. It will be 4-6 cycles of 21-day treatments using Cisplatin and Gemcitabine and possibly the trial drug OGX-427 (double blind study, 2/3 chance of receiving it). As a result my treatments will happen in Seattle so I will be temporarily relocating up there.

So yeah, the gloves are off, the cancer isn't playing nice so we're going to give it a heavy dose and see what it has to say about that.

Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers and offers of support so far, they do mean a lot.  Physically I have been feeling good most of the time besides a few episodes of pain (how we found it).  I'm currently waiting for my start date and until then am wrapping things up at work and at home to prepare.