Day 100 and the LONG awaited two words......

CANCER FREE !!!!!!!!!!

Yahoo!!!!!!!!!!!!
I had a PET scan on Tues. April 1st (I mean, really, if THAT"S not totally ironic!), and for the first time was not anxious about the results. Dr. Meehan had already been telling us for weeks that there was no expectation the disease would be gone, in fact it could possibly be the same or even increased. What the info from the PET would give him is the speed in which we can start to taper my immune suppressants. The lesser the disease, the more gradually we can taper off the immune suppressants (which means less chance of graft vs. host disease) and safer side effects, the more disease, the more aggressive the taper, so the donor cells would come on strong and go after the disease (most likely to cause more GVHD side effects). Well ...... low and behold ...... my PET returned NORMAL!!

I had to ask them again and again , "OK, normal PET, what EXACTLY does that mean?!" "OK,OK, so .... negative, you mean not there ...... no sign .... no disease ..... NO CANCER!" I even called again this morning to double check that I heard and understood correctly. As I said to Dr. Meehan and Beth, "I've NEVER been told this!"

We still have alot of work ahead of us. It takes up to a year or so to rebuild my immune system. I still will be masked out in public, still limited to smaller groups, same precautions to my diet ..... all to stay infection free.

But long and short of it ...... from the mouths of the drs. "You are in the best place! Disease free, infection free, GVHD free. You're doing great!"

I send off my chinese fortune cookie words from two weeks ago ......
"struggle as hard as you can for whatever you believe in"

Love to all from this cancer free friend
Pam