I confirmed today with my care team that yes, it’s official, I am NED as of May 9! This means:
- I am now in what they described as “surveillance mode” — they’ll be checking on me periodically. My oncologist said ordinarily I would now do scans every 6 months (with bloodwork every 3-4 months) but she needs to check the stipulations of the clinical trial I participated in last year. I am pretty sure the scans are more frequent with that trial.
- The port will come out — I’ll no longer be a cyborg!
- The active topic now is focusing on my continued recovery from the recent reversal surgery. It’s all about what comes in, and how frequently it goes out. I did get the green light today to expand my diet. Psyllium husk powder every day is working well for me, and I’ll continue with that.
- My only concern from today’s visit is that my bloodwork from this morning shows that my white blood cell counts have dropped a lot — lower than they ever were during chemo last year (and they were quite low then). They didn’t seem too concerned, suggesting this may be a delayed reaction to radiation, but that doesn’t seem right to me. Radiation for me was a year ago (happened last May-June). I asked them to check into this further.
