Seems like an eternity, but this week marks my 4 year anniversary of "the" diagnosis. Non-Hodgkin's B-cell Lymphoma of my Spine, with the tumor at L3, wrapped around the vertebra and invading some bone marrow. That got me a rating of Stage 4, because the primary sight was in the bone, and a prognosis of 5 years, 10 years if I remain in remission for at least 5 years straight. My saving grace was the disease had not invaded my lymph nodes. As a 44 year old female, the odds of getting this lymphoma was one TENTH of ONE per cent! It's the norm for elderly men, or teenagers to encounter this disease. I had won the lymphoma lottery!
First line of attack was specifically targeted radiation therapy. Simple enough, right? Except for the difficulty laying flat for over a half hour on a hard table, radiation zapped through my pelvis through the top, then flip and the same from the bottom up. About six weeks of that, three times a week and the tumor had shrunk enough to take the pressure off the nerve root of L3. With the tumor shrunk, I wasn't going to totally lose the use of my right leg.
Let me digress for a moment and explain the leg problem, since you're probably saying, 'but the tumor was on your spine?'. Back in the fall of 2007, I had 3 puppies, Duncan, the Gordon Setter, plus Winston and Churchill, Cairn Terrier littermates that were about a month younger than Duncan. I was enrolled full-time at The University of Toledo for my senior year. I also took care of what you would deem a "hobby farm", with 9 goats of several different breeds, 5 geese, 25 chickens, a half a dozen guinea fowl, and a pot-bellied pig named 'Hamlet". So even though my children were all off to college, I was still a busy woman.
About a week before Thanksgiving, I was outside at dusk with Duncan, the Gordon, and there had been a bit of wet snow. Mr. Duncan, all of 6 months old, spied the neighbor's dogs across the street, and decided (for the first time) that he was going to go make their acquaintance. Being it was dusk, that Duncan is a black dog, and people drive like idiots on our road, I panicked and lunged toward Duncan to grab his collar. With the wet snow, and the fact that I had my ever-present Crocs on, I got a grip on the pup, but at the expense of my leg that went straight out to the side of my body. With the pain I had, I figured I had just pulled some ligaments on the interior part of my knee, it wasn't enough pain to make me go to the doctor, so I waited until just before Christmas when I couldn't stand it anymore.
And with that, I will leave you with a picture of
my little "angel" Duncan and a promise to continue
this story on another day. ~Namaste~
