No one grows tumors for attention.

Tumors get attention.

Can you grow tumors and not get attention?  Here is our tale of a child (a grown child) of ours who has been actively dealing with cancer for several years and yet has managed to remain under the radar.  This child has definitely known what happens when one has cancer, and this time has chosen to forego said attention and keep the struggle within family/close friend boundaries.  I have permission to write this post, but respect this child’s wishes and thus will not use proper names.  Can I use pronouns?  Can I use “they” in place of he/she?  That would drive me crazy… so – it is a HE and since most of our friends already know the story they can just smile at his attempts to remain incognito.

He just completed his 18th(?) round of chemotherapy.  Over a year of chemotherapy and still going strong.  That sums up 2019.  Back up to Christmas of 2017 when he finally “remembered” to tell me that the post-cancer scans had shown some new activity in his lungs.  He had known for a couple months but didn’t want to worry me, at least not until after the holidays.  Great… Have you ever hoped for lung cancer?  We did.  Lung cancer would mean that we had a plan of attack.  Our fear was that this wasn’t lung cancer, but rather an old cancer that had come back to haunt us, traveling through his body and landing in his lungs.

2018 was spent regularly checking on these little tumors to see if they had grown… were they really tumors or just some sort of scar tissue in the lungs?  Lung cancer? Metastasis?  Finally they began to grow at a consistent rate until they were large enough to be biopsied.  Our fears were answered, a previous cancer had survived a previous chemotherapy.  That darn cancer had sprung back to life in three separate tumors in three separate pulmonary lobes.  We had planned a special Christmas – secluded in a cabin in Wyoming, and he really didn’t want to be suffering from chemotherapy.  The doctors wanted to begin treatments right away but respected his wishes to wait a few more weeks.

And so it began…

Please respect his wishes to remain “incognito” and direct all comments to me, all the while not using his name.  For over a year he has kept his medical condition private – unknown to work, church and many friends.  He enjoys being able to keep these relationships “normal” though all prayers from loved ones are welcomed!