Saturday, May 2, 2009

Some Very Happy Anniversaries

This past week we celebrated 2 years since the date of my stem cell transplant. I also just completed CAT scans and there still remains no signs of my cancer - Yeah!! I think my chances for relapse are like less than 5% now. I will continue to be scanned (less frequently) until the 5 year mark and that is when they use the wonderful "C" word - CURED!!

Despite all the good news I still find it a little hard to embrace being "cancer-free". There are nagging thoughts that it is somewhere lurking in my system. Plus, just making claims to have "beaten cancer" seems like an invitation for it to come back and prove me wrong. But I have found that I am not as fearful about cancer, and it no longer dominates our lives and the plans that we make. So at least mentally I feel like I have beaten cancer.

It has been a busy Spring. We celebrated my parent's 50th anniversary at the end of March. We had a nice group of relatives and friends here to celebrate. Both of my brothers came from Australia, and it was special for them to have all four kids present. My parents are the 3rd golden anniversary in a row for our family - Brant and I just have 35 more years to go to keep the streak going! The picture above includes the extended family at the party (Brant and Katie had just left for a baseball game and aren't in the picture).