So December 15th is the one-year anniversary of my tripping while walking the dog which gave me cancer.

That’s my joke at least….sort of LOL. As you may recall I DID trip while walking the dog and landed on my ribs. When I went to the ER, they did an x-ray and said “your ribs are fine but you have a tumour in your lung.” And of course, after going back the next day for more scans, the cancer was in more than just my lung.

Out of curiosity, a few weeks ago, I asked my oncologist if he could estimate how long I had cancer before being diagnosed. I didn’t expect much from him – and that’s about what I got hahaha. He said there were too many variables and so much they still didn’t know about melanoma. It could have been a few months, but equally, it might have been in my body for a few years – essentially dormant – until something triggered it to grow and spread. I mean it really doesn’t matter at this point but I hoped to understand a bit more about what I was dealing with and I suppose I did.

On another note, I had my second haircut since my hair has grown back -for whatever that’s worth 😛

Medical Update

I don’t think I could be more vaccinated right now – my pneumonia vaccine, my fifth COVID vaccine, and my flu shot (and yes I had the shingles vaccine a few years ago) – so I’m feeling more confident in socializing a bit more than I have been. That said I’m spending Christmas with my parents in Brighton (just celebrated my Dad’s 90th birthday!!) so I’ll probably hold off on all the partying until the new year just to be on the safe side.

The results of an MRI and a couple of CT scans came back this week and again the results were pretty positive. Several tumours shrunk again, some no longer showed up, and I think one was no change. Two had slight increases (like 0.2 cm) but the doctors said that happens and weren’t concerned at this point.  My immunotherapy treatments have been reduced from every two weeks to every four which I’m quite happy with as long as the results are still positive 🙂  The next treatment is tomorrow and then I’m good til the new year.

And speaking of next year, I’m wishing you all very happy holidays, a happy new year, and my thanks for all your support over the past 12 months!

John