Progress! And almost grateful for migraines

It’s been very hard for me to believe, emotionally, that my cancer might be gone, because my body is not yet completely well. What I don’t actually know is whether or not I’m still fighting cancer, or if I’m just still recovering from the surgery and chemo.

Because my body is clearly still struggling, I feel like I still have cancer, so I tend to think I still have cancer (even though I don’t consider myself to be typically a pessimistic person). Intellectually, I know there’s a darn good chance that my body will fight off this cancer; has fought off this cancer. But it seems like I can still feel the cancer lurking in me. That makes for a little bit of an awkward conversation when people ask me how I’m doing. I’m a very truthful person, and for me the truth right now is, “We can’t currently detect any cancer (yay!), but I might still have it, and I do still feel like I have it.”

In addition to not feeling as well as I did a few years ago, before I had cancer, I’m still feeling significantly worse than I did a year ago, right before the diagnosis, when I definitely had cancer. How could I not have cancer now, when I feel so much worse than I did last year when I did have cancer?

My type of cancer is slow growing, so it will be awhile of waiting. If my cancer still exists, we have to give it enough time to grow enough before we can see it. My next set of scans and colonoscopy will be this coming March.

Meanwhile, my migraines are coming back, which – although of course I hate migraines – I’m taking as a very good sign. My migraines had started slowly going away about 3 years ago. At the time, I welcomed the change and assumed that I was heading into menopause, because migraines often improve at that point due to changes in hormone levels.

I started getting hot flashes the week after I started chemo. And I wasn’t having migraines anymore. Chemo often brings on menopause, so I figured, well, I’m old enough, so here we are. So many hot flashes! All day and all night, all through chemo. And then they started tapering off, slowly, after I was done with chemo. Had I completed menopause, or what?

Well, according to my bloodwork done in October, it looked like I was actually heading back out of menopause. Seriously? I’m 54 years old. But that’s what my doctor said. Very little sign of menopause at all. Well. Whatever. And – I’m not getting hot flashes anymore.

Now my migraines are coming back. Migraines suck! But here’s why I think it’s a good sign. I’ve always felt like my migraines are connected to my immune system somehow. In fact, I’ve even wondered if they were some sort of autoimmune response, because there are a lot of similarities between my migraines and all the autoimmune things in my family.

I’m not a doctor, and I’m just making stuff up here. But my immune system had been overwhelmed by the cancer and my white blood cell count had been down for a couple of years at least, corresponding with the time that my migraines were less frequent.

I believe that if I start to feel like I felt before I had cancer, then I would be able to convince myself that I don’t have cancer. That would have been at least 3 or more years ago. Back when I had migraines all the time.

Even better, of course, would be to finally reach menopause – with no migraines AND no cancer! I’ll take those hot flashes, any day, all day, all night, whatever – no problem! Hot flashes (although super annoying and disruptive) are far less debilitating than migraines.

Here’s to getting older! I would truly be a new person with no cancer OR migraines!

Meanwhile, here’s pictures from our hike on Friday. I’m grateful to be well enough to hike again!

We didn’t take any photos of me. You’ll just have to believe that I was there too! I guess with the mask and the hat, you can’t even tell this is John. Could be any skinny guy hiking in the desert!

To send Kristina a comment, email turning51bykristina@gmail.com