Approaching the 10-year mark of being diagnosed with follicular lymphoma, I anticipated the day being momentous -- not necessarily a celebratory day, but a memorable one. I would post something on social media, note it in a few lymphoma groups to which belong, maybe even recognize the day here on this quasi-dormant blog. The reality is, I forgot about it. The day came and went, and here we are three weeks later.
This is a good thing.
On July 1, 2011, the day after I was diagnosed, here's what I wrote:
"When I think of the future and try to project out 10/20 years, that's when I start to lose it. When I focus on the present -- how I feel today -- fine, thank you-- I'm calm and rational.
I remember eating dinner before my softball game while Noah and Stacy played alphabet go fish. I was watching him play and he was getting silly and having the greatest time -- laughing and playing -- and I wasn't thinking about my dx at all."
And so here we are, 10 years later. Noah's no longer playing alphabet go fish - he's a rising high school senior and Matthew's halfway through college. We have two dogs and I've been through two different treatment cycles - six rounds of Bendamustine and Rituxan in 2012/2013, and four rounds of Rituxan plus Imprime in 2017, and I'm still feeling fine. Always have been, even if it's likely that I'll be doing another round of treatment in 2022. But 10 years later, there are many more options than there were in 2012, and things like CAR-T Cell therapy are there as possibilities, along with some of the more "conventional" treatments.
Days pass often when my lymphoma hasn't even crossed my mine; but days pass when it has. When I think of retirement or of buying our own lake house instead of renting one for a week each summer, there's a little more urgency to do it now and not put it off for five or ten years. It's not necessarily a seize-the-moment kind of thinking, but it is a reminder that you can spend so much time planning and thinking about what you're going to do, that you can leave yourself little time to actually do it.
So this is life with follicular lymphoma. It's not a dark cloud that overhangs my daily life, but more an occasional storm that I can sometimes spot on the horizon, and hope that it blows through our life quickly and with little damage in its wake.
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| A view from the Narrows looking out at Upper Bay on Little Sebago Lake |
