"The scan looks good"

It was such a relief that the doc walked into the room and these were the first words from his lips.

The first scan after surgery is the scariest, we remembered that from last time. No matter how positive you feel or how much you trust that the cancer is gone, you really need those scan results to know.  We confirmed the plan to keep double daily doses of Gleevec and we'll scan again in 4 months.  John has been doing better on the morning doses so I think that his body is getting used to it and he's learning to work around it and with it the best that he can.  The doc felt around a bit and gave us the green light to go and we burst into tears.  Keeping everything together as we waited for these results was an essential, but difficult thing to do.

This is hard.  It's something that we are going to have for the rest of our life.  We'll always have a scan or checkup on the horizon and John has to be on drugs forever and on top of that, continue the mental battle against his cancer.  The fact that it found a foothold and came back so quickly when he was off his drugs really goes to shows the monster that cancer is.  It's like we have to build ourselves into a fortress and keep someone in the watchtower at all times.  It will take all three of us: John, me, and the Gleevec.

It took a while to let our nerves calm down and our bellies to release their butterflies.We are utterly elated that we are fighting to keep it from coming back rather than fighting something growing inside.  This is the best possible outcome we could have hoped for and the fact that we are in this position twice is amazing.  I know that this is not the case for many cancer fighters and thank my lucky stars that we are here.

Here's to celebrating successful scans.  I love you JJ.