Almost 6 years & it’s back!

Unfortunately, the Meso has returned!

In 2 weeks I will be hitting my 6 year diagnosis anniversary, so If you told me then that I would still be here in 6 years time right before my 46^th birthday, I would have jumped at the chance! And we are still extremely grateful to have had these last 6 years which is absolutely everything for our kids growing up.

Mid September I noticed a lump which was causing me some pain. The Meso team are great and very rapidly I was seen by my Oncologist. A biopsy via ultrasound and CT scan were booked and so the anxiety waiting game began! A follow up telephone appointment was booked for yesterday, however a call on Tuesday asking me to attend the hospital face to face made our anxiety rapidly rise!!

The biospy has confirmed Meso on my scar tissue, and the CT scan shows a further nodule/tumour in some fatty tissue near my chest wall. We take the positive in that they are only small, and at this stage they are advising no immediate treatment. They will observe the growth and any symptoms over the next 3 months and then have further CT scan!

Yesterday, we felt very relived in that we thought it would be straight into treatment and may have spread to my right lung etc. Today, I am now struggling to get my head around the wait and see part, and would rather be doing something productive to treat it! Something we are going to investigate and think on over the next week!

For fellow Meso patients …. if anyone has had experience of wait & see, or have had treatment for small signs of tumours etc, we’d be very interested in your thoughts thanks…

Sorry for so many of you reading this on FB but we made the extremely tough decision to try and keep it within us this last month or so and not tell the kids/risk them over hearing conversations when we had no facts to tell them. This has been extremely hard as we are very open people and feel better when talking but they had just returned to school & Erin settling in at high school. We did tell the kids last night, they’re aware its meso, which is a cancer, but we’ve said its that small, no treatment is required currently and if they/anyone google’s meso – Dad’s is re-writing the rules on this & has already lived past his prognosis!!

For local friends and those with friends of our kids, we encourage you to be open talking about this with us now and with our kids your kids. It is very hard, there will be tears I’m sure but we will be open and work this through as a family together and with your fabulous support as family and friends.

Will keep you posted. Best wishes

Dave & Ali