Well- All my Facebook friends know, but for everyone else, I was told early last week that my final (HA!) PET scan showed just some residual hot spots and my surgeon did a thorough exam and declared that all of the tissue looked viable and healthy except a little spot in my neck that he felt was just lymph fluid. Being the paranoid that I have become, I insisted on a needle biopsy and ultrasound which he completed in the office. He told me confidently that he was absolutely certain that he was not looking at cancer and that I could consider myself in remission.

Guess what? Labs came back Monday full of metatastic squamous cells. So much for remission. After the news I went to social security to apply for disability because I have been so lame at work that I just don't know how much more patience they are gonna have with me, so i figure I better get on the ball and get that rolling so I can have some benefits if it turns out this thing is gonna kill me. For you see, at this point I have very little hope that I will win this war. I have had no hope of that since the first recurrence. I feel this cancer wants to kill me.

Off I go again to Seattle on the 24th of January, and I will be having this surgery alone with no one around because my family has had a vacation planned for a year to Mexico during this time, and I have insisted that they keep their plans so that they can have a break from this stuff, as they deserve and need some rest from all of this.

I will be staying at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance House from the 22nd of January until surgery, then I will likely return there for at least a day to get my flight plans home set up.

I laid in bed for one whole day feeling sorry for myself and got that out of my system, but the despair is pretty deep this time, the will to fight is much deminished and I don't have the same sense of humor about this anymore. I wonder if I will be in hospice for my 41st birthday.

So if anyone has had this damn cancer pop up every 3 months like I have and lived to be cancer free, please tell me its possible. I need all the hope I can get.