Part 16
"Brain Tumor?"

I was now over the halfway point in my chemotherapy treatment. Things had been going fine with my marker count. After each week I would get blood drawn out and each week the cancer counts were less that the week before. This was good. It meant that the chemotherapy was working. That didn’t mean I was happy about the whole thing but it did make me feel better.

One week my marker count didn’t go down at all. In fact, it went up a little. This was a scary thing to hear. That the chemotherapy wasn’t working anymore. We met with the oncologist and she recommended that we will just keep doing the same routine and see how next week goes. These things happen sometime.

Another week went by and again the cancer count didn’t lower. Now I was really scared. We met with Dr. Williams, the oncologist (yeah, the lady who got to feel me up in the earlier chapters), and discussed our new course of action. We were going to change the routine a little bit. I’m not sure of the medical terms of what she said but it was one the lines of “changing your gas from unleaded to premium”. Also, she wanted me to get another CAT scan. Only this time I was to have pictures taken of my brain. My brain? Why get pictures of my brain? Well, Dr. Williams explained that there was a slight possibility that I might also have cancer cells in my brain, and the chemotherapy wasn’t reaching that area. That’s why the cancer cells weren’t dropping. Crap! What else could go wrong? We left the hospital that day with our minds wandering again. What if I did have a brain tumor? Would they have to do brain surgery? Would have to get “blee juice” pumped into my head everyday? Was I going to die? There is really now was of escaping these type of questions.

That night I had church band practice. Before we would practice we always had a “prayer request” time. People in the band would ask the others to pray for their jobs, or pray for some money for a bill or something. I usually never had anything TOO important for them to pray for. Just school. This week Jack asked me, “Cliff, how are things going with you?” I answered, “Well, lately my cancer counts haven’t been going down as they are supposed to and the doctors scheduled an appointment for me to get a CAT scan on my brain because there might be a chance that I have a brain tumor.”…. “Oh.” The band prayed for me that night.

The next day I went in for my CAT scan. I had gotten a few scans on my chest before hand so I was pretty familiar with the whole routine. They set me up on the table and mover me into “The Big Donut”. The doctor went in the back and started talking to me on the intercom. “Alright Cliff, were going to begin the scanning.” After ten minutes they were done with the pictures. I left the hospital and went home to wait. Later that night we received a call from Group Health. It was KC, the head nurse in the Oncology department. It was past business hours but she knew that we were probably pretty sweating bricks right about now. My mom answered the phone and talked to her. They talked for a little bit and I heard my mom say, “praise the Lord!” This took a monkey off my chest because I knew everything was fine. It was. They didn’t find anything in my brain. We continued with the chemotherapy the following week. After the week was over I had some more blood withdrawn. This time my cancer count halved itself.

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