Are you sitting down?

For many years, those words have been used as a preamble for important news. One can usually tell if the news are good or bad by the way those words are spoken. On Monday, April 3, Tracey called me and almost immediately asked me if I was sitting down. The tone of her voice told me it was not good news. She told me that Dr. Madden, her medical oncologist, had called her and confirmed that the mass on her back was cancer — indeed, it is the same breast cancer that she discovered in April 2004 and that has changed her so much.

It all started in early March when Tracey went for a routine bone scan. The results came back abnormal and showed a compression fracture of one of Tracey's thoracic vertebrae (T9). This type of fracture has very few possible causes. In Tracey's case the most likely reason was cancer. We met with Tracey's medical oncologist and decided to do a CatScan to confirm the existence of abnormal cell activity near the affected vertebrae. The CatScan confirmed such but also revealed no other unusual spots in her chest or abdomen. On Thursday, March 30, Tracey had a biopsy of the affected area, including the removal of a small part of her vertebrae. We received the results of such on April 3.

Dr. Madden estimates that we can fight this with radiation therapy alone. Perhaps they can repair her T9 vertebrae after radiation is over. We have an appointment with the radiation oncologist on Tuesday, April 11, to map the needed treatment.

Tracey continues to amaze me. Despite the pain she is in due to the fractured vertebrae and the neuropathy caused by the original chemo therapy, she has her "game face" on and is ready to fight this new occurrence. And so am I and everyone around her.

I hope to see the day when we no longer have to worry about cancer, and that the isolated cases of such disease can be treated in an efficient, painless manner that does not involve burning someone (radiation) or running a poison through their veins (chemo). Current treatments remind me of those used in the dark ages, where patients died more from the cure than from the disease.