Today was my last day of radiation. It felt great knowing that I was not going to have to make the daily trek up to Bethesda every day anymore. I got to meet with Doctors Duelge and Smart for the last time and then I had my last treatment. As the machine was doing its thing I was just praying to God thanking Him for getting me through this and just asking for continued healing. As the machine moved to the left and final side, a feeling of relief and excitement came over me as I realized that I was closing a chapter in this battle against my brain cancer. It has taken me some time to come to the realization that I did have cancer in my brain. And now, we hope and pray that it is gone. I'll have a follow-up appointment with Dr. Duelge in a month and we'll take another MRI in August to see what things look like. If all is clear, we'll have another MRI in six months and then yearly for a few years. By then, we'll be back in Texas. They gave me the mask that you see in the pictures that was used to keep my head in place. That should be a cool conversation piece.
We still need to figure out exactly what is going to happen next with my military career - will they medically retire me? If not, will the military keep taking care of me after we get back to Texas? Doctors Smart and Duelge are working that for me and I'll have more info soon. For now, I just need to rest this week as the residual effects of the radiation will continue to make me feel fatigued. In fact, today I woke up at 1000, but I was in dire need of a nap by 1500. It probably didn't help that I had a dental cleaning appt at 1330 and then we had to stop by the commissary to get a few items. Unfortunately, when we got home, the skies opened and a torrential downpour came upon us. The rain came so hard and fast that water leaked in around one of our windows in the bedroom and we had to dry it up and call maintenance. Nothing was damaged, but they are going to have to fix the window from the outside. That should be interesting as we live on the 12th floor! I finally snuck in an hour nap at 1700. Oh yeah.. one more cool thing that happened today: I began my final taper of my anti-seizure medication. I'll be taking 250mg for the next three weeks and then nothing after that. Please please pray that the seizures stay away!
Tomorrow, Wed and Fri I just have PT and that's it. Thu will be my first day of nothing. I'm looking forward to getting back to work next week. Here's a link to the rest of the pics we took at NNMC today. I'm glad the radiation is behind me - I'm still alive and am beating this cancer down. I'm proud to be able to call myself a cancer survivor.
That has a nice ring to it: Roger J. Mommaerts, Jr., Cancer Survivor.
1 comment:
Congrats Roger. We hope that you will regain energy soon. You are an awsome person and I am proud to say that I am the sister in law of Roger Mommaerts,Jr., Cancer Survivor.
Brandy
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