dominic + scan results

"it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness"

(unknown)

this is my friend dominic.

i have wrote about him before.

he was diagnosed with crohn's disease last year and is currently going in for infusions at seattle children's hospital.

he is a fighter.

you can tell that from many things about this picture. he is smiling. you can tell he has a positive attitude. he is holding boxing gloves. those are the gloves that i gave him when he was starting to have infusions. those are the gloves that were with me for every surgery i had and my scan result appointments and infusion days. they were with my sister-in-law kim when she had her breast cancer surgeries and appointments. when kim gave them back to me, i knew that they now belonged to him from now on for his fight. and i was right about that. he is a fighter in his own right, but those gloves have been through some serious battle rounds. so they can only bring him luck as he faces his own battles. he has an awesome family and so he already has a tremendous amount of luck on his side. 

you can't help but get inspired by a young man that shows the world that no matter what the age, you climb in the ring, you put on the gloves, and you fight. no matter what. you fight. i know he is a hero to me.

friday was another fight day for me.

scan day.

i fasted as i always have to.

it took two tries to get the iv in my arm. the first time was not good and the line broke open and blood went everywhere. not the kind of morning i like to have.

they got it in the second time but damn it hurt for some reason due to the angle they had to take to get to my vein.

this time, i took two kinds of nausea meds before we headed to seattle because my doctor gave me the ok to do it in hopes that i wouldn't vomit during the scan.

that plan did not work.

i held the vomit in long enough for the machine to start to roll me out because i wanted them to get the images. and then it was hell. i have kind of given up hope that i will be able to do those scans anymore without getting sick. it just seems to be a given now so i guess i will just assume that is how it is going to roll moving forward.

tomorrow morning i fast and check in at 10am for my bloodwork and my urine sample. then we meet with my oncologist to get the scan results at 11:30.

monday is going to be huge. it will be the day that tells us if this clinical trial is working or if they will not let me continue on.

this feels like the most significant results day yet.

if i get to continue on, i will have infusions late in the day tomorrow. i will have a psychiatrist appointment and another appointment in the afternoon. it will a long and full and tiring day.

as i usually do on the weekends before scans, i kept myself in constant motion. because sitting means thinking. and thinking means thinking about scan results. and i felt like i needed to take my anxiety meds every 5 minutes to keep myself in check. but i didn't. i took them when i am supposed to and maintained my new normalcy throughout the weekend.

so please send dominic a lot of love, he has an appointment coming up in early february to tell him if his infusions are working. we need to send him all of our good vibes and prayers until then (and after then too of course).

please send us your love and prayers too - we need them to make it through tomorrow, whatever it shall bring us.

anywhere i fight, you fight.

let's hope tomorrow brings us a knockout, if not, i would be ecstatic with even the win of this round.

here we go.

xoxo