Steady....

or not, I love you.

Dear Friend,

Thank you for your patience. I put a note into substack on Thursday afternoon about scan results. Another friend mentioned he hadn’t seen it, and then I began to wonder if I might need to put an update here. Again, never meant to leave you hanging. Thank you for being so patient.

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Bottom line: The oncologist noted that while the scan shows more of something than the last one showed in January, the team is 60-70% convinced that something continues to be an inflammatory response to treatment and not new tumor growth. Said differently, my brain has swollen, but is not swole. This is not an uncommon response to the combination of radiation and chemotherapy, even three months after radiation has ended. The way the changes in the scan present themselves and my particular tumor characteristics (it’s methylated - which is good because it tends to respond well to chemo) are all consistent with treatment-induced inflammation. Hence tumor board puts the chances that this is not new tumor growth at 60-70%.

All good. And also not definitive. Inflammation and tumor look awfully similar on a scan, so there is a chance that what we are seeing is, in fact, new tumor growth. Unlikely, but possible.

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It’s not an accident that I’ve come to embrace the ambiguous, because that is what scans will always be to me - as they always were with Dr. McGaughey six years ago. It could be inflammation, or it could be new tumor growth, or it could be both. It could be this. It could be that. It could be this and that. All possible.

Here is what it all means. Medically, we stay the course on chemo next week, treat the swelling with steroids, but instead of waiting eight weeks for the next scan, we do one in four weeks…just in case.

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But to be completely honest, the medical part of this continues to be the least interesting part, and it’s not even close. We are still friends, cancer and me, or at least neighbors. We nod to each other each morning as I head out to walk alone, or with Carley or with friends who have been so faithful to accompany me. What is far more interesting is what we find on our walks, or maybe more accurately, what finds us.

One morning last week, just Carley and me, the sun snoozed an extra snooze, and so was a little slow to burn the fog off the leafless branches. There was one magical moment where the mist, the angle of the light, and the complete absence of breeze came together in the only way they could have come together to reveal a softball sized spider web - a three-dimensional sphere - just off the trail. It was not there the day before. It has not returned since, and, believe me, I am looking. Carley was unimpressed, but I couldn’t resist snapping a photo, because who would believe this without a photo? Unless you have seen this before, and I had not.

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Early on in this whole process, I was reminded of how good I can be at asking precisely the wrong question, and I remember knowing, for a few precious moments of complete clarity, that the right question never changes: The question, of course is:

How is God making God’s love known to us in this moment?

It would be easy to answer this question today with the promising scan report we received on Thursday afternoon. And that would be true, I think. But it would be completely incomplete. Perhaps there will never again be a spherical spider web on my morning walk. Perhaps there will never be another eight-point buck sneaking into my backyard and staring me down while I’m waiting for the coffee to brew. But there will certainly be other reminders of God’s boundless love and compassion. There will be image bearers in the medians near Broad Street traffic lights. There will be hummingbirds (and soon!) and there will be thunder and lightning and stars and always more neighbors to love until loving feels like being loved.

Cancer’s morning nods might mean, “Don’t forget who is driving, Chris, and it’s definitely not you.” Or they may mean, “Don’t forget the right question, Chris. If you remember the right question, an answer just might find you.” Or most likely, cancer’s morning nods mean both and almost certainly way more than just both.

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Thank you for checking in on us. It means more than you know - You, and you specifically, are yet another compelling answer to the question.

Oremus, dear friend,

Chris