Did you Leave Your Lymph Nodes At Home?

"Did you leave your lymph nodes at home?"

"Huh?" I had no idea what he was talking about.

Dr. Khan looked at my eyes. "Have you been feeling your lymph nodes?"

Uh . . . I wasn't sure what the right answer was. So I told him the truth. "No, I have been to scared that I will, you know, push the cancer around and into other parts of my body."

He gave me a smile. "Your lymph nodes in your neck are no longer palpable. Except for the one we biopsied, which will be enlarged because of the needle. You have had an excellent reaction to the chemo therapy, and it has only been six days. And your tumor in your breast is no longer outwardly visible, it seems to have been reduced as well . . . you remember, I told you I was hopeful about you."

What, wait, wait, wait? What? Was this actually a bit of good news?

Dr. Khan scribbled in his notebook, and muttered, "I think we can downgrade you to a Stage III, as the cancer is no longer in distant lymph nodes."

I looked at my mom, whose eyes were wide and mouth was open.

"You mean," I cleared my throat. "It shrunk already?"

Dr. Khan nodded.

WOOOHOOOOOOOOOO! So I did a little victory dance, did my blood work, and then proceeded to call my husband, my father, and my brother, Paul, whose typically tepid reaction was. "That's cool."

I am so excited. I haven't been this happy since, well, I can't remember.

So not to get all metaphysical on y'all (the Texan in me), but I really really really believe that one of the major contributing reasons was everyone's thoughts and messages. I received over 150 emails and wall posts (Facebook). If all of those people just thought about me for the 30 seconds it took to write the post, that is a lot of positive energy flowing my way!

Coincidentally, Time Magazine's Cover Article this week is called, How Faith can Heal. And while I am nowhere near religious, my new age hippy-ness completely has faith in the power of mind over matter and how lots of people thinking the same thing can cause physical events to unfold.

The whole point of this is to thank you for all your love, support, prayers, thoughts, positive energy, good vibes, or whatever you want to call it. I wholeheartedly believe that it all of you who caused my tumor to have such an extreme reaction to the chemo.

I know the skeptics will remember that I had mentioned before that aggressive tumors do react well to chemotherapy, but even the stoic Dr. Khan (aka Dr. Gandhi) was quite amazed, and even SMILED (he is the one who said to me the week before, "You have a serious problem." ).

He looks like Gandhi, doesn't he?

To chasten things, I am still not by any means out of the woods, and I am looking forward to a lot more vomiting, low white blood cell count induced sickness, and rough patches, BUT I am heading in the right direction! So thank you, gracias, and lots of mahalos!