Hope and Victory
Thursday, March 5, 2009
By: Ken Parsons

In 2002 I was diagnosed with cancer. I do not capitalize the disease or any reference to it as I will not assign it even that level of importance. I hope my story helps someone dealing with this disease to find a little ray of hope to hold onto.

In June of 2002, I noticed a discomfort in my abdomen that felt like I was lying on a golf ball. I could not find the offending orb, so I sought medical assistance. At first, doctors thought I had a hiatus hernia or acid reflux and started me on treatment for this. I left Saskatchewan and went to British Columbia for holidays.

On July 1, we celebrated my nieces' birthday with a large family barbecue. I was awakened at 2:00 a.m. with a definite pain in my abdomen, right where I had felt the offensive golf ball only 10 days before. I went to emergency, and the doctor there thought maybe it was a hiatus hernia as had been previously indicated by doctors in Saskatchewan. When I mentioned this, he decided to keep me until a specialist arrived for his morning shift around 6:00 a.m.

At 6 a.m. the specialist arrived, raised my blanket, lowered it and said, "that is not a hernia", and walked away. I thought he was either a quack, or just very good. He returned in a few minutes and checked me a bit further and decided to send me for a barium x-ray that morning. The results came back before noon and were inconclusive, but they thought there might be a shadow between my kidneys. The doctor decided to admit me until further testing and a definitive answer could be found. I asked him at that time to tell me everything that was going on, regardless of how blunt it may be. If he thought it, I wanted to know.

I underwent an ultrasound the next day which confirmed there was something between my kidneys, but they weren't sure what. The doctor said, "let's hope for lymphoma". All I could think was, "hope for cancer?". " What could be worse than that?" The next day I went for a CT scan. When the results came back it was confirmed that there was a 7cm mass on my aorta, 15 cm from my heart, right between my kidneys. An additional CT scan, where a core biopsy was extracted, was performed the next day, which, by the way, was Friday the 5th.

The results of the biopsy were also found to be unclear as there was not enough of a sample to determine anything more than the fact I was dealing with some form of lymphoma. A "laperotomy" was scheduled for August 1 to see the mass, take a larger sample, and remove what was there if possible. From the time this procedure was scheduled until it was performed, I underwent adjacent lymph node biopsies, started pain treatment as the pain increased, and lost 65 pounds. By this time, I could only eat single slices of toast, and only one or two in a day.

On August 1, when the laperotomy was performed, there were a few surprises in store for the doctors. During the anaesthetics, my blood oxygen dropped from 98% to 40% in less than 30 seconds. This was because my left lung had collapsed and the lung cavity had filled with five litres of fluid. When they stabilized me and did the operation, they found two 18 cm masses where there had been a single 7 cm mass only four weeks previous. My left kidney was completely encased and had shut down. My right kidney was slowing. My liver had shut down and the masses were dangerously close to my heart. With the extensive involvement, the doctors could only remove a sample, but could not remove the masses.

On August 6, I was given the news. I was dealing with stage 3, type B, Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and that I needed to start chemotherapy immediately. At that point, the chances were not good for me. The doctor told me that at this stage, treatments were effective in only 15% of cases. Of that 15%, only 60% would get to remission and only 5% of those would ever get to full cure. I was also told that if the treatments did not work, I did not have two weeks left.

I opted to return to Saskatchewan for treatment. I flew into Regina on Thursday afternoon and took my information to the hospital at 2:30 p.m. They scheduled me to return the next morning at 8:00 a.m. and then the fun started. The oncologist checked me over and we did a bone marrow biopsy while we waited for him to review the test results and records from BC. When I saw him next, about 10:00 a.m., he told me they would start treatments that afternoon but that they would have to wait for one of the drugs he wanted me on because it had to be approved on a case by case basis and that could take 10 days.

We scheduled for 2:30 p.m. to start my treatments. At 11:30 a.m., I was called back into the doctor's office, and he told me that I had been approved for this additional drug already and that would start at the same time.
Over the next seven months, I would endure countless mouth and throat infections and delays in treatment when my white cell counts would go dangerously low. Treatments were normally every three weeks, and would start at 8:00 a.m. continuing till after 4:00 p.m.

Ten days after the treatment, I had to inject myself with a drug aimed at increasing my white cell count. This treatment itself would cause every joint in my body to ache as my bone marrow was pushed into hyper-mode for producing blood. When the treatments were done in February, I was scheduled for radiation therapy every weekday for a month. This resulted in my receiving 4300 rads of radiation in an area where 4500 rads is considered the lifetime maximum to be administered
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I would return to my local hospital weekly for blood work and back to Regina monthly for follow up CT scans for several months. The CT scans reduced to every three months, then six months and eventually to annually over the next few years, always reaffirming that the masses had been reduced to five cm of scar tissue.

In January of 2009, I was told by the oncologist that I was done. I no longer needed to return for follow ups, or blood work, and my cancer was gone. I had reached the elusive 0.45% goal.

Since I was diagnosed I have participated in the annual Relay for Life every year. I hope that people having to deal with this horrible disease can find comfort in my story of success, and if one person feels better for it, my ordeals were not in vain.