Dancing with NED (No Evidence of Disease)

I had made it through six rounds of chemotherapy with carboplatin and taxol.  I had been out of work from mid-September to about mid-February and I was going crazy!  It was nice to have the freedom to do volunteer work for the Red Cross whenever I wanted to, but I wanted to get back into being productive!  Three weeks after my last chemo session, I was told I was cancer free!!!

For the first two years after treatment, I was checked out every three months.  After that, I was checked every six months for another two years.  I was supposed to be checked out once a year after that, but it didn't always happen.  For example, when I went to China in September 2006 to teach English, I didn't get checked before I left.  I did go to the point of asking the hospital (through a translator) to do a CT and a CA-125 test and it appeared that all was well in the spring of 2007.  I didn't get checked again until the following year when I had returned to the states for another problem.

I would like to go into a little detail about my trip to China because it was an important event in my life.  I took a job teaching English at Beijing Normal University in Zhuhai.  I was teaching non-English majors, but I was making better money by comparison than I had ever made in the states.  I had a free apartment so I only had to pay for food and electricity.  In 2007, I moved to Meizhou, a city about 600 KM away from there, but still in Guangdong Province.  I taught at JiaYing University and was teaching English majors at this time.  This was far more rewarding for me because the students actually wanted to learn English.  The money wasn't quite as good, but for the hours I worked it was not bad.  I had to cut that year a little short because of medical problems.

I returned to the states in May of 2008 due to stress and some abdominal problems.  I went to the doctor soon after returning and found out I had an incisional hernia.  I was looking at another surgery.  It had been five years since the hysterectomy and I was tired of holding my side all the time.  My brother thought it was strange that I was always doing that.  It turned out that they had to cut me on the same incision because the whole thing had apparently herniated.  This time, not only was I in the hospital for a week due to pneumonia, but by the end of that week, I was still not able to walk the hall easily so they transferred me to a rehab center.  They didn't want me going home because I was living alone in a third floor apartment without any elevator.

While I was in the rehab center, they tried to get me up and walking more than I had been.  It was hard at first because of the pain, but also because I was still on oxygen and it was hard to push around the tank when they wanted to have me walk.  It got to the point where they got a wheelchair that could hold the tank while I was pushing it and if I got tired, I could be pushed back.  That was a miserable time for me because they only got me into physical therapy a couple of times a week so it was not very productive most of the time.  I was eventually able to climb a flight of stairs and that was a pre-requisite to them letting me go home.  I was using a walker most of the time, but I stayed in my room more than wandering around because of the oxygen tank.  If I tried to go without the oxygen, my level would go down to a point where they worried about me.  I was sent home with the oxygen and a company brought equipment to my apartment so that I could be free from a tank unless I went outside.  Being tied to a machine, even with a 50 foot tube was a pain, but I guess it was better than carrying a tank around all day.  Eventually, they got me the smaller tank that I could wear on my back, but shortly after that, they told me to stop using it because the drop in level when I was off it wasn't enough to warrant continuing to use it.  During the time I was in Arizona, I was also rechecked for cancer and all was well at that time.

I moved to Missouri in January 2009.  I know I had my CA-125 checked while I was here, but I don't think I ever got a CT because I couldn't afford it.  I wasn't able to find any jobs most of the time I was here (I had two temporary jobs lasting maybe a month or two each).  Finally after a year and a half, I decided to return to China.  This time I took a job in Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, about 5 hours from Shanghai.  I went there in September 2010 and was there until December.  But that is another chapter.