I remember very well the day I received the notice in the mail from the State of Illinois.   I was awaiting the results of my State Optometry Exam.   I had spent several months consumed over the miss-marked answers and dwelling over the possible mistakes.   I was obsessed by the fact that I was going to have to take the darn test again.   Of that, I was sure.   I am a horrible test taker.   I may know the information, but it never translated very well from a – e.   I received the letter at the Post Office on Grand and State in Chicago.   Standing in the parking lot, I read and reread the results.   I looked so baffled, a postal worker offered to read the letter to me.

The letter started out, Dear Dr. Ford; we are pleased to inform you. . . .  I never got past that sentence.   I was so upset that a rejection letter would begin by telling me how pleased they were to inform me of this type of news.   It was unbelievable.   I read and reread, but couldn’t get past that sentence.   That’s when the postal worker read my letter and told me that I had passed my exams.   I asked him many times if he was sure, and he said that he was positive.

So confused and only two blocks away from where my father was working, I started running towards his office with my letter in hand.   I ran as fast as I could go in my cowboy boots.   I had an employee read the note to be sure that I wasn’t making a tragic mistake, and then we set the letter out for my father to open.

He was so excited that he miss-dialed my phone number 5 or 6 times.   I stepped into the office and saw the pure joy on his face.   It was then that I knew I had passed my exam.

I just received a phone call thirty minutes ago.   I have the same baffled expression on my face.   The same look of confusion.   The results of my PET scan just came in. . . .  I am Cancer Free.   There was no uptake of the material into any cells in either the heart or liver.   The scar tissue is there, but the cancer is gone.

I’m still stunned, trying to absorb the information, but I’m pretty convinced this is good news!   I still meet with the oncologist on Wednesday.   We’ll plan a new course of action from there.   I don’t really know where we go from here.   There is a possibility of more treatments to remove the scar tissue I don’t know but we will be discussing all of this with our oncologist and probably getting a second opinion as to follow up with a sarcoma specialist at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York at the beginning of February.

I had forecast that I would be cancer free by June and my oncologist smiled, asking which June?   Now I know.   June came along in January.

My love and best wishes to all for a very happy and healthy 2007

Love always,

Randy