NED ~ No Evidence of Disease


Today is my six month anniversary of being NED. I had to think about what date I would use and finally decided on January 15, 2009, the date of my last surgery and what I hope will continue to be my last surgery. As I said yesterday, I'll be seeing both my oncologist and my oncology dermatologist on the 22nd next week. This will be my second three-month followup and no scans this time. Usually, those scans would happen every three months the first year but since mine were unchanged from the first one in November to the second in April, they went with a six month schedule.

There was a big international melanoma conference at the beginning of this year and they came up with new staging and new 'patient outcome' prediction tools. A nice way of saying what the odds are you will see five years and ten years after diagnosis. I ran my info through the system and here is what came back for a 56 year old woman with stage 3b melanoma on an extremity -

Estimated 5 and 10 Year Survival Rates for this Patient:

Estimated 5 Year Survival Rate: 76.3 %
Confidence Interval: 71.5 % - 81.5 %

Estimated 10 Year Survival Rate: 65.8 %
Confidence Interval: 59.3 % - 72.9 %

Why do I keep bringing this up? Because I can't let myself forget for even a moment that this could come back at any time. I am happier than I have ever been in my life right now. My marriage is better than it has ever been and we have amazing plans for the future. All of those things mean I have to stay vigilant. I have to maintain my health. And most important of all, I have to be present and thankful for every single moment I am given.

There isn't enough time in the world for me to hold onto anger, disappointment, sadness. I have to remember these things and looking at statistics like those above help me to do that. I follow several melanoma bulletin boards and there are people there my age, living ten or more years with stage 4 metastatic melanoma. Then there are young, strong, healthy people in their twenties who die within months of diagnosis. I'm not afraid to die, I just have so very much to live for these days.

So I will continue to remind myself at every anniversary to stay conscious, to love as much as I can, and to be joyful every single possible moment.