Something many people don't seem to understand about cancer in general, and my specific kind of cancer in particular...
When you have surgery to remove cancerous lymph nodes... it doesn't CURE the cancer. You still have cancer, it's just in remission, because you don't have enough actively malignant cancer cells to detect a large mass.
Even when they say you are "cancer free", it doesn't actually mean you're cancer free, it just means there are no detectable large masses of cancerous tissue.
... And you PRAY most fervently, that there are no large undetected masses... because there easily can be... and that you have a long while before the cancer grows enough again to be a threat to your life.
You have to understand... once cancer is in your lymphatic system, small clumps of cancer cells circulate through your entire body. You just have to hope and pray they don't implant and grow... or at least they won't for as long a time as possible...
... Because, barring some kind of miracle, lymphocytic cancer ALWAYS comes back... it's just a question of how long until it does.
My cancer is currently in remission... at least I hope so, because I haven't had a post surgical scan, or my six month scan. So there very well could be more large malignant masses growing in me right now... I don't have the money to get the tests necessary to know whether I do or not.
...But the odds are about 75% that it will be back within two years. About 85% within 5. About 95% within 10, and about 99.6% within 15.
... And my own personal history proves that out...
I had my first cancer surgery in July 2012.
We detected the lymphocytic metastasis in November of 2015.. three years... and had surgery in March of 2016, when they got "all the cancer"... and at they time, they absolutely thought they had.
Six months later, in October of 2016, I had approximately twice as many cancerous nodes as they had taken out in March... and at the time, it looked liked they had got all the cancer... again...
21 months after that, I had approximately double THAT amount of cancerous lymph nods and infiltrated tissue removed.
It's been a little less than 8 months... There's a very good chance I have more cancer right now... but I won't know until I can raise enough money... or work enough... to get the tests I need.
So... yeah... That...
