Saturday, January 7, 2011: Wow! – It’s been awhile since my last post in the beginning of December when we left Nashville. Readjusting life in Knoxville was a big change, and prepping for and celebrating the holidays made things even more exciting. If that wasn’t enough, I came down with a cold a week after we got back. We were worried about me, but a week of antibiotics got me better. Unfortunately, I gave whatever I had to Jacqui, so she was not feeling the greatest for about a week also.

We were both better before Christmas, which meant we got to celebrate the holidays, bake LOTS of cookies (really…LOTS!), and spend a few wonderful days with family. If you’re reading this, I hope you had a good Christmas and New Year’s as well. Jacqui and I rang in New Year’s in style. She, the cat, and I put on our party hats, broke out the champagne, turned on the tv, and brought in the New Year watching the ball drop at home.

Happy New Year's!

We looked at the New Year as a way of closing the door on the last year of chemo, stem cell transplants, cancer, and hospital stays. I have had clean PET scans since since end of August (3 of them!), and I intend to keep it that way, and let go of the cancer behind us. We put an exclamation point on the year by going on a ~7mile hike up to the fire tower in Frozen Head State Park to begin rebuilding my strength and endurance.

it was cold starting out

we warmed up quickly

Snow!

beautiful as always

the last 0.5 mile up was the hardest

So we’re done with the cancer, and, to keep it from coming back, I have been seeing my local oncologist here in Knoxville on a weekly basis just to make sure my bloodwork is staying normal. And the fun new adventure is going to be several weeks of radiation starting in February (to make sure the cancer doesn’t even THINK about coming back). That will be 5 days a week for several weeks, should not take too much time each day, and should not wipe me out nearly as much as chemo, since the radiation I will be getting is highly focused on one part of my body, and won’t attack my whole body like the chemo did (how’s that for a run-on sentence?).

In other news, I have been occupying my brain during the stem cell transplant process with studying taxes through H&R Block. I worked for them last spring, and over the summer and fall months I completed over 200 hours of online tax training. I am looking forward to working at the tax office this year, and I wil be careful about avoiding germs. I actually go to start working at the tax office on Tuesday, January 3, and have worked 30+ hours this week, doing several tax returns and scheduling appointments for the end of January and beginning of February. I love answering people’s questions so they can better understand their tax situation. I even have a profile page on H&R Block’s website–still working on getting a picture of myself up there.
http://www.hrbtax.com/Andrew_MacDonald

I am very excited to have the opportunity to work again. It’s amazing how much I missed cooking, cleaning, and working while going through the stem cell transplant process (Who knew I would miss those things?!?!).

Now, on a more serious note… when I started this blog in mid-2010 after being diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma, I put a tag line in the header picture: “Looking FORWARD… to 2011 and NO cancer.” The news at the beginning of 2011 that we had not seen the last of my cancer was disheartening, but we have have persevered and my scans have been clean with no cancer since August 29, 2011. Going through more chemo and the stem cell transplant was a grueling process, and I’m sure that radiation won’t be a cakewalk (though I could always hope), but we have achieved the goal of me being cancer free in 2011, and everything that we have done and are doing since then, the stem cell transplant, radiation, etc, is to make sure that it doesn’t even think about coming back. It is time to move on to a new chapter in my life, in which I am a cancer SURVIVOR.

The transplant nurse at Vanderbilt was right: “It’s time to go live our lives!”