three years out

After a little delay due to my vacation, I got the results of my CAT scan today. We're all good. My oncologist said 90% of Hodgkin's patients who relapse do so within the first three years after treatment. If I were to have Hodgkin's again in the future, I would be in a class of 10% of the 15% who ever relapse at all.

Something that scared me a bit was some sun exposure I got on Sunday. We were at the beach a mere hour and a half in mid-afternoon, and apparently I had missed a swath on my left arm with the sunblock -- very strange, since that's normally where I start applying. I hesitate to call it a "sunburn" since it was just a dark pink, not red, and it didn't hurt. I only noticed it when I was getting ready for bed that night.

It's already fading, and I've been putting some menthol aloe vera sunburn spray on it occasionally. My oncologist didn't think it was a problem, and said my skin by now shouldn't be much more sensitive than it was before chemo. I don't know if that really jibes with what my radiation oncologist told me three years ago ("You've received several lifetimes' worth of radiation, so we're asking the skin to work extra overtime to repair it, especially in the first year") but there you have it. At least now I have a better idea of my limits.

He also said that my next checkup, in six months, will just be a chest X-ray; the CAT scan will just be once a year now. Hurrah!

I'll get to the vacation writeup soon, I hope. For the first few days, I wrote a little bit each night, but I still need to sort through and edit the photos.