Dan is going to Live!

Tuesday, August 1 2017
I can't even put into words right now how incredibly happy we are!!  Dan is definitely going to survive this! The CT scan shows that the cancer has not spread to the lymph nodes or other organs in the body.
We haven't slept in days.  I've never seen Dan cry in my life... except the moment Carolyn was born and every year on Christmas Eve when he reads The Little Match Girl to the kids... That's it.  Never any other time.  I am here to tell you that he hasn't stopped crying since last Thursday when he left the doctors office. This came as such a shock to us.  Dan is super healthy, he feels good... he ran the Ogden half marathon in May and with the coaching of Casey (who is a speed runner) he finished the race in 1:52 -- almost his best time ever even though he's older and slighter fatter.  :)  Dan was paranoid he might have a pre-cancer polyp... having gone through cancer once in his lifetime already he knew he didn't ever want to go down that road again... EVER.  So, even though it didn't make logical sense, he just couldn't shake the feeling that he should get a colonoscopy.  He felt a nagging feeling for a few months that woke him up at night or other times when his mind was free to wander.  So he finally did it. There are no words to express my gratitude to the Lord for this constant prompting Dan felt.
Dr. Grunander is amazing!  She spent an hour with us and explained the difference between colon cancer and rectal cancer.  Dan has a large tumor (10 cm which is 5 in if you don't think in the metric system) that spans over the rectum and the colon.  It's hard to know where the tumor started.
The tissue in the colon is much different than the tissue in the rectum... so over time and experience the doctors know that they have to be treated differently.  Colon tissue is much easier to treat and the success rate is very high if it hasn't spread outside of the colon.  Rectal tissue is much more difficult to treat.  The success rates are still good (although not a high as colon cancer) but the path of treatment is totally different.  The goal now is to determine if we're dealing with colon cancer or rectal cancer...