#the advancements in cancer treatments and therapies are coming at such an absolutely insane clip

[dramas-vs-novels]

I haven't asked in a while hun, how is your mom doing? Still in remission? I pray for her.

She's good, and thank you so much for the prayers and for thinking about her <3

She's still in remission. Her numbers kind of wiggle sometimes, they'll go up a little, they'll come down a little. There are a lot of new meds that have come out even in the last couple months that definitely give us hope, should the need for them arise.

Honestly, when they said they were doing immunotherapy, I thought it was more to make us feel better than any serious attempt at saving her. But the immunotherapy has done... more than the chemo even at this point, I think. It's been an absolute miracle. We had the scare when a tumor appeared in her esophagus last summer, but she responded immediately to treatment and is doing really really well.

My father has cancer as well now, but a very slow growing kind, the doctor emphasized it's a cancer you die with, not from. They caught it almost before it was even detectable, might have actually removed most of it just doing the biopsy, and it hasn't even grown enough yet for them to bother treating. So there's that.

It's been... a really rough several years. But they didn't think my mother would last 11 months, and it's been 5 years and she's still in remission, the only sign you'd see looking at her is that she can't really move her right arm much.

We've been insanely lucky.