In the early morning hours of April 7, around 2 AM, I sat in a dark, quiet house and wrote to you. My wife and our oldest son were away in Tennessee helping her mom recover from hip replacement surgery, so it was just me, drenched in sweat, unable to sleep, six hours away from scan results that would tell me a great deal about my future.
I told you I was scared. I told you I wasn’t defeated. And I asked you to pray.
You showed up.
So here is the news you prayed for.
There is no new metastatic disease in my body.
Let me say that again. No new cancer. Not in my liver. Not in my pancreas. Not in my spleen. Not in my kidneys. Not in my lymph nodes. Not in my bones. The omental nodularity they had been watching in my abdomen? Gone. Disappeared. Not even visible on the scan. The small lung nodules they have been tracking? Stable. Unchanged. Holding the line.
Four years into this fight. Three rounds of treatment. Seventy radiation sessions. Twenty chemotherapy infusions. A five hour radical neck dissection with three surgeons. A stage four diagnosis was handed to me on my 25th wedding anniversary. And today, the cancer is not advancing.
In the world of stage four, “no new metastatic disease” is not just good news. It is the news. It is the thing you bargain with God for at 2 AM when the house is dark and the only sound is your own heartbeat.
I want to be honest with you, because that is the promise I have always kept.
The scan did find something new. I have what appears to be pneumonia, with extensive consolidation in my right lower lobe and smaller areas elsewhere in my lungs. There is also a small amount of fluid around my right lung that was not there before. The radiologist believes this is an infection, not cancer. But the pneumonia is obscuring some of the small nodules they have been tracking, so my doctors will treat the infection first and then we will likely need to scan again to get a clear picture.
It is not a clean victory. But I have learned something about complicated victories over these four years. They are still victories.
The integrative protocol is working. The Keytruda immunotherapy, the carnivore diet, the high dose IV vitamin C at The DRIPBaR, the repurposed medications, the supplements, the careful monitoring of every immune marker. The strategy I built when I decided to stop being a passive patient and start being an active participant in my own survival is holding the line.
And your support is part of that protocol. Every comment on WaynesCancerJourney.com keeps me motivated. Every prayer that carried me when my faith wobbled. The connections I have made with others walking this same road, and the mutual support we give each other. You are woven into these results. This is not just my victory.
The fight is not over. The pneumonia means more appointments, more treatment, and likely another scan in the coming weeks. The IV vitamin C infusions continue. The supplements continue. Only some of this is covered by insurance, and disability only stretches so far.
If you want to stand with me right now, here is how.
Visit WaynesCancerJourney.com and leave a comment. Say a prayer for me, for my wife, for my family. If your heart leads you to give, I have a GoFundMe to help with medical costs. And please share this update, because someone you know might need to hear that stage four does not have to be the end of the story.
I wrote to you from a place of fear in the early morning hours of April 7. I am writing to you now from a place of gratitude. Gratitude for a God who keeps showing up. Gratitude for a wife who fights beside me every single day. Gratitude for doctors who have not given up. And gratitude for you, the people who refuse to let me fight alone.
I’m still here.