Ten More Years

My new favorite number is ten. I read an article in TIME magazine recently about research to isolate the cancer stem cell so that cancer can be killed at the source. So instead of just attacking the tumor with chemotherapy and radiation, some day, they’ll be able to kill the stem cell that creates cancer cells. Then there would be no more cancer recurrence once the tumor has been removed. The doctor quoted in the story said it would take no more than ten years for scientists to succeed at this.

I read another article about new treatments to kill cancer cells by cutting off various feeders that keep them alive and allow them to grow. Again, this article said success is expected in ten years. And today, my oncologist told me that she expects there to be a cure in ten years. She’s just come back from the ASCO (American Society of Clinical Oncologists) conference in the U.S. and she said unlike previous conferences she’d attended where they just rehashed the same things over and over again, this year, there were some really exciting new developments in research.

I think if I can just hang on for ten more years, they’ll have found a cure for my cancer. Just ten more years. Josie will be 13 and Toby will be 11. They’ll be old enough then to remember me. But if they find a cure by then, I won’t have to worry about whether or not they’ll remember me. So I’m holding out for ten.