NED is coming to Christmas

Generally people get through primary cancer fine, it's when it starts travelling and you start developing metastasis (mets) or secondary cancer in other parts of your body when all the major problems begin. Today I have no mets detected and my cancer is graded stage 3 (out of 4). If I get mets I get upgraded to 4, one upgrade I don't want.. The medical team have indicated that due to the nature of my tumour that there is a good possibility that mets will develop and potentially that these are already in place but they are so small they can't detect them yet. Next week I get my first CT scan (every 3 months) to see if any secondary mets or tumours have developed.

Also following Radiotherapy (RT) and the coming surgery the pathology team start playing a role and from the material excised they will give us a clearer picture of progress. From their work they may find: 

1. no cancer cells detected (last surgery cut it all out)

2. dead cancer cells (RT was very effective)

3. some live cancer cells (RT was less effective)

1 and 2 results are great, 3 not so. With result 3 "where there is smoke there is fire" i.e. although the test is on excised material it is likely that at a cellular level there is still cancer in body and it is resistant to the treatments todate.

So who the hell is NED?
NED is a cancer survivors term for No Evidence of Disease. So my short term goal is for the CT scan to be negative and to get a 1 or 2 score on the pathology report. If so at Christmas, although I will still be hobbling about a bit post surgery, I will be wearing a large NED badge and smile. Although I need to be in the NED zone for a couple of years before my prognosis starts improving, getting into the NED club will be a major milestone.